Films by Women – Page 17

Vintage Viewing: Germaine Dulac, Surrealist Theorist

While America was building its clout as the commercial center of the global film industry, it was France that became the center of film theory, driving experimentation. A key figure in that development was Germaine Dulac.

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

The career of Alice Guy, the original film director, straddles two continents. In America, where she made the bulk of her films, Guy mentored Lois Weber, triggering an unparalleled wave of female film directors. But her career began in France, and it was to France that Guy returned in 1922, lecturing on film there for many years. While America was building its clout as the commercial center of the global film industry, it was France that became the center of film theory, driving experimentation. A key figure in that development was Germaine Dulac. Beginning her career as a journalist and drama critic for feminist publications La Française and La Fronde, while exploring photography, the bisexual Dulac was introduced to cinema by her girlfriends, actress Stasia de Napierkowska and writer Irène Hillel-Erlanger, founding D.H. Films with Hillel-Erlanger in 1915. Women’s contributions are often erased within their collaborations with male lovers, but Dulac reminds us that sharing goals is a natural romantic development, that goes beyond gender. Like Alice Guy’s Pierrette’s Escapades, Dulac’s early films explore playful gender fluidity, filming a ballet of a crossdressing masked ball. Her lost collaboration with future husband Louis Delluc, Spanish Fiesta, is credited with kickstarting French Impressionist cinema. Her influential The Seashell and the Clergyman, often called the first surrealist film, was released the year before Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s more famous Un Chien Andalou.

By combining the roles of critic and practising filmmaker, Dulac developed a theory of film that was uniquely coherent for its time, shaping the thinking of France’s cinematic avant-garde. Dulac was a firm believer in cinema as a director’s vision (Antonin Artaud fought publicly with Dulac over the liberties she took with his screenplay for The Seashell and the Clergyman). In a 1923 interview, Dulac declares: “cinema comes from palpable emotion… To be worth something and “bring” something, this emotion must come from one source only.” She explicitly demanded recognition as “author” (“auteure” – a term not then used of cinema) of The Seashell and the Clergyman, laying the foundation for the auteurism of the French New Wave in the 1950s. With the advent of sound, Dulac abandoned her impressionist and surrealist “visual symphonies” to become an artistic director and documentary filmmaker at Alice Guy’s old studio, Gaumont. She played a key role in nationalizing the French film industry in 1935, taught cinema at the Louis Lumière school and helped to establish the Cinémathèque Française, whose archives and program of organized screenings educated many of the French New Wave’s directors. After her death in 1942, a magazine apparently attempted to censor her obituary, out of discomfort with her “nonconformism”. Dulac’s historical significance has been marginalized, often limited to “the first feminist filmmaker” (a label which manages the impressive double whammy of limiting the scope of Dulac’s achievement while erasing Alice Guy, Lois Weber and Marion E. Wong). This marginalization resembles that of Agnès Varda, whose 1955 film La Pointe-Courte launched the French New Wave, before male directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were allowed to dominate international coverage of the movement.

The Smiling Madame Beudet – 1923

“Only by using ideas, lights, and the camera was I able, by the time I made my first film, to understand what cinema was, art of interior life and of sensation” – Germaine Dulac

Theatre struggles to stage inner worlds. We watch characters onstage as we watch people in life, from the outside. Traditionally, women suffered most from realist depictions, because women were expected to play passive roles, easily dismissed as decorations or overlooked altogether. In Dulac’s best-known film, her subject matter is passivity and suppression itself: a frustrated housewife who does not, actually, dramatically murder her husband. Dulac creates tension from this static premise, in the conflict between Madame Beudet’s outer passivity and her vibrant inner life. Cinematic effects of slow motion, distortion and superimposition allow easy shifting between reality and vivid fantasy, confirming cinema’s potential as Dulac’s “art of interior life.”

Opening on a tranquil small town’s facade, Dulac takes us first inside the house and then inside the head, as the sparkling lake in Madame Beudet’s mind mirrors the mood of the music she plays, establishing her sophistication and artistic appreciation in a few strokes. Isolated in a black vacuum, Madame Beudet fantasizes of escape by fast car, or a burly tennis player kidnapping her mocking and controlling husband, who emotionally blackmails her with faked suicides. He locks her piano to assert his power, anticipating Jane Campion’s The Piano. The older, married Madame Labas ogles magazine pictures of attractive sportsmen, while the housemaid’s inner smile, as she fantasizes of her lover, is contrasted with her outwardly dutiful expression, emphasizing that the passions of women are independent from their social value. A running conflict over the placing of a vase of flowers shows the banality of hellish incompatibility.

Madame Beudet’s own imaginary lover is blurred, a vague aspiration, while the grinning face of her grotesque husband is tauntingly clear, haunting her from every angle, hanging in mid-air, leaping in the window in slow motion and whizzing around the house speeded up. She loads his gun, dooming him to die if he pulls another fake suicide. While jokingly throttling a doll, Mr. Beudet clumsily breaks it, because “a doll is fragile, like a woman.” Careless ignorance does as much damage as deliberate spite. In the end, Madame Beudet is only human, and shrieks when her husband seems about to really shoot himself. Can the impulse be judged, when not acted on? In her husband’s crushing embrace, “together by habitude,” the Beudets walk the streets of their small town’s picturesque façades. Traditional womanhood is an iceberg: nine tenths lie beneath the surface. La Souriante Madame Beudet is a classic feminist work, not because it depicts what should be, but because it clarifies the stifling frustration of what is.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKiyxv88CKE”]

Invitation to the Voyage – 1927

“the intellectuals and the filmmakers should develop a closer kinship to one another, for it is only nuances between words that irremediably keep them apart” – Germaine Dulac

From the popularity of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Ruses to the paintings of Henri Matisse, Orientalism saturated early 20th century Paris. Edward Said has criticized its distortions and stereotypes but, under the pretext of representing real cultures, the “Orient” allowed Parisians to role-play alternative social values, as scifi and fantasy worlds do today. In particular, the Persian homoerotic poetry of Abu Nuwas, Omar Khayyam and Rumi made Orientalism an important codifier of gay identity. Novelist Lucie Delarue-Mardrus and dancer Ida Rubinstein led a heavily orientalized lesbian counterculture in Dulac’s Paris, while Dulac’s own lover, Stasia de Napierkowska, played Cleopatra on film and danced with the Ballets Ruses. Rather than disdaining popular Orientalism, Dulac explores it as an imaginary French creation, representing a striving for sexual liberation. In Dulac’s six-part serial, 1920’s Âmes de fous, a French heiress is liberated from her oppressive stepmother by adopting the persona of an Egyptian dancer while, in 1928’s Princesse Mandane, the Orient is the hero’s dream, where his rescued princess elopes with her female bodyguard, playfully thwarting his assumed entitlement to her. In Antonia Lant’s assessment, “it was the pleasure of the Islamic as a visual and cultural code, transformed through recyclings within contemporary French urban culture, that fascinated Dulac.”

Invitation to the Voyage was born as a poem by Charles Baudelaire, where the poet seeks “to love at leisure, love and die in a land that resembles you.” Dulac’s film makes the metaphorical nature of the voyage clear, by converting it into the theme of a bar that our inhibited heroine furtively enters. Veiled by her fur stole, her eyes devour the scene with enigmatic desires, though she flinches from sexual propositions. She pictures her home life, sewing wordlessly while her husband reads. Their child’s cot materializes between them – an obligation binding them? Clocks tick meaninglessly in her husband’s repeated absences on business (rendez vous d’affaires), echoing Madame Beudet’s stagnation. The heroine smiles hungrily at dancing couples, including fleetingly glimpsed interracial and lesbian pairings, then allows herself to join them. Rolling seascapes blend with her admirer, associating his sexual promise with escape, while Oriental musicians play. Yet, just as Madame Beudet fails to kill her husband, so the lonely wife returns home with dreams unconsummated.

Soundtrack suggestion: Billie Holiday’s The Best of Jazz Forever

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKzlYMkpxvI”]

The Seashell and the Clergyman – 1928

“Lines and surfaces evolving according to the logic of their forms, and stripped of all meanings that are too human to better elevate themselves towards abstraction of sentiments, leaving more space for sensations and dreams: integral cinema.” – Germaine Dulac

The Seashell and the Clergyman, an impressionist portrait of a clergyman’s lustful desire for a general’s wife, shares many themes with Dulac’s earlier work. Repressive hypocrisy and stifling convention are represented by clerical celibacy, while the violent fantasies of Madame Beudet are recalled in the priest’s violent fantasy of throttling his rival, the general, until his head tears apart. As with Invitation to the Voyage, the sea suggests sexual release. However, Dulac’s imagery in this film is far more abstract, evolving an aesthetic of surrealism by empowering the viewer to make their own meanings. Dulac’s theories of “pure cinema” called for all the elements of film – the rhythm of camera movement and cutting, the shape of forms portrayed, the flow between movements – to combine in their own “visual symphony” beyond narrative logic. Through the possibilities of slow or speeded motion, running film backward and jump cuts, cinema allows for time itself to become another element to sculpt with. In her 1928 film Thèmes et variations, Dulac eliminates narrative altogether, playfully juxtaposing a ballerina and factory machinery, feminine and masculine, elite and working class, before allowing them to flow together in a pure poetry of motion. In The Seashell and the Clergyman, that sense of visual poetry combines with a fever dream of erotic repression, fantasy, possessiveness and conformity. Dulac’s clergyman feels trapped as a disembodied head in a jar, surrounded by caretaking women, but ends up imaginatively trapping the woman in his place. This version is tinted and set to “The Dreams” by Delia Derbyshire (legendary electronica pioneer and composer of the Doctor Who theme tune).

