Films by Women – Page 6

The Repercussions of Repressing Teenage Girls in ‘The Virgin Suicides’ and ‘Mustang’

Both are critically acclaimed dramas directed by women documenting the coming-of-age of five teenage sisters under close scrutiny for their behavior — especially when it comes to their sexuality. And in both films, the girls’ response to this repression is to resort to desperate measures to regain control, resulting in tragedy that could have been averted if they were given the freedom for which they hungered.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of suicide]

Anyone who has ever been a teenage girl knows that the bridge between girlhood and womanhood is a rough passage, rife with drama. Two films that examine this deeply personal struggle are The Virgin Suicides, released in 1999, and Mustang, released in 2015. Both are critically acclaimed dramas directed by women documenting the coming-of-age of five teenage sisters under close scrutiny for their behavior — especially when it comes to their sexuality. And in both films, the girls’ response to this repression is to resort to desperate measures to regain control, resulting in tragedy that could have been averted if they were given the freedom for which they hungered. Yet while the basic elements may sound the same, The Virgin Suicides and Mustang stand apart thanks to the different styles of the women directors who made them.

Adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides marked the feature directorial debut of Sofia Coppola, whose elegant, elegiac style immediately marked her as a talented filmmaker who didn’t need to hide in her famous father’s shadow. The film chronicles how the brief lives and tragic deaths of the five Lisbon sisters rocked the residents of a 1970s Michigan suburb. All long blonde hair and sun-kissed limbs, these beautiful girls are kept under lock and key by their infamously strict parents, making them even more desirable to the neighborhood boys.

The story is narrated by one of the boys, now grown, as he reflects on the brief time they spent in the Lisbons’ orbit. “Cecilia was the first to go,” he tells us, and indeed, it is the youngest sister’s suicide that sets the story on its path. After sad, sensitive Cecilia (Hanna R. Hall) throws herself out of her bedroom window and onto a spiked fence, a neighbor scoffs, “That girl didn’t want to die. She just wanted out of that house.”

The Lisbons were always a mystery thanks to the tight reins their parents kept them on, but after Cecilia’s death, the four surviving sisters are elevated to mythical status. When Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst) is the only girl in school who doesn’t collapse at the feet of heartthrob Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), he makes it his goal to win her heart. He’s able to convince Mr. Lisbon (James Woods) to let him take Lux to homecoming, with one caveat: he’ll have to enlist boys to take her sisters, too. Like awestruck Cinderellas finally wiping the soot from their eyes, the girls — all clad in angelic, virginal white dresses — spend the night dancing, experimenting with alcohol, and canoodling under the bleachers. Lux and Trip celebrate being crowned homecoming king and queen by sneaking out onto the football field to have sex while the others go home without them. Yet the fiery adolescent hunger Trip had for Lux fades away upon consummation. Once he’s managed to win her over, she is no longer the object of his hazy, golden fantasies; when the mystery fades away, she’s just like every other girl. The spell broken, Trip abandons Lux on the football field to sleep through the night — and her curfew.

This is the moment when life as the Lisbon girls previously knew it ends. The sliver of freedom they were so briefly allowed is wrenched from their grasps as they’re taken out of school and kept cloistered within the house. Lux seizes freedom the only way that is within her power — with her body. She repeatedly sneaks onto the roof of the house to have sex with a variety of men; it seems to be the one thing she can do to feel alive. Eventually, the boys show up in a car to rescue the girls, but the scene they encounter in the Lisbon house is more horror show than heroic tableau. Like Cecilia before them, the remaining Lisbons have taken their own lives. The boys flee, left to spend the rest of their lives wondering what could have been if the sisters had found a different means of escape than the most permanent one of all.