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO60-cvUFmk”]

Germaine Dulac was hailed as the “first feminist filmmaker” for harnessing cinema to visualize the fantasies of women, but she was not the first to do so. In 1916, Chinese-American filmmaker Marion E. Wong wrote, directed and produced The Curse of Quon Gwon, featuring a fantasy sequence that uses dissolves and superimposition to visualize its heroine’s fears of marriage. The ethnographic films of Zora Neale Hurston are among the only other vintage footage online that is directed by a woman of color. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Zora Neale Hurston, Open Observer. Stay tuned!

Brigit McCone wishes she could pull off that sophisticated French look, but does not recommend you take up smoking. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and learning new things.

Controlling Mothers in ‘Carrie,’ ‘Mommie Dearest,’ and ‘Now Voyager’

These three “bad moms” fashion themselves the Moirai, the Fates, the three women in control of everything on earth. … These films were just the start of audiences’ obsession with controlling mothers. We continue to see these tropes replayed in a multitude of ways.

This guest post by Al Rosenberg appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Mothers who abuse their children, abandon them, or neglect them are easy to spot and label as “bad mothers.” Then there are the subtler forms of “bad mothering.” For these types it all comes down to control; control through religion, respectability, or ambition. It is in these three arenas that the Mommie Dearests of the world push their daughters to the breaking point. These three “bad moms” fashion themselves the Moirai, the Fates, the three women in control of everything on earth. These types of manipulation in the extreme are the things of nightmares, or of the big screen.

The insidious part is that it is meant to seem like this behavior stems from a slight corruption of maternal love, of wanting the best for your child. In the case of Carrie (1976), Margaret White (Piper Laurie) wants better for her daughter than she had for herself. Throughout the course of the film it’s revealed that Carrie was conceived after her mother was raped by her own husband, and now Margaret wishes constantly to cleanse Carrie of this sin through cruel and overbearing religion. After Carrie is tormented by her fellow students for finally getting her period, and having no idea what it is, her mother locks her away for prayer and reflection.

Of course, it being a horror movie based on a Stephen King novel, the outcome is not so simple as a terrifying “religious cleansing.” When Carrie and Margaret finally have a heart-to-heart it’s the biproduct of the telekinetic teenager having just murdered a good percentage of her high school. Margaret cannot suffer to let this witch live, and attempts to end her daughter’s life, a final act of ultimate control, and ends up on the wrong end of Carrie’s new found powers.

Movies have been curious about this maternal tension since the get-go. While Carrie may have had the super skills, all three of these mothers have very realistic power over their offspring. In Now, Voyager (1942), Bette Davis plays rich, mousey Charlotte Vale, a woman whose life is entirely dictated by her mother (Gladys Cooper). Mrs. Vale does not push Charlotte into closets, or chant biblical passages at her. In fact, this matriarch barely moves throughout the film. Instead, Charlotte’s life is controlled through her mother’s emotional manipulation. Like Carrie, Charlotte was an unwanted child and Mrs. Vale makes sure she knows it. She tells Charlotte what to wear, how to talk, whom to associate with, all in the name of ladylike propriety.

Through therapy and travel Davis’s character finds her own voice (and was a babe-in-disguise, perhaps one of the earliest films in that trope as well). When the two women meet again they’re at a stalemate. What is a controlling mother without a child to control? Mrs. Vale’s demise is more similar to Margaret White’s than one might expect from a “weepie” film, finally leaving Charlotte to be her own woman.

Hollywood would like us to believe that this kind of parent is just one bad turn away in everyday life. And maybe that’s true: Mommie Dearest is based on the memoirs of Joan Crawford’s (Bette Davis’s biggest rival) daughter. It’s the tale of Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) tormenting her adopted daughter Christina in bizarre, abusive ways. Again an unwanted child, but this time not by her mother. Though Joan chose Christina, it becomes clear that it was all an act, like much of Crawford’s life in this film.

Eventually Christina makes it onto the big screen herself, perhaps due to years of her mother’s ambition being shoved down her throat. But when she’s too ill to make it to set, Joan, a much older woman, takes the role from her. Joan doesn’t join Margaret White and Mrs. Vale in the Killed-By-Our-Daughters afterlife, but Christina did wait until after the death of her mother to publish these memoirs and, hopefully, find some resolution.

These films were just the start of audiences’ obsession with controlling mothers. We continue to see these tropes replayed in a multitude of ways. Carrie (1976) was recently remade for the second time, Carrie (2014). Though this time it offered a slightly more sympathetic view of both mother and daughter. Audiences may not have loved it as much as the first attempt, but it was still the Halloween pick for many movie-goers.

Mommie Dearest’s fame-driven mother finds a spiritual successor in Natalie Portman’s mother in Black Swan (2010). Portman is driven to the brink of insanity by her own ambition, but couple that with her mother’s drive and it’s just too much for the young ballerina. You can also watch moms incredibly similar to Crawford and her drive for success in any of the many seasons of Dance Moms available on Lifetime. Or watch the beginning of “no more wire hanger” relationships in Little Miss Perfect, and, my personal favorite, Toddlers & Tiaras. Audiences seem to love to hate the controlling pageant mom.

Mothers are important, they guide children through life in a multitude of ways, but some children get stuck with the women who never wanted them. Perhaps these mothers, raped, or widowed, or abandoned, see too much of themselves in their daughters and push too hard. Perhaps the real life version of these mothers deserve more of our sympathy than to be turned into monsters of the big screen in a multitude of ways. But these three mean moms? Maybe they got the ends they deserved.

Al Rosenberg is the Games Section Editor of WomenWriteAboutComics.com, a reviewer at Lesbrary.com, a Chicagoan, and a general nuisance. Follow on Twitter: @sportsmyballs

‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’s Abject Mother

The film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

Written by Sarah Smyth as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Western society and culture fears mothers. Through her grotesque leaky body and the ambiguous division of the mother/child during pregnancy, patriarchy marks the mother as strange and mysterious. She is nature, opposed to the “proper” masculine position of culture. So prevalent a fear within Western society, the mother is the ultimate embodiment of abjection. In this piece, I will use the theory of abjection in order to examine Lynne Ramsay’s exquisite 2011 film, We Need to Talk about Kevin. In doing so, I hope to locate the film within a post-feminist framework, demonstrating the ways in which the representation of abjection plays into our notions of maternal and female achievement. Ultimately, I argue that the film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

The poster for "We Need to Talk about Kevin" — The poster for “We Need to Talk about Kevin”

The theory of abjection is most powerfully put forward by Julia Kristeva in her book, Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection. Here, she discusses the abject as the grotesque, the repulsive, as that which we want to expel and dispose of. Particular examples of this include bodily waste such as excretions, secretions, vomit and menstruation, rotting food, and corpses. The significance of these abject moments and the reason we fear them so much is, as Kristeva says, not due to their lack of cleanliness or health “but what disturbs identity, system, order”: “What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”. It is, then, the uneasy position between boundaries that causes or repulsion and rejection of the abject: death and life, clean and unclean, healthy and diseased.

Film academic, Barbara Creed, developed Kristeva’s theory of the abject to suggest the ways in which the maternal body, as particularly represented in horror films, embodies abjection. So obviously and relentlessly fleshy and visceral, the maternal body is linked to the “natural” world of birth, decay and death. Menstruating, lactating and gestating, the maternal body embodies this very ambiguous abject space. The boundaries of her body become blurred, setting her apart from the patriarchal world which continually attempts to remain “clean and proper”. For Creed, many classic horror and science fiction films including Alien, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and Carrie play on this idea of the monstrous abject maternal function. In all of these films, the pregnant woman, or the potential pregnant woman as represented through menstruation, provides the horror of the film through the very abjection of their female body.

Website, Ain't it Cool's poster for "We Need to Talk about Kevin" plays on the original poster for "Rosemary's Baby" suggesting the links between the two films — Website, Ain’t it Cool’s poster for “We Need to Talk about Kevin” plays on the original poster for “Rosemary’s Baby” suggesting the links between the two films

Although We Need to Talk about Kevin is not explicitly a horror film, it uses many of the tropes of the genre to create feelings of unease and fear around motherhood. Adapted from Lionel Shriver’s successful novel, the film focuses on Eva (Tilda Swinton), a travel writer, and her relationship with her (sociopathic? disturbed? evil?) son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). The film is told in a series of flashbacks as we learn that Kevin is somehow involved in a terrible criminal atrocity. As we discover what Kevin has done, the film also reveals the relationship between mother and son, posing the continually fascinating question: does familial and social upbringing wholly inform a person’s moral and ethical values or are some people just born evil?