Telling such a female-centric film from the point of view of a group of young men is an odd choice — especially for a woman director. One would expect The Virgin Suicides to explore the inner lives of the Lisbons, but instead, the audience — like the boys — is held at arm’s length. Coppola sticks to the format of the novel and filters the Lisbons’ story through the male gaze; we only see them the way the boys see them, both in reality and in their dreams. Lux is frequently seen in hazy glimpses that wouldn’t be out of place on the cover of a paperback edition of Lolita — a flash of flaxen hair covering a twinkling blue eye, red lips curling into a mischievous a smile, long limbs leaping into the air with carefree abandon while a unicorn frolics nearby. Such an object of pure fantasy is Lux that her image is synonymous with that of a creature that only exists in fairy tales. Notebook doodles of hearts and names in cartoonish bubble letters illustrate the film, adding to the illusion that this is all a teenage dream.

Sixteen years after The Virgin Suicides, Deniz Gamze Ergüven made a big splash with Mustang, the emotional turmoil of the teenage years once again providing the inspiration for a talented woman director’s debut feature. Rather than tell their story from the point of view of an outsider, Mustang is narrated by the youngest sister, Lale (Güneş Şensoy), as she helplessly watches her older sisters fall victim one by one to what adults — particularly men — think a young woman should be. Because of this, Mustang feels more intimate, more immediate, and much more heartbreaking than Coppola’s film.

Mustang begins with the life-changing fallout from a seemingly harmless event: five orphaned sisters having chicken fights with the local boys on the beach. The image of these girls riding on the boys’ shoulders — rubbing their private parts on their necks, as their grandmother puts it — is a source of shame in the tiny, conservative village where they live. The elder girls are even subject to a virginity exam in the aftermath, with the ominous warning, “If there was the slightest doubt, you’d never be able to get married.”

The punishment for “teasing the boys” only escalates as the girls’ aggressively old-fashioned Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan) takes control over their lives; meanwhile, the boys involved are able to move on. The infuriating double standard that girls and boys are often held to is on display time and time again throughout Mustang — after all, none of the male characters are ever subject to the humiliation of a virginity test. The girls’ developing bodies are viewed as dangerous objects of temptation that must be subject to control, but one never suggests that the boys should be able to control themselves.

Like Lux sobbing as she is forced to burn her Kiss records in The Virgin Suicides, the girls of Mustang are forced to give up their computers, phones, and anything else that is deemed a perverting influence. The sisters are forbidden from returning to school; instead, they spend their days learning how to cook and clean while wearing “shapeless, shit-colored dresses” that Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner) would have admired. It is only a matter of time until families come calling to ask for the sisters’ hands in marriage on behalf of their sons. As Lale notes, “The house became a wife factory that we never came out of.”

While it was the actions of the youngest sister that set the story of The Virgin Suicides in motion, in Mustang, the youngest girl starts the story on the sidelines. Lale is too young to be immediately threatened by the prospect of becoming someone’s wife. Her older sisters’ growing sexuality is still a mystery to her, one that she tries to solve by stealing eldest sister Sonay’s (İlayda Akdoğan) bras and kissing pictures of men in magazines. Meanwhile, Sonay is shimmying down the drainpipe every night to meet with her lover, using her body as a means of rebellion in the same way Lux did.

Sonay refuses to marry unless it is to this man of her choice, and shockingly, she gets her way — better she be married off, after all, then not married at all. So, the man meant for Sonay gets passed down to the second sister, Selma (Tuğba Sunguroğlu), with no regard to how she may feel about him. On her wedding night, Selma is rushed to the hospital for yet another invasive examination after she fails to bleed upon having sex for the first time; she’s treated like a defective appliance being returned to the store by a frustrated customer. Her husband has no concern for her emotional well-being, only that of her hymen. Selma’s life as something that belongs to her alone is effectively over.