As the film unpicks this question, it deconstructs traditional conceptualisations of the abject and identifications of the monstrous. For Eva, great pleasure is taken in the abject. During one of the first scenes in the film, Eva travels to La Tomatina festival in Spain. Through the shots of Eva wading through the semi-naked bodies and the vivid red tomatoes, the film emphasises Eva’s pleasure or even jouissance (a kind of excessive, orgasmic pleasure) in the visceral, bloodlike, grotesque experience. The film makes clear that Kevin disconnects Eva from these experiences she so craves. She’s not able to travel, and eventually winds up at a menial job in a travel agency. In one particularly painful moment, she finishes decorating her own room, her special room, with rare maps, which Kevin then destroys with paint. But not only is Eva unable to travel, write or occupy a room of her own, crucial activities for the active, challenging, and independent woman as Virginia Woolf so passionately advocated. She is also particularly separated from the physical and emotional experiences of pregnancy. The film gestures towards her pregnancy through an extreme close-up shot of cells splitting. Later, after childbirth, Eva sits quietly and almost mournfully in a cold, clinical hospital as Franklin (John C. Reilly), her husband, coos over the baby. The film presents her pregnancy through a scientific and technological lens, far removed from the abject experiences of pregnancy put forward from the previously mentioned films.

The wide angle of this shot suggests the physical and emotional distance Eva experiences towards her pregnancy and her child

Most radically, however, in a reversal of gender, Kevin primarily embodies abjection within the film. He throws, smears and expels food, leaving it to rot and become covered in ants. He refuses to become toilet trained but shows an extraordinary level of control over his bowels as he defecates just after being changed, frustrating his mother greatly. When he’s older, Eva catches him masturbating but rather than feeling embarrassed or chastised, he menacingly holds eye contact with her until she hastily shuts the door and walks away. What’s interesting about these moments is the manipulation of the traditional abject mother-child relationship. As Creed points out, the mother not only embodies the abject body. She must also police the abject body; it is the mother’s job to map and uphold the “clean and proper” body of the child before he/she enters the paternal and patriarchal world of language and culture. In We Need to Talk about Kevin, Eva refuses or is unable to exert this maternal authority in order to keep Kevin’s body “clean”. She doesn’t clear up the food Kevin throws. She cannot potty train or exert any kind of control over Kevin’s bowel movements. She is unable to extend any influence over Kevin’s masturbatory habits. As Sue Thornham claims, “Kevin denies [Eva] control, refusing her transformation of the unknown into an exercise of mapping, of motherhood into a teaching relationship. Instead, his behaviour insists on the messiness of the body, on the fleshy, the organic, the abject – and insists that Eva recognize this, together with her own rage and fear at her entrapment”.

Kevin's not at all concerned that his mother's caught him masturbating... — Kevin’s not at all concerned that his mother’s caught him masturbating…

The film’s deconstruction and blurring of the abject roles examines and challenges the post-feminist ideas and ideals of motherhood. In Unruly Girls; Unrepentant Mothers, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn writes that post-feminism purports to celebrate intensive mothering as the liberated woman’s enlightened choice when, in fact, it both replaces subservience to a husband with subservience to the child, and naturalizes motherhood as an essential part of womanhood. By refusing to embody her traditional position as the abject mother, Eva and, indeed the film, challenge the idea that every woman must become a mother, that every woman will find fulfillment in being a mother, and that every mother must take up her position as the abject figure in this patriarchal society.

In all, We Need to Talk about Kevin is not a misogynist depiction of the feared maternal figure. Rather, it is a feminist revelation of the fears mothers have themselves; that they may not love their child, that they may not fulfill the so-called ultimate expression of womanhood and femininity, and that they may, in fact, release the monstrous potential of themselves and their child through the very abjection of their maternal function.

Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

‘Riding in Cars with Boys’ and Post-Maternal Female Agency

‘Riding in Cars with Boys’ showcases a humanity to women who are mothers that our media lacks. Women are constantly punished and depowered for their sexuality, and their motherhood status is often used as another way to control in media.

This guest post by CG is part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Being a woman in today’s society means following a particular script. You are to: be a quiet, pleasant child. Discover boys by puberty. Get good grades, wear a sparkling prom dress. Have a college boyfriend. Marry said college boyfriend. Be a quiet homemaker, be pregnant, raise your children accordingly. But rarely, if ever, do we get a glimpse into what life means outside of this script – particularly after motherhood. What happens to these women who follow the script, who find themselves the proper example of what the script can mean – and what happens to those who choose to forge their own path, and mix life in with the order of the script?

It’s rare to find that there is life for women beyond motherhood. For this, I turn to one example that has shown the full humanity of post-maternal female agency. This is 2001’s Riding in Cars with Boys.

Riding in Cars With Boys is a journey story, first and foremost. Radical even today, the story follows Beverly “Bev” Delfrino (played by Drew Barrymore) as she stumbles her ways through life. Even at eleven, Bev displays her zest for life and the zing of excitement. She wants to be a writer. She wants to go to college and rub elbows with the elite. And most of all, she wants to be desired…by boys.

In one of the first scenes, Bev’s father is flabergasted as she tells him that what she really wants for Christmas isn’t a bike, but a bra, to impress a classmate that she likes.

This kind of boldness is cemented into Bev’s character as she grows older. Even when she is rejected at a high school party by yet another classmate she is pining over, she finds comfort in Ray, a guy who really doesn’t have much going for him but comforts our heroine. She then has unprotected sex with Ray in the backseat of a car.

It isn’t long before Bev finds herself pregnant. And while most stories would end here, or move the heroine to find some meaning in her pregnancy and motherhood, Bev rejects this. She continues being the same selfish, flamboyant lover of life that she is at the beginning of the film, despite the constant pressure from others in her life (particularly men) for her to conform. Her father, with whom Bev has a close relationship with, not only rejects her but kicks her out of the house when he finds out she is pregnant. Ray, who Bev marries out of necessity, remains a static character as well. He is a well meaning individual whose irresponsibility outweighs Bev’s. Between forgetting basic essentials to falling into a haze of drugs, Ray’s unreliability mirrors the same gender roles that move along the film.

It seems odd to praise a film like this, where the mother figure is such a notable “bad mother”, but that in lies the beauty of this film. Riding in Cars with Boys doesn’t negate or try to water down Bev. She remains an individual first and foremost, and the role of mother becomes secondary to that. And there are far and few media representations that allow women to embody themselves fully like this.

Bev is surrounded by men in the film – her father, Ray, her son Jason – and they all embody some part of the responsibility and gender roles that Bev is fighting against. Jason ends up being the voice of reason in the film, growing up feeling resentful and grateful for having Bev as a mother. In one of the final climax scenes of the film, we see Jason’s frustration bubbling over as he tells his mother “I raised you!” Bev’s reaction? To pout and throw a temper tantrum.

Do you see how great this is?

Riding in Cars with Boys showcases a humanity to women who are mothers that our media lacks. Women are constantly punished and depowered for their sexuality, and their motherhood status is often used as another way to control in media. We see this in everything from Scandal to Flowers in the Attic to Lizzy Bordon Killed a Man. Rarely are women granted that full spectrum of emotions and flaws in the way that men and men who are fathers are allowed to be. Bev Delfino proves that there is life beyond motherhood, and that a woman doesn’t stop being who she is once she has children.

Though this film came out in 2001, I still hope that more people can watch Riding in Cars with Boys and can see the importance of post-maternal female agency in our media.

CG is a writer, blogger, and fangirl from New Jersey. Most of her online writing can be found on her site (blackgirlinmedia.com).

‘The Babadook’ and the Horrors of Motherhood

Amelia didn’t need to be possessed to have feelings of vitriol towards her son; they were already there, lurking inside her at the beginning. Rarely, if ever, is a mother depicted in film this way. Mothers are expected to be completely accepting and loving towards their child 24/7, despite any hardships or challenges their child presents to them.

This guest post by Caroline Madden appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

The Australian horror film The Babadook is a chilling story that takes you on an insanely thrilling and mentally stimulating ride, shot in striking gothic charcoal hues. The best part of The Babadook is its contribution to telling an honest and complex female story. The Babadook subverts common horror tropes in electrifying ways. While The Babadook has many themes, such as the monster being a metaphor for depression and grief, but one it particularly touches on is motherhood. Director/writer Jennifer Kent uses The Babadook to question the meaning of what it means to be a mother. “I’m not saying we all want to go and kill our kids, but a lot of women struggle. And it is a very taboo subject, to say that motherhood is anything but a perfect experience for women,” she said in an interview.

The story of The Babadook centers on a woman, Amelia (a powerhouse performance from actress Essie Davis) who is the mother of a little boy, Samuel. Samuel has violent tendencies and frequent temper tantrums. He is constantly getting in trouble in school. Amelia is left utterly exhausted, coming home from a long day at work to a child who is relentlessly difficult. Amelia’s sister has a strong disdain for Samuel and the way Amelia raises him. Samuel also gets in trouble by accidentally hurting his cousin. Trouble follows him everywhere and it seems Amelia can never get a break with him.

Aside from his behavior problems, Samuel’s mere existence comes with a lot of baggage for her. Samuel was born the day his father died–in a car accident on the way to the hospital. Amelia is not over her husband’s death, and this will always darkly shadow her feelings for Samuel. “I can’t stand being around your son,” her sister Claire says to her in one scene. “And you can’t stand being around him yourself.” Amelia does not deny it. There’s a scene where Samuel lingers sadly by the bed asking for food while Amelia screams about needing sleep. Samuel keeps her up every night hiding from monsters. She later corners him growling, “You don’t know how many times I wished it was you, not him, that died.” “I just want you to be happy,” Samuel replies.

The audience’s feelings are constantly being juggled between Amelia and Samuel. We can empathize with Amelia for being frustrated with her challenging child, but at the same time we are offered glimpses that remind us that Samuel is just a child; he can’t help the way he came into the world.

Often, mothers in horror films are either the saviors of the child or the villain, taking the bad mother trope to a whole other level. We recall the terrified Wendy Torrance scuffling Danny out of the bathroom to stay and face the ax-wielding Johnny in The Shining, or Kathy running from her demon-possessed husband in The Amityville Horror. As for mother villains, we’ve had the famous mother from Stephen King’s Carrie, or Jason’s in Friday the 13^th.

The Babadook is unique in making the vessel of evil be the mother, or having the mother be possessed and her child as the victim. But The Babadook subverts this even further for Amelia’s antagonist feelings towards her son have been there in the beginning, before any evil presence or possession. Amelia didn’t need to be possessed to have feelings of vitriol towards her son; they were already there, lurking inside her at the beginning. Rarely, if ever, is a mother depicted in film this way. Mothers are expected to be completely accepting and loving towards their child 24/7, despite any hardships or challenges their child presents to them. A mother’s love for her child must be unwavering; to be acknowledged as anything else is not permitted in society’s eyes. It is refreshing to have a film that depicts motherhood in a way that is rarely seen but is felt by many women everywhere.

The Babadook is unique for it portrays the true (but often overlooked, or afraid to be touched upon notion) that motherhood is not always the greatest. That sometimes loving your child can be difficult. Children are not always perfect and it is not an easy or always enjoyable feat to raise them. The Babadook is a brave and human look at what it means to be a mother, led by a well-crafted and fully fleshed-out female protagonist that is rarely seen in horror, let alone film at all. The fact that her actions cannot entirely be wholly attributed to demonic possession is what makes The Babadook both frightening, thought provoking, and one of the most original and exciting horror films in recent history.

Caroline Madden has a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory and is working on an MA in Cinema Studies at Savannah College of Art and Design. She writes about film at Geek Juice, Screenqueens, and her blog. You can usually find her watching movies or listening to Bruce Springsteen.

“The More You Deny Me, the Stronger I’ll Get”: On ‘The Babadook,’ Mothers, and Mental Illness

Most people I talked to and most of the reviews that I read about ‘The Babadook’ concluded that the film is about motherhood or mother-son relations. While I agree, I also really tuned in on the complicating element to this whole narrative, which is that the mother is mentally ill.

This guest post by Elizabeth King appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

I don’t typically like horror movies. I have always been sort of a scaredy-cat when it comes to anything horror-related, and I was completely terrified when I watched The Babadook with my roommates several months ago. To tell the truth, I barely saw the Mr. Babadook creature himself, because I would immediately cover my eyes when I sensed an appearance was pending. For many reasons, the film is truly horrifying.

To summarize (and spoil) the film’s plot: the two main characters are a mother and son, Amelia and Sam. Amelia’s husband and Sam’s father died in a car accident while driving Amelia to the hospital while she was in labor and about to give birth to Sam. We join mother and son, several years later in the present day, and see that Sam ostensibly has some severe behavioral issues (including self-hard and violence towards others), and that Amelia has not yet recovered and found peace after her husband’s untimely death.

One evening, Sam pulls a book off of his shelf for Amelia to read to him at bedtime. What he brings to her is a book neither of them have seen before, and the contents quickly reveal themselves to be very dark and violent. The title of the book is Mr. Babadook, and Mr. Babadook is a threatening, scary, and sinister monster that foretells of his haunting of homes and ability to provoke violent behavior and terror from others. Naturally this scares the hell out of Sam, and he fixates on this character both as an object of his fears, and the sense of protection he feels for his mother. As Sam’s obsession and fear of the Babadook worsen, Amelia’s nerves fray, and she is emotionally and physically exhausted trying to care for her son and ease his fears. Her exhaustion turns to madness, and she eventually turns on Sam, drugging him and attempting to harm or kill him.

The film resolves in an extremely satisfying way (the best I have ever seen a horror movie end) with the family managing to face their fears after being consumed by them, and saving their own lives as mother and son. So yes: the film is disturbing and exceptionally scary by my standards, but with a message so powerful that it warrants further conversation.

Most people I talked to and most of the reviews that I read about The Babadook concluded that the film is about motherhood or mother-son relations. While I agree, I also really tuned in on the complicating element to this whole narrative, which is that the mother is mentally ill. Throughout the film, Amelia is very obviously in the deepest darkest depths of a major depressive episode, initiated by her husband’s death, and felt helpless in the face of her maternal responsibilities. I interpreted Mr. Babadook not as the difficulties of motherhood personified, but rather as an excruciating metaphor for depression, and the ways that mental illness can be further complicated and stigmatized when they are present in mothers.

Throughout The Babadook, Amelia is judged and later rejected by her sister when Amelia expresses her desperation regarding Sam’s behavior. Amelia can’t live up to her sister’s expectations of a perfect mother, and is therefore deemed unworthy of support. Sam’s school administrators also stigmatize Amelia’s condition and her parenting abilities, and appear to conspire against her instead of offering support. They all see her as a bad mother, when in fact she is struggling to cope with depression, and needs their help more than ever.

Amelia is also in denial of her depression, and seems to internalize the “bad mother” judgement, in large part due to her understandably complicated feelings towards her son. She feels resentful and claustrophobic around Sam, as she sees him as the cause of her pain: the death of her husband. Motherhood not only was the birth of her depression (her husband died the day Sam, her only child, was born), but also what exacerbated her depression and ultimately made it unbearable.

What clinches the depression metaphor for me is Amelia’s strong denial and inability to acknowledge the extent of her problems. She repeatedly says she is fine, and never names her depression, which takes shape as the terrifying and destructive Babadook. Denial is never a good thing, particularly when addressing mental illness. As the Babadook says, “The more you deny me, the stronger I’ll get.” This is perhaps the most true threat the Babadook made, and also the best possible way to describe what will happen when depression goes unchecked. Unacknowledged depression like Amelia’s is bound to reach a tragic critical mass unless measures are taken to cope and heal.

As her depression symptoms intensify (we see repeated scenes of Amelia staying awake all night, not eating, lacking the energy to work, becoming paranoid, etc.), Amelia devolves into the Babadook, and is totally possessed by her illness. As a result she seeks to eliminate the ostensible source of the problem: her son. Instead of being a mother to Sam, the illness warps Amelia into an imminent threat that Sam has to protect himself against. And yet, the one person who doesn’t see Amelia as a bad mother is the subject of her angst and pain: her son.

At the extremely touching and horrifying climax of the film, Sam has his mother bound with ropes on the floor of their basement at the peak of her possession by the Babadook, Sam yells at his mother, “I know you don’t love me! I know the Babadook won’t let you!” I was simultaneously terrified of what was happening, and heartbroken by Sam’s message to his mother. He needed her to understand that it wasn’t her, it was her depression, the unaddressed grief she felt that was destroying their family. She was a good mom and wanted to love her son, but the Babadook’s power over her made it impossible for that to happen.

After Amelia, with Sam’s help, is able to confront her pain and can no longer deny her depression (she screams at Mr. Babadook: “This is my house!” a sign that she is ready to reclaim her life), she and Sam are able to cope and move forward. At the very end of the movie, we see Amelia tending to the Babadook creature, shackled and very tightly locked away in the basement of her home. She tells Sam that they can discuss the creature when he’s older. Not only has Amelia confronted her depression, she also acknowledges that while she will never be able to completely subdue the pain of her husband’s death, she must face it.

Elizabeth King is a freelance writer based in Chicago, Ill. She is an ardent feminist and environmentalist, and a huge fan of ice cream. You can find her on Twitter @ekingc, and Instagram @mr.sweatpants.

‘Bessie’: Unapologetically Black, Female, and Queer

‘Bessie’ is one of the rare mainstream films that shows an unapologetically Black, female and queer protagonist. That alone is groundbreaking in an otherwise straightforward biopic.

Written by Lisa Bolekaja.