The middle sister, Ece (Elit İşcan), is next, and her story is the saddest of all the girls in Mustang. Abused by Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan) and repeatedly denied the right to make her own choices, the only way Ece can prove to herself and others that she is still her own person is to choose to die. Her suicide is horrifying, a tragic act, particularly because it is also a form of liberation — the only one she had at her disposal. Ece rejects a life in a house that has become a prison, where nothing — not even her own body — is her own to do with as she pleases. As in The Virgin Suicides, taking one’s life is a desperate form of defiance, the only way to take control of oneself and one’s personhood. It should never, ever be that way, and yet the most painful thing about Ece’s death is knowing that there are other girls like her, and her sisters, in similar situations around the world.

After Ece’s suicide, second-youngest sister Nur (Doğa Zeynep Doğuşlu) is next in line for both marriage and Uncle Erol’s abuse; she’s also the only one left standing between Lale and this terrible fate. A passive observer of the events unfolding around her for much of the film, Lale grows increasingly active as she edges closer to the end of the wife assembly line. She convinces a friendly trucker to teach her to drive. On the night of Nur’s wedding, the two girls lock everyone out of the house so that they can prepare their escape. That’s right — the house that was for so long a prison is for a very brief moment a refuge, with Uncle Erol attempting to break down the door like a rabid animal. In the end, Nur and Lale make it to Istanbul, the bustling metropolis portrayed a symbol of freedom and modernity.

While The Virgin Suicides often has the aura of a dream thanks to its ethereal cinematography, swoon-worthy score by Air, and fantasy sequences, Mustang feels utterly grounded in the blood, sweat, and tears of reality — and because of that, it’s all the more painful and poignant to watch. A scene in which the sisters sneak out of the house to attend a soccer match was one of the most exhilarating moments I have ever seen on-screen, while Ece’s hauntingly calm exit from the kitchen table to take a gun and end her life nearly wrenched my heart in two. What is most heartbreaking about Mustang is the knowledge that communities like this exist throughout our world today (not to mention the sexism girls face in countries with supposed equality), continually repressing girls and telling that they are worth no more than their wombs. Their world is harsh and cruel, with flashes of beauty — the sparkling fireworks at the soccer match, the bright white sand of the beach shimmering beneath the clear blue sky — that are all too fleeting in the darkness.

Meanwhile, The Virgin Suicides seems to project glamour onto the lives and deaths of the Lisbons — likely because we are seeing them through the eyes of the boys, who always saw them as glamorous engimas. Unlike the sisters of Mustang, the Lisbon sisters don’t seem entirely real; there is an element of distance that prevents us from getting close enough to peer inside their heads and hearts. We don’t see them the way they seem themselves; we see them the way the boys do, which is less as fully-fledged human beings than as unattainable objects to lust after, like sparkling jewels kept locked away in a rusty casket that was then lost forever at sea. Because of this, one doesn’t feel the sucker punch of their deaths in the same way that one does Ece’s in Mustang. It doesn’t help that from the opening lines of The Virgin Suicides, we know that the story will end with all of the Lisbon sisters dead. This knowledge keeps us from being fully invested in their struggle for life, because we already know they won’t succeed. A story of the past recounted from the present with a languid tone of nostalgia and regret, The Virgin Suicides lacks the urgency of Mustang, which feels entirely of the here and now. Yet while these films might not emotionally connect with the audience in the same way, both still succeed in showing us the tragic consequences of confining teenage girls at a time in their lives when they most need to spread their wings.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Sofia Coppola and the Silent Woman; Director Spotlight: Sofia Coppola

Recommended Reading: An Interview with Deniz Gamze Ergüven on Her Feminist Fairytale ‘Mustang’ by Ren Jender via The Toast

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play and currently reviews television shows as a staff writer for TV Fanatic. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

“A Truth Universally Acknowledged”: The Importance of the Bennet Sisters Now

But more and more it seems you can judge the quality of modern adaptations on how the filmmakers view Lizzie in relation to her sisters. Even though the representation of women has greatly expanded since Austen’s time, a story that revolves mostly around sisterly relationships remains rare, which makes it even more vital. And while it is true that Austen’s romance has a timeless quality that makes it popular, the narrative of sisterly love remains transcendent.

This guest post written by Maddie Webb appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood.

The Bennet sisters are some of the most enduring characters in fiction and Pride and Prejudice remains a beloved story. Can the modern incarnations of Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, Kitty, and Mary explain why people keep falling in love with their story?

Pride and Prejudice, for most people in popular culture, is seen as an early example of the “rom-com” genre. Boy meets girl, boy and girl hate each other, but despite their clashing personalities, they grow, develop and eventually, inevitably, fall in love. But Pride and Prejudice is more than just a first in its genre; it’s also one of the most adapted, readapted, spun off, and reworked pieces of fiction. I think the reason for that isn’t about how hunky Darcy and Wickham are or even the comic stylings of Mrs Bennet; I think it’s because of the Bennet sisters.

Like most of Jane Austen’s work, there is so much more going on under the surface and it’s easy to miss how her plots or characters often subvert societal norms, which is part of the reason her stories endure. In the case of Pride and Prejudice, this subversion comes in the form of the Bennet sisters, who are at once relatable and thoroughly atypical female characters in Regency fiction. Even within the confines of the 19th century, the Bennet sisters, for better and worse, have agency and personality coming out their ears. Though I didn’t watch every single adaptation of Austen’s classic (you’ll have to forgive me but my spare time is not that abundant), the most successful ones choose to make Lizzie’s happiness as dependent on her relationship with her sisters as her relationship with Darcy.

Three modern versions of Pride and Prejudice I did watch recently are Bride and Prejudice, the web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — all of which I can recommend for different reasons, but all ground the heart of the narrative in the Bennet sisters’ bond. My personal favorite retelling of the Elizabeth Bennet story is The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, an Emmy-winning web series that reimagines Lizzie as a grad student who starts a video series while studying mass communication. Although only two of the sisters, Jane and Lydia, make the cut for this adaptation (there is a cousin Mary and a cat replaces Kitty), they are unquestionably more important to Lizzie than her love life, a good thing considering Darcy doesn’t even appear in person until episode 50. The vlogging format of the show gives the story enough room to fully flesh out both Jane and Lydia and shifts large amounts of Lizzie’s character development onto her relationships with her sisters. Lydia even gets her own spin-off series, which in her own words is “totes adorbs.”

I also enjoy Bride and Prejudice, the 2004 Bollywood film, mostly because of some killer musical numbers, but also because of the Bakshi sisters’ camaraderie. Our Elizabeth character, here called Lalita Bakshi, has three sisters, only losing Kitty in the translation (poor Kitty). Having the concept of arranged marriages still in place within the culture makes it a modernization that maintains more of the plot than The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. But again the alterations made to the story are largely to do with the sisters. The frame of the plot is largely the same, but the chemistry, affection, and bickering between the women feels honest and refreshing; it’s given more screen-time than the period adaptations. Bollywood and Regency fiction may not seem like a natural pairing, but keeping the family dynamic central is key to why this version is so charming.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies may be ridiculous but it’s both a period film and an action movie, making it my kind of ridiculous. Even though this is still technically a period piece it has much in common with the other modern spins on the story. The action in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is focused on the power of the sisters as a team and helps develop their characters. The opening fight scene — when the girls slaughter the zombie hoards — is a moment where an otherwise muddled film comes alive, while the training scenes are used to smuggle in some sister bonding time, over their love lives. Considering how easily this could have ended up as the period version of Sucker Punch, the Bennet sisters ensure that the film, while occasionally brainless, is never heartless.