See-line woman
Wiggle wiggle
Turn like a cat
Wink at a man
And he wink back

Now child
See-line woman
Empty his pockets
And wreck his days
Make him love her
And she’ll fly away

Writer/director Dee Rees opens the film Bessie with the Nina Simone classic “See-Line Woman” playing as the camera takes in Queen Latifah in close-up, her face drenched in resplendent blue lighting. The color, framing and music told me from jump that the narrative would be coming from a place of womanist Blackness. Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Soul, was signifying musically the proper introduction to Bessie Smith, the woman known in her day as the Empress of the Blues.

The story of Bessie Smith has been a long time coming, and it was quite timely that she should be given her due just a few days after the passing of the Blues legend B.B. King. Most people know very little about Bessie Smith, and it is almost a given that biopics are never truly satisfying, typically following a rise to fame and falling into trouble narrative. All I wanted to know was, would Rees be true to the highly unorthodox life of Smith? Or would we be subjected to a safe narrative that tip-toed around the raunchy, bisexual and profane realness of the Bessie Smith I read about in college?

Rees kept it real. Bessie is one of the rare mainstream films that shows an unapologetically Black, female and queer protagonist. That alone is groundbreaking in an otherwise straightforward biopic. Within ten minutes of the film, we see Bessie fooling around with a male paramour whom she beats up after he gets a little too fresh for her tastes, and then we see her in bed with her longtime female lover, Lucille (the gorgeous Tika Sumpter). It comes off natural, not some forbidden plot device to be used later to create conflict. It is what it is, and Bessie doesn’t waste time fretting over it. When she jumps on a train owned by Ma Rainey (Mo’Nique) to beg for a singing job and observes Ma interacting with her own female lover who prances around comfortably topless, Ma asks her straight out, “Watchu know about it?” Bessie tells her, “Same thing you do.” And that is that.

It was very powerful to see Black queer women openly affectionate with one another, and openly sexual in private spaces, especially for that time period. Black queer women, hardly ever get to see themselves on film without the narrative making them act secretive of fearful. Throughout the viewing, I kept waiting for Bessie’s bisexuality to become a big issue with her family, her band, or even her husband (and many lovers). It didn’t.

Ma Rainey takes Bessie under her wing, teaches her the ropes and how to sing the Blues to make the audience want more. She even teaches Bessie how to dress as a man and enjoy the thrill of smoking and gambling with men dressed that way. It reminded me of the stories I read that told of private clubs where women could be gender fluid and embrace masculine expressions without fear of bodily harm from violent homophobes.

Black love in all forms is front and center, and a new love comes in the form of Jack Gee (Michael Kenneth Williams being fierce and nuanced in this role), a man who sees Bessie perform, and goes to her hotel uninvited. As Bessie lies in bed, still in her nightgown and headscarf, her brother and business partner Clarence (Tory Kittles) watching her back, Jack Gee tells her his personal stats and proclaims without haste, “I’m auditioning to be your man.” He’s bold as brass and Bessie eventually marries him, and keeps her girlfriend Lucille too.

Jack seems very much Bessie’s equal, and they do go toe to toe with their hard loving, hard fighting and hard drinking. It’s a fragile relationship that hinges on Bessie’s Achilles heel, which is a bottomless hunger that stems from the loss of a mother at an early age, and the dysfunctional relationship she has with her older sister Viola (Khandi Alexander). Viola used to lock up food in the family refrigerator and beat on Bessie. This back-story told in flashbacks is the key to Bessie’s insatiable need for more success, more money, more lovers, and more control over her family. She eventually buys a large house without telling Jack, bringing everyone (including her sister Viola and Lucille) under one roof. She ignores her husband’s complaints and forces her will on everyone. She will live the life she felt was denied her, and even brings home a little boy on Thanksgiving to be her and Jack’s son. It’s Bessie’s world and everyone is expected to fall in line and gravitate around her.

The best part of Bessie is how she handles the intrusion of the White Gaze on the storyline. Bessie’s world seems insulated from white intrusion, and this allows us to focus on the Black characters just being themselves without having to focus on the known and ubiquitous racism. Whiteness does seep in through the colorism issues that Bessie encounters with the infamous paper bag test (Black performers, even in Black entertainment spaces of the period, did not hire darker skinned Black women who were not lighter than a paper bag). White intrusion is most prominent in two scenes, one involving the Klan showing up at one of Bessie’s performances, and the other at a prominent white patron’s home.

In the Klan sequence, Bessie simply walks outside and cusses the white men out and chases them away. She doesn’t quake in her boots or shrink behind the protection of Black men. She then turns around and goes back to performing, winning over the respect of the frightened Black men and women who were prepared to run away from White terrorism intruding onto Black space. In the home of Carl Van Vechten (Oliver Platt), a controversial patron of Negro artists whom he finds crude, primitive, and folksy, Bessie turns the White Gaze (and cultural appropriation) on its head by being true to her unfiltered Blackness. When a white woman puts her hands on Bessie in an attempt to hug her and says, “I heard that you were wild,” Bessie pushes her away and says, “Get the fuck off me.” Bessie in one fell swoop refused to let the white woman turn her body into a commodity. She turns on Carl Van Vechten too when he tells her about his book Nigger Heaven. This is a tremendous sequence because Bessie doesn’t allow the White characters to hijack the narrative and center the story on Bessie having to impress Van Vechten to get something from him for her survival. Bessie doesn’t give a fuck about anyone in that room except for herself and the two lovers she brought with her. In fact, Bessie doesn’t even care what Langston Hughes (Jeremie Harris) has to say when he tries to warn her about Van Vechten’s fetishizing of Black culture and Black people.

I found it fascinating watching Hughes take in Bessie’s behavior towards Van Vechten, because Hughes had to depend on White patrons much like Van Vechten to supplement his income in order to write and survive. Bessie didn’t. She had her voice and she had regular working class Black people who came out to see her when she travelled. Eventually she made records, (there’s the hilarious moment where she goes to a Black record company called Black Swan Records and discovers the company isn’t as Black as she thought, and that she is too Black for them), and was able to gain new revenue from vinyl sales. Bessie never had to water down her personality to make White folks feel comfortable. Unfortunately Hughes and other writers of their time (like my favorite Harlem Renaissance writer, Zora Neale Hurston) had to walk a thin line of creating the art they wanted without offending Whites who funded that art. It still happens today. Recently, poet and Buzzfeed Literary Editor Saeed Jones wrote about this same issue with his recent piece Self-Portrait Of The Artist As Ungrateful Black Writer.

Bessie is a good primer movie for people who know nothing about Bessie Smith, and it is a breakthrough performance for Queen Latifah. The cast is flawless and I expect Emmy nods for Queen Latifah, Mo’Nique and Khandi Alexander. (Khandi can do anything and just be dynamite. Period.) It was a pleasure watching unapologetic Black, female, queerness. I hope HBO takes more chances on projects like this. Somebody get Dee Rees financing for a new movie stat. It is maddening to think that she hasn’t had an opportunity since Pariah in 2011 to show us her voice. She has more radical stories to tell. I can feel it.

‘Pitch Perfect 2’: Tuning Up for an Aca-Trilogy?

Non-white characters get the short end of the stick in other ways, too: Cynthia Rose (Ester Dean) amps up the predatory lesbian angle (an outdated, unfortunate motif); Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) keeps whispering shockers as if that joke never gets old (it does); and the only lines Guatemalan Flo (Chrissie Fit), another new Bella, gets are about how she prefers the United States to her native country. Can you say aca-propaganda? Such political incorrectness is an unfortunate default to early second-wave feminism, which marginalized women who weren’t straight and Caucasian.

This guest post by Lisa Rosman previously appeared at Word and Film and on her website Signs and Sirens. Cross-posted with permission.

Here at Word and Film, we are not in the business of grading movies. But if I were to grade Pitch Perfect 2, the much-anticipated follow-up to the breakout 2012 musical comedy, I’d give it a solid B. As sequels go, that’s not bad, and the film deserves extra points for sidestepping the meta-movie trap into which so many comedic sequels fall. (Here’s looking at you, 22 Jump Street.) But, though I’m a huge fan of its pop-feminism and hip a cappella (no, that’s not an oxymoron), Pitch Perfect 2 doesn’t quite hit the high notes of its predecessor. Chalk that up to a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen plot and a disappointing profusion of micro-aggression.

The film begins as the Barden Bellas, the prize-winning all-female a cappella group from a fictional Georgia college, become a national joke when Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) suffers a spectacular wardrobe malfunction during a concert for the Obamas and Shonda Rhimes. (Insert Scandal joke here.) In order to claw their way back to good standing, the girls have to win the a cappella world title. The problem? No one’s been able to beat Das Sound Machine, a German group led by Kommissar (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), a sort of BDSM Barbie.

Most of the gang from the first movie is still in place – Chloe (Brittany Snow) is now in her third senior year – and there’s a new Bella, legacy Emily (Hailee Steinfeld, sunnier than we’ve ever seen her), who is bummed the group is in such disrepute. Also still in attendance: commentators John (John Michael Higgins) and Gail (Elizabeth Banks, who now doubles as director). John’s bad-taste humor, a throwback to Fred Willard’s shtick in the dog mockumentary Best in Show, is more problematic in this film, especially at the international competition, where he throws out nearly every ugly stereotype about minorities under the sun. Because Banks has fewer good lines this time around (in the spirit of ill-advised modesty?), John’s racism goes unchecked. The effect, for example when an Indian group leaves the stage, is a tacit endorsement of such comments as “they’re running offstage to take more of our jobs.”