Another key point of change in these versions is how the Wickham/Lydia plot is handled. I can only speak for myself, but in the book, Lydia’s behavior for me is just another annoying inconvenience in the path of Lizzie and Darcy’s happiness. In the original, the issue of Lydia running off isn’t about what will happen when Wickham abandons her, but more that it’ll ruin the family’s standing in society (read: Lizzie and Jane, the characters we actually care about). However, placed in a modern context, the Wickham/Lydia plot reads more like an abuse story. She is still young, naïve, and silly but crucially, not vilified because of it. As a result of this subtle but important distinction, Wickham is elevated from cad to full on monster. Hell, in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, he literally locks Lydia up and is unmasked as the cause of the zombie apocalypse. It’s another element of this version that is a bit ridiculous, but again, no one can accuse Pride and Prejudice and Zombies of being subtle.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries variation on Wickham, while more restrained, is equally as menacing and monstrous. Over the course of the series, a subplot of party girl Lydia becoming isolated from her family slowly unravels. Now career women, Jane and Lizzie are too busy for their little sister, with the latter dismissing her as a “stupid whorey slut” in the second episode. This leads her to be emotionally manipulated by Wickham, which we get to see painfully play out in her own spin-off series. The episode in which Lizzie confronts her and Lydia realizes Wickham’s true nature, is devastating. Not because it messes with Lizzie’s happiness, but because we truly care about Lydia. Creators Hank Green and Bernie Su have spoken at length about the importance of their alterations to Lydia’s story, resulting in a heartbreaking and insightful portrayal of abuse, within a light comedy series.

A similar situation unfolds in Bride and Prejudice, perhaps to a more satisfying conclusion since we get to see both Bakshi girls slap Wickham before walking out hand in hand. It’s only fitting that, in each of these adaptations Lydia is (sometimes literally) saved from Wickham and her crime of being an impressionable and impulsive teenage girl is no longer worth a life sentence. This area of the story has always left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to the otherwise completely serviceable 2005 Joe Wright film adaptation. Despite bringing a modern filmmaking sensibility to the rest of the narrative, Lydia is still just another silly, inconvenient hurdle on Lizzie’s path to happiness, a real wasted opportunity to show how crap it was being a woman in Regency England.

People love Pride and Prejudice for all sorts of reasons: for example, my mother is rather attached to Colin Firth’s Darcy. But more and more it seems you can judge the quality of modern adaptations on how the filmmakers view Lizzie in relation to her sisters. Even though the representation of women has greatly expanded since Austen’s time, a story that revolves mostly around sisterly relationships remains rare, which makes it even more vital. And while it is true that Austen’s romance has a timeless quality that makes it popular, the narrative of sisterly love remains transcendent.

Recommended Reading: Lizzie Bennett Diaries #2 by Hank Green (on the Lydia Bennet story)

Maddie Webb is a student currently studying Biology in London. If she doesn’t end up becoming a mad scientist, her goal is to write about science and the ladies kicking ass in STEM fields. In the meantime, you can find her on Twitter at @maddiefallsover.

Sisters in Catherine Breillat’s ‘Fat Girl’

The core of ‘Fat Girl’ is these two girls, who contrast each other in some very essential ways, but are inexorably bound together by shared experiences. Both are adolescents grappling with the early throes of sexuality, but their divergent appearances and ages leave them in different positions socially, affecting their worldviews.

This guest post written by Tessa Racked originally appeared at Consistent Panda Bear Shape and appears here as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. It is cross-posted with permission.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape]

Fat Girl is a coming-of-age story about two sisters on summer vacation with their family: chubby 13-year-old Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) and slender 15-year-old Elena (Roxane Mesquida). A scene in the middle of the film serves as a cypher for the central paradox of the sisters’ relationship. Elena and Anaïs stand cheek to cheek, regarding themselves in the mirror. “It’s funny. We really have nothing in common,” Elena says. “Look at you. You have small, hard eyes, while mine are hazy. But when I look deep into your eyes, it makes me feel like I belong, as if they were my eyes.” The core of Fat Girl is these two girls, who contrast each other in some very essential ways, but are inexorably bound together by shared experiences. Both are adolescents grappling with the early throes of sexuality, but their divergent appearances and ages leave them in different positions socially, affecting their worldviews. Their different experiences come up in the first conversation we hear between them: Anaïs claims that boys run from her sister once they see that she “[reeks] of loose morals,” while Elena counters that boys don’t come near Anaïs in the first place because she’s a “fat slob.”

The ways in which Anaïs and Elena deviate from cultural standards of conduct are notably different. The Criterion DVD of Fat Girl includes an interview with Breillat after the film’s debut at the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival, in which the director describes Anaïs’ fatness as her coping mechanism to deal with having her body and sexuality denied by those around her. It would be liberatory if Anaïs’ body could exist without rationalization, but by now, reader, I think you and I have become used to a fat body paying the admission of meaning in order to be present in a film. Anaïs is frequently shown eating in Fat Girl. When Elena meets her summer love Fernando (Libero de Rienzo) at a cafe, their flirtation and first kiss is paralleled with Anaïs ordering and eating a banana split, “[her] favorite.” The girls’ mother (Arsinée Khanjian) initially defends Anaïs when Elena criticizes her for eating “like a pig.” At the end of the film, however, fed up with her daughters’ adolescent shenanigans, Mother snaps at her for opening a snack after they have a meal. Anaïs’ transgression is explicitly evident on her body, making her an easy target of criticism by her family. Elena’s sexual activity, however, is also transgressively excessive by cultural standards, especially considering her age. She is waiting to have PiV sex with someone special, but has been sexually active with casual partners. Elena is able to have her metaphorical cake and eat it too, satisfying her desire for sex without the effects of those desires physically manifesting on her body that would open her up to criticism and judgment, the kind of which she lavishes on Anaïs. Breillat’s Berlin International Film Festival interview delves more directly into her philosophy of the two sisters:

“Since [Anaïs’] body makes her unlovable, since she isn’t looked at and desired, she’s more intelligent about the world. She can create herself and be herself, with a kind of rebellion, certainly, which is painful, but all the same, she exists. While her sister, to her internal devastation, isn’t able to exist.”

Her analysis reduces the characters to what they experience based on their looks, but it is certainly an applicable factor to understanding not only the girls of Fat Girl, but the majority of female film characters. Anaïs desires sex without romanticizing it, whereas Elena denies her desire for sex because she romanticizes it. Anaïs wants her own sexual debut to be with a casual partner who won’t have the ability to brag about deflowering her, whereas Elena seeks a partner whose love will validate her decision. Fernando is able to coax a reluctant Elena into sex acts through hollow declarations of love. Anaïs, on the other hand, playacts being a manipulative lover, pretending two ladders in their swimming pool are different sex partners of hers. She swims back and forth between each, whispering cliche lies and practicing kissing. “Women aren’t like bars of soap, you know,” she tells her pretend-partner, “they don’t wear away. On the contrary, each lover brings them more.”

Anaïs’ sexual frustration means she observes and contemplates the sex lives of others, namely Elena’s. Her observations are cynical, but more attuned to the film’s reality. The audience may be accustomed to thinking of shots of Anaïs eating as grotesque or pitiable, but would a similar reaction be expected to the very long scene during which Fernando hounds Elena until she consents to anal sex? Elena is too emotionally involved in the scene to see it for what it is, but Anaïs, who watches from across the room, is not. The sex scenes in the film are shot from far away, putting Elena and Fernando on a stage of sorts. We aren’t used to sex scenes looking like this; we usually see closeups of hands and faces – how Anaïs is shot as she tosses and turns in bed, awkwardly watching and trying to ignore the couple. The audience is invited to empathize with her over Elena and Fernando.