At times, Pitch Perfect 2 is so diffuse and so packed with random cameos that it seems like a mildly funny SNL 40. An underground aca-contest between Das Sound Machine, some (real-life) Green Bay Packers, the Bellas, and the “Tone Hangers” (featuring such comedians as Reggie Watts and John Hodgman) is admittedly hilarious, especially with a Southern-fried David Cross at the helm. But other sidebars fall flat, as they draw focus from the barely there main story: Beca (Anna Kendrick) tries to keep her recording internship secret; Fat Amy and Bumper (Adam DeVine) embark on a surprisingly dull courtship (who knew there could be too much Fat Amy?); and we’re subjected to a super-dull flirtation between Benji (Ben Platt) and Emily, which feels like a sidebar to a sidebar. One plot that gets no screen time this go-round: the romance between Jesse (Skylar Astin) and Beca, which is just as well as their chemistry always seems forced. (Sexually, Beca only perks up when Kommissar comes onscreen; now there’s a plotline that could’ve been interesting.) In general, Beca seems incapable of connecting with others although she’d supposedly cleared that hurdle in the first movie. Kendrick plays this suspiciously convincingly, as if a sequel wasn’t exactly her bright idea.

But sisterhood is still powerful, and it all gels whenever the girls sing and dance together. Despite my misgivings, I teared up when the Bellas performed an original song co-written by Beca and Emily – “Flashlight” is the new “Cups,” trust me – especially when other generations of the group joined the stage; the idea of celebrating an “old girls network” on the big screen is still revolutionary. So maybe it’s good news that, given this film’s blockbuster opening weekend (it edged out Mad Max domestically), we can expect a Pitch Perfect 3 – ideally with those sophomore-slump kinks worked out. Hollywood can always use more ladies-first ladies.

A former labor organizer, Lisa Rosman has reviewed film for such outlets as Time Out New York, Salon, Us Magazine, Flavorwire, LA Weekly, RogerEbert.com, and CBS News. She appears weekly on the NY1 film review show Talking Pictures and writes on film, feminism, and eavesdropping for SignsandSirens.com. Most notably, she once served as an assistant for Elmo on Sesame Street.

‘Girlhood’: Observed But Not Seen

‘Girlhood’ starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls.

When Boyhood was making its victory lap through critics’ circles and award ceremonies, I wasn’t the only person who thought, “I want a film called Girlhood.” We all got our wish near the beginning of this year when the out, writer-director of Water Lilies and Tomboy, Céline Sciamma, gave us the art house US release Girlhood about a French, Black teenager, Marieme (Karidja Touré). The English title isn’t an exact translation of the original French Bande de Filles (“Group of Girls”) which was in production long before Boyhood was released–and perhaps even before that film was called Boyhood: the original title was 12 Years. Still, I was eager to see Sciamma’s film–until I read about its “bleak” ending and some talk from women of color that they found the writer-director’s take on Marieme’s life lacking. When the film played at my local art house as a revival months after its first run, I went to see it. I’m glad I did, but now I understand both reactions: the effusive praise and the cringing.

Girlhood starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls. Marieme and the rest of the team all live in the same neighborhood so after the game they walk home together with each saying “Good night” to the rest as she leaves the group to go home. Marieme is the only one left at the end, making her way up to her family’s apartment, where we see that she and her sister, who is a couple of years younger than she is, (Marieme is 15 or 16 at the beginning of the film) are the ones raising their much younger sister, cooking her meals and doing the dishes while their mother works. Their older brother is a physically abusive, petty dictator who kicks Marieme out of the living room when he comes home, so he can have the computer soccer game she was playing to himself.

Marieme finds out that she is flunking out of school and an unsympathetic counselor won’t listen to her excuses, or allow her to redeem herself. Dejected, she leaves, then just outside the school meets up with a group of three girls about her age, also not attending classes, who invite her to go to Paris with them (the film seems to mostly take place in the Parisian suburbs). At first she turns them down but when she notices the attention they receive from a group of local boys (including a friend of her brother’s she’s attracted to) she decides to go to Paris with the other girls after all.

In the city the girls unapologetically take up space, whether blasting music and teaching each other dance routines in a crowded metro car (with the white passengers turning their backs on them, pretending not to notice) or shaming and shoving a white clothing store clerk who profiles them. Marieme is entranced and becomes a permanent part of the group. She exchanges her long braids for the long straight weave/wig similar to that of the leader of the group Lady (Assa Sylla) and intimidates one of her former football teammates into giving her money that the group pool into a night in a motel room (with extra for food and booze). While she’s partying with her friends her brother calls, but Lady, while taking a bath, instructs her not to answer. She tells Marieme, “You do what you want.” When Marieme repeats the words back to Lady, she says she should look in her bag for a gift, a necklace that spells out “Vic.” “As in ‘victory,'” Lady tells her. We later find out “Lady” isn’t her real name either: it’s “Sophie.”

In another highlight the girls lip sync to “Diamonds” (the Sia Furler song sung by Rihanna) while in the room, wearing the new dresses they’ve shoplifted, dancing (shot stunningly by cinematographer Crystel Fournier) like they are in their own music video. But the high life never lasts–afterward when Marieme, now known as “Vic” returns to the apartment her brother chokes her, telling her to never ignore his calls again.

GirlhoodDiamonds — The girls dance and lip sync to “Diamonds”

By this time Vic’s nearly silent mother knows that she is out of school and has arranged for her to join her at her job cleaning hotel rooms. We see the defeated expression on Vic’s face as she scrubs a bathroom sink but aren’t prepared when, at the end of the shift, Vic grabs the supervisor’s hand, as in a handshake but squeezes and twists it until the supervisor agrees to tell her mother that she doesn’t have a position for Vic after all.

We’re used to seeing teenaged protagonists, especially those who suffer physical abuse at home, turn to petty crime and violence in film, but they’re rarely girls: the only other unapologetically violent, girl-protagonist that comes readily to mind is Reese Witherspoon’s Vanessa in 1996’s Freeway. We see Lady and the others in the group call out insults to other groups of Black girls which sometimes leads to nothing and sometimes culminates in scheduled fights (complete with a crowd of spectators filming the event with their phones). One of these fights leads to a humiliating defeat for Lady and the chance for Vic to avenge it. In Vic’s fight, she not only takes off the other girl’s shirt, as the girl did to Lady, she takes out her switchblade and cuts off the girl’s bra as well. When she comes home, her brother, who apparently saw the fight on YouTube, instead of hitting her (as he usually does when he calls her into a room) invites her to play computer soccer with him.

When Vic sees her younger sister with a group of other girls her age robbing a woman’s purse she ‘s upset. On the train ride home she implies she too will swear off stealing and fighting–only to find her brother waiting for her in the apartment with a beat-down, angry that she’s had sex with his friend (this boyfriend is one of the only Black men or boys in the film who is presented as more than a cardboard thug).

Sciamma is at her best when the girls are alone together (including an early funny scene between Marieme and her slightly younger sister) and also as in her earlier films when her characters seem to be exploring their sexual orientation and gender expression. Unlike every other woman or girl character in a movie, when Vic is in a dress and high heels it’s only until she can change into sweats and sneakers. At one point she wears her hair in short cornrows and binds her breasts, to protect herself as a woman alone on the street, but she continues to wear her “disguise” when she is at home as well. The scenes when she talks to Lady in the bathtub as well as a later dance with a sex worker/roommate have a sexual tension to them that Vic’s scenes with her boyfriend (even as she, just before they have sex together for the first time, objectifies his bare ass) don’t equal.

But during other scenes I felt Sciamma was observing these girls as a sociologist or tourist might, as opposed to truly seeing and understanding them or giving their scenes the same nuance the white male director of Our Song gave to the girls of color who were his main characters. The sometimes careless cinematography doesn’t help; although Touré is photographed beautifully in most of the first part of the film (she’s never lovelier than when, in the presence of the boy she likes, she looks down and smiles) in some latter parts she’s poorly lit (a persistent problem of white photographers and cinematographers with dark skinned actresses/subjects), so we can’t clearly make out her features.

Other reviews made me dread a downer ending. Needlessly degrading or deeming “hopeless” a woman or girl character is one of the biggest clichés writers, especially male ones, have at their disposal and I’m not the only woman who is sick of it. But the last shot of Vic isn’t any more hopeless than the one of another, very famous teenaged protagonist in French film who had also gotten into a lot of trouble, Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. And unlike him, Vic wears a look of determination on her face as she walks purposefully away from us.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AabCFCREVbQ” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

‘Bessie’: A Mainstream Portrait of Black Queer Women by a Black Queer Woman

The difference between ‘Bessie’ and the similar bio-pics about Black performers of the Jim Crow era is in the details. We see Bessie (played by Queen Latifah, in the affable, spirited persona she usually brings to roles: she’s also in good voice even though no one could be Smith’s equal) fail the “paper bag test” a Black impresario uses for the women he recruits to his revue. Smith is darker than the paper bag (as is Latifah, though not as dark as Smith was) so in spite of her talent, she’s out. Later, when she has her own revue, she uses the same test, but this time the recruits have to be darker than the bag, eliminating the women Bessie calls, “high yellow bitches.”

In some ways writer-director Dee Rees’s Bessie (showing tonight on HBO) about “The Empress of the Blues” singer Bessie Smith, is a story we’ve seen before, complete with feathers, spangles, and bootleg liquor as the action meanders through the 1920s, but a script (written by Rees, the late white playwright Horton Foote, plus Christopher Cleveland and Bettina Gilois) about a queer Black woman (Smith was bisexual) by an out queer Black woman who also directed is unusual, especially on a platform as popular as HBO. The only other recent example I can think of is Rees’s last film, the theatrically released, indie, coming-out drama, Pariah.

The difference between Bessie and the similar bio-pics about Black performers of the Jim Crow era is in the details. We see Bessie (played by Queen Latifah, in the affable, spirited persona she usually brings to roles–she’s also in good voice even though no one could be Smith’s equal) fail the “paper bag test” a Black impresario uses for the women he recruits to his revue. Smith is darker than the paper bag (as is Latifah, though not as dark as Smith was) so in spite of her talent, she’s out. Later, when she has her own revue, she uses the same test, but this time the recruits have to be darker than the bag, eliminating the women Bessie calls, “high yellow bitches.”

We see Bessie mentored by the slightly older blues singer Ma Rainey (also the subject of one of August Wilson’s most famous plays) and with Mo’Nique in the role we get a taste of the complex interplay of Black women we saw in Pariah between the main queer character, Alike (played by Adepero Oduye) and her homophobic mother (Kim Wayans). Rainey (Mo’Nique is terrific in the role and made me wish she were in more films) at first is a mother/teacher figure showing Smith that she should deliver her songs teetering at the front edge of the stage as she explains, “If you not riskin’ nothing, neither will they.” She also instructs her to find people in the audience to focus on and sing to, “The blues is not about people knowing you. It’s about you knowing people.”

With these two characters Rees is, again, one of the few filmmakers showing an audience one queer Black woman (Rainey, though she had a husband who was also her business partner, was as out as one could be in those days, singing, “Went out last night with a crowd of my friends/They must’ve been women, cause I don’t like no men”) offering guidance to another (we see Smith in multiple scenes with a girlfriend, Lucille, played by Tika Sumpter). When the two singers are relaxing in a saloon, Rainey is openly affectionate with her girlfriend and when she notices Smith nervously looking around, afraid to be seen in public with her girlfriend, Rainey tells her she shouldn’t care what other people think. Rainey and Smith are both presented as sexual, desirable beings (Latifah in one non-sexual scene reminiscent of Viola Davis in How To Get Away With Murder, removes her wig and makeup while also topless) in spite of both Latifah and Mo’Nique being over 40 and neither possessing the model-thin body type that is the default for most modern-day actresses.

But as Smith develops her stage presence and her great voice (we see the performers don’t have microphones, a condition which favors those who can easily reach the back row with no amplification, as Smith, and later in musical theater, Ethel Merman, did) we see Rainey look warily at her and eventually demote her from a starring role in the revue. Smith with her brother strikes out on her own and eventually outshines her mentor, both because of her talent, but also because of timing. The peak of her popularity as a live performer was just right for the nascent recording industry, which made better quality records of Smith’s work than of Rainey’s.

We see that Smith is reluctant to release “race records” because of the racist imagery used to promote them. But when she fails to be “respectable” enough for the Black nationalist record company during her audition (after a fawning invitation letter the very light-skinned president of the company signs “Yours in negritude”), she makes records for Columbia, a white-owned company, which offers her a flat fee, but no royalties, and features her photo, not a caricature, on the covers. The records become so popular, the Black farmworkers in the fields all stop their work to wave to her train car as it makes its way from town to town for live shows.

Smith grew up in a violent household (like many children of that era) and we see that she doesn’t hesitate to use her fists or a makeshift weapon at hand if she needs to. When we first meet her she receives a scar from one of these fights and we see it throughout the rest of the film, to remind us of these beginnings. I could have used fewer flashbacks to violent incidents when she was a little girl, especially since, unlike the at times violent mother in Pariah, Smith’s abusive older sister Viola (Khandi Alexander) is neither as nuanced in the script nor in her performance as Kim Wayans’s Audrey.

We also see Smith’s relationships with men (even as Lucille remains a member of her revue as well as Bessie’s girlfriend, a portrait of, for a time, fairly happy polyamory) including her husband Jack Gee (played by The Wire’s Michael Kenneth Williams, his distinctive facial scar perfect for this volatile character) who becomes her manager and, because of his propensity for violence, her sometime protector in the business deals that commonly cheated Black performers. We see both how she should get far away from this man and how his presence works to her advantage–and that she may very well have seen this paradox too.

I wish the film had used more period music (as well as more music that includes Smith’s voice, not Latifah’s) instead of the score which could have been lifted from pretty much any movie covering any era, the orchestra always intruding, telegraphing to us what we should be feeling instead of letting us feel. The last time I heard a score that distracted and irritated me to this extent–while still being completely forgettable–it was by the same composer: Rachel Portman. I know we need more women composers in film, but I much prefer the work of innovators like Mica Levi. I also wish the film had made its center the relationships with Rainey and Lucille (the publicity for the film, especially that targeted to queer women makes these two roles seem much bigger than they turn out to be). We’ve seen the story of the abusive husband-manager before (though Smith’s was probably one of the earlier examples) and the performer whose fortunes fall as her popularity does as surely as we haven’t seen complicated relationships between queer Black women, especially not on HBO.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FhmzwXfgz8″ iv_load_policy=”3″]

Director Diane Bell Chats about ‘Bleeding Heart’ Stars Jessica Biel and Zosia Mamet

During the festival I met with Bell at a restaurant in the Meatpacking district to chat about her film and following are edited highlights:

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Bleeding Heart, written and directed by Diane Bell, stars Jessica Biel and Zosia Mamet as two sisters who have never known each other. Biel plays May, a reserved and disciplined yoga instructor who has enlisted a private investigator to help her track down her long-lost biological sister, Shiva (Mamet). She discovers her younger sister is a prostitute in an abusive relationship with a boyfriend who is also her pimp. May feels protective and driven to rescue Shiva from her chaotic and dire financial and personal situation.

Bleeding Heart begins as a character study of two very different women and turns into a revenge thriller. The movie features two strong female roles by actresses who are usually typecast. A deglamorized Biel get a chance to show of her acting range instead of coasting on her looks, while Mamet is convincing as a hooker with a heart of gold trapped in a toxic relationship, a role world’s away from the whiny, privileged Shoshanna she plays in Girls.

The cinematography is particularly beautiful, especially in an early scene where May is practicing yoga and her body is framed by a gorgeous Los Angeles sunrise. In a shot that feels like it could only be directed only by a woman, the camera pans over every part of Biel’s body as she does her yoga routine and rather than sexualizing her, reveals her strength and power, something May is not even aware of at that moment.

Bleeding Heart recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, which screened 119 features, of which only 30 were by women filmmakers. Bleeding Heart was one of 12 narrative films by women directors screened. This is an improvement over the previous year but not good enough. (Biel, who is married to Justin Timberlake, had just given birth to a baby boy and was unable to make the movie’s premiere at Tribeca.)

During the festival I met with Bell at a restaurant in the Meatpacking district to chat about her film and following are edited highlights:

Talk about the opening shot of the film, where Jessica is practicing yoga and the sun rises. The camera focuses on different parts of Biel’s body and it feels like only a woman filmmaker could get a shot like this.

This is why we need more female filmmakers, because it’s a different perspective. Everyone’s got a different perspective, and we have different stories and different ways of looking at the world. I feel that the stories we have on film just don’t reflect our reality; they also create it. They also change how we see things.

I was very blessed with Jessica that when she got onboard the film she probably had about three months in which she completely immersed herself in the yoga practice.

Jessica hadn’t done much yoga before the film?

She’d done some yoga but like I was very specific with this film that she’s an Ashtanga Yoga practitioner, which is what I taught and which I practiced, so she immediately started practicing Ashtanga every single day. And she started working out in the gym. She completely committed to it and she became vegetarian, and she went the whole way with it.

The thing that’s different with Ashtanga than with other kinds of yoga is you do a self-practice. You learn the sequence of positions and you do them. So when she came to shoot it she knew the sequence… I’ve done it every day for 15 years or something. We knew what it was that we were doing. And I think the thing that really comes across in those scenes is her level of concentration. She’s in that zone.

And Zak (Mulligan) and I, my DP, was just phenomenal, and we knew the kind of lighting that we wanted. The film both starts and ends with that moment of dawn, of the sun coming up. Ashtanga yoga is typically practiced in the very early mornings so ideally you’re practicing from when it’s dark until when it’s light. And that was something that was really important to me, so in the opening sequence it goes back and forth between her teaching a class and also her doing her own practice. When she’s doing her own practice, it’s just that cool light of like pre-dawn, before the sun comes out when it’s a little bit blue. And then when she’s teaching, it’s light and it’s just past the sun coming out. And that’s typically what Ashtanga teaches.

Jessica Biel is usually typecast, especially in roles that focus on her looks and being sexy. In the film she hardly wears makeup and her hair is pulled back in a simple ponytail. Were you worried she’d be able to pull this off?

My concern when she was suggested was that she’s so glamorous. My impression was that she’s so perfect and glamorous and I didn’t think she’ll be able to do this, you know, and the first thing she said to me when I met her was, “I understand May because everybody thinks my life is perfect, but I’m a human being.” I asked her if she would be happy to have no make up and she said, “100 percent.”

What was your production schedule?

We shot the film in 19 days, 12 hours a day normally. As a director I will not go over time. It’s not fair to cast. 12 hours a day is plenty for everybody, and I’m absolutely rigorous, being lucky in both my films working with great first ADs, and then just absolutely rigorous about just keeping it going and keeping that momentum and getting our days every day.

Talk about the chemistry between Zosia Mamet and Jessica Biel since that is crucial for the story since it focuses on their relationship.

Everybody connected and bounded very quickly. And I think a lot of friendships came out of the film. I know Zosia and Jessie became really close. They didn’t know each other before, but the moment they met, and this is one of those things, you just say, “Oh my God, I’m so lucky!” They really clicked. They somehow brought out something great in each other. On set, as human beings too, they just had that connection. They were just like sort of goofy together. There were lots of laughs and you could see they had a bound.

Did you test them together?

No. The funny thing about that sort of chemistry between people, like I feel the movie is partly a love story. It’s about these two women falling in love with each other. And I knew it had to have that chemistry. It’s just like a love story. There’s got to be that sort of spark and I feel they really had it. I felt it every day on set. The two of them together are so charming and sweet and funny.

In the film their characters are both controlled by men although in different ways. Shiva’s boyfriend is her pimp, and he is violent and abusive, while May’s partner is gentle and good to her, but he also tries to control her life. Talk about that.

It was just something that I was interested in. There’s explicit violence and then there’s sort of like another kind of violence, which is sort of implicit.

May’s boyfriend wouldn’t identify himself as being a controlling person and would hate to think of himself as that, and she wouldn’t think of herself as being in that relationship, but that’s what they are. Those are the mechanisms of their relationship and that was definitely something I kind of wanted to say of these two women. They’re two opposites, yin yang, but they’re really the same.

In the production notes it says you are fascinated by violence. What do you mean?

There’s so much of it in our society. How do we actually deal with it? I don’t like violence at all. I absolutely detest it. I’m a complete pacifist. And for me one of the questions driving this film from my perspective was, okay, if you’re completely committed to peace, it’s easy to be peaceful if everyone around you is peaceful. It’s super easy, it’s great. But what if you have to deal with somebody who’s really violent? How far do you go to help someone, protect someone from someone who’s really violent?

In our society domestic abuse and the murder of women by spouses or boyfriends are epidemic. And it’s something we don’t want to talk about. I looked up the actual statistics of it before coming here because I thought, I better get it right. In my head I thought it was about 30 women a month are killed in America by their partners right? That was the figure I had in my head. I looked it up. It’s really three women a day. On average spouses or ex-boyfriends are killing three women everyday. That’s an epidemic!

What is your next movie?

The next one I’m going to shoot in July. We’re Crowdfunding right now in a totally off the grid way. It’s a micro-budget movie. It’s called Of Dust and Bones. It’s about a widow of a war journalist and her husband was killed in Syria. She had decided to just retreat from the world. She lives a monastic kind of life in the desert where she wants no part of what she views as this crazy world, basically. Then her husband’s best friend and colleague, Alex, who actually sent her husband to Syria, comes to visit her. He has come with an agenda. He wants the rights to her dead husband’s last photographs. She feels very strongly that there’s no hope to be good in this world and every time we try to make things better we actually end up making things worse creating more suffering. The film is about what unfolds between them in the desert over these days. It’s these two wildly different viewpoints clashing.

See also at Bitch Flicks: “Vive La Revolution!” by Diane Bell

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from “The Artist.” Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

Mo’Nique Returns to the Spotlight in ‘Bessie’

The film also focuses on the relationship between Smith and Ma Rainey, who mentored Smith and gave her guidance on developing her stagecraft. Mo’Nique portrays Ma Rainey, known as the “Mother of the Blues,” in a rich and layered performance and has so much charisma she steals every scene she’s in.

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Queen Latifah was born to play the Empress of the Blues. Queen Latifah stars in Bessie, the new biopic about the early life of legendary blues singer Bessie Smith. The film will premiere Saturday on HBO. Mo’Nique, who has her first stand out role since Precious, reminds us why she won the Oscar in 2010.

Directed by Dee Rees (Pariah) from a screenplay by Rees, Christopher Cleveland, and Bettina Gilois, the story is by Rees and acclaimed playwright Horton Foote, who died in 2009. The film focuses on Smith’s early years as she struggled as a young singer to eventually become one of the most successful recording artists of the 1920’s. She earned $2,000 a week – an unheard of sum – at the height of her career.

Both Queen Latifah and Mo’Nique received Critics Choice nominations the other day and the Golden Globes and other accolades are sure to follow.

The cast includes Michael Kenneth Williams (Boardwalk Empire, 12 Years a Slave) as Bessie’s husband; Khandi Alexander (Scandal) as Bessie’s abusive older sister, Viola; Mike Epps (The Hangover) as the singer’s bootlegger romantic interest; Tory Kittles (True Detective) as Bessie’s older brother Clarence; Tika Sumpter as Lucille, Bessie’s longtime lover.

At the recent premiere at the Museum of Modern Art, nobody worked the red carpet harder than Mo’Nique, who talked to all the journalists clamoring for her attention.

Bessie has many explicit sex scenes and Queen Latifah’s character has a nude scene that’s integral to the story but sure to get audiences talking. Ma Rainey was gay and Bessie Smith was bisexual, and the film doesn’t shy away from showing scenes of their characters having sex with both men and women. A standout is a scene early in the film where Mo’Nique and Queen Latifah dress up in drag, smoke cigars and do a song together to a boisterous audience.

Here’s a red carpet interview with Mo’Nique, who looked terrific in a blue lace gown, and was warm and thoughtful in her replies to all the journalists:

Were gay women who performed on stage more open about their sexuality in the time of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith? (Of course they didn’t have to contend with social media.):

Mo’Nique: I think back then there was a strength that said I’m unwavering about who I was born to be. Don’t we still fight with it today? But figure what she had to walk through then? It was illegal. They got locked up. If you were seen with the same sex so to have that kind of strength back then is absolutely beautiful.

What was the key to finding her character?

Mo’Nique: Her music, (I found it) through her music. If you listen to Ma Rainey you’ll really understand Ma Rainey because she sang from her soul. She sung her truth and that’s how I really got to understand who that woman was because there’s really very little written information about this woman. She’s so hidden and now history, you have to dig really deep to get that little bit…. And she told the truth. And even back then, she was fighting for wage equality, so we’re still having that fight today but definitely she kicked open the doors so we can even go to the meetings to have those discussions.

They were friends. And she was Bessie Smith’s mentor and she was very motherly but she was that type of mother that knew when she had to let go and let that baby fly and go see it for herself. And when the bird flew back home she was right there waiting for her. That’s what that relationship what. And what I so appreciate about her, we don’t often times see those relationships anymore, you don’t see it where two friends go through it, they fall out, but they’re still willing to love each other through it and come back together.

What does she see as Ma Rainey’s influence on A&R and jazz?

Mo’Nique: It’s truthful. It’s very honest. It’s very from the soul. When you listen to those singers back then, they couldn’t pretend. They couldn’t fake it because the people would know it and they were those singers that when you sat there, you know how they say music moves you? That was that type of music that moved you and made you make a decision, may it be the right, wrong or indifferent, but when you listen to that music it was like you know what? OK, “I’m gonna finish this darn liquor and I’m gonna make a change.” That’s what that music was back then. Absolutely beautiful!

What were the key factors that made her want to take on the role of Ma Rainey?

Mo’Nique: It was Ma Rainey’s strength. Her integrity. You know when you read that script and you understand that the sacrifices that woman made for little girls like us, and she had no idea that she was doing it, it was just the right thing to do. So when you read those lines, and you understand that that woman is talking to me for me, off the pages, and she’s saying Monique keep pushing. Keep going in the right direction and don’t waver from what you know is right. Look at my story and when you look at that woman’s story it’s not like most of our stories, where we die broke, alone, miserable. When you look at her story she had a very full life.

Before she made her way into the theater, I asked Mo’Nique if she actually sang.

Mo’Nique: All day long!

Later at the after party I asked the 36-year-old director about how she discovered Bessie Smith’s music, she told me it was through her grandmother: “She played Bessie Smith’s records all the time.”