Despite all the talk between Anaïs and Elena about sex, the act causes a rift in their relationship. When Elena shows Anaïs the engagement ring that Fernando gave her as a proof of his love, Anais immediately smells a rat and begs Elena not to trust him. While Elena and Fernando “go all the way,” we see Anaïs in her bed in the foreground, quietly crying. Later, Fernando’s mother (Laura Betti) – a tacky woman who is the only other fat character – explains that Fernando stole her ring. The girls’ mother asks Anaïs where Elena is, to which the girl impertinently replies that she is “not her keeper.” Enraged, their mother ends the family vacation early. On the way home, Anaïs attempts to comfort her sister. “It’s sick that people think it’s their business. It’s sick, being a virgin,” she tells Elena, who is worried about their father’s reaction and can’t get over Fernando.

The film’s climax further parallels and separates the sisters. Asleep at a highway rest stop, a trucker murders Elena and their mother, chases Anaïs into the woods, and rapes her. Once again, the introduction of a male character demanding sex disrupts the relationships between the female characters. And, as with Elena’s experience with Fernando, the rape is a desecration of the sex that she wants to have. However, Anaïs’ reaction is to assert agency within the horrible situation. She puts her arms around her assailant. When the police find her in the morning, one tells another, “She says he didn’t rape her,” to which she defiantly adds, “Don’t believe me if you don’t want to.” It’s a troubling ending; what first sprang to my mind when I saw it was how fat rape survivors are often met with disbelief or derision. Breillat is a feminist, it would be difficult to believe that she would be dismissive of young girl being raped. The film doesn’t excuse the attacker’s actions, but it does disturb the notion of Anaïs as a passive victim. Elena’s experience was a subversion of her idealized notion of having sex (by her own definition) for the first time with someone she loved; once it became obvious that Fernando had duped her, she felt sadness and shame. But according to Anaïs, “the first time should be with nobody.” What happens to her at the end of the film should never happen to anyone, ever, but given that she refuses to describe it as a rape to the police, it seems she interpreted the trucker’s attack as a removal of the vulnerability she feared from a sexual debut with a future boyfriend. She certainly does not want to be seen as vulnerable by the uniformed men surrounding her and her dead mother and sister. Elena, whose appearance and ideas about sexuality conform to patriarchal values, has been destroyed by the events of the film. But the outsider, Anaïs, defiantly survives.

I do agree with Breillat that being an outsider allows a critical vantage point; my own adolescent experience of feeling ostracized due to my weight was a major catalyst of my journey to become the faux-academic, buzzword-dropping, far-left feminist you’ve all come to know and tolerate. On the other hand, Anaïs verges on being a didactic mouthpiece at times, and it’s undeniably problematic to suggest that her value system is so outside of the mainstream that she would be okay with being violently raped. Fat Girl provides an effective critique of patriarchal sexual values, but beyond that, only a bleak non-alternative.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Catherine Breillat’s Transfigurative Female Gaze

Recommended Reading: ‘Fat Girl’: About the Title by Catherine Breillat via Criterion

Tessa Racked blogs about fat characters in film at Consistent Panda Bear Shape. They have had “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life” stuck in their head for over a week now.

‘Artemisia’: The Romantic Roots of Rape Culture

The impulse to erase a woman’s testimony, to deny her agency and perception of the crime, while denying society’s victim blaming and bias against survivors of rape — this is the basis of what feminism describes as rape culture. Yet here it is practiced not by a misogynist man, nor by a loyal friend of the alleged rapist, but by a female director aiming to create “emphatically a feminist film.”

Written by Brigit McCone.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape]

Is it possible to admire a woman’s art while denying its meaning? Certainly, a feminist viewer wants to admire 1997’s Artemisia, a ravishingly beautiful film about a young girl seizing control of her talent and sexuality in the face of a sexist society, filmed by a female director, Agnès Merlet. It tells the story of the first woman to become an official member of Florence’s Academy of Art and Design, the most famous female artist of the Renaissance, Artemisia Gentileschi. Merlet’s Artemisia is a director before her time in the seventeenth century. She oversees the setting up of her studio with minute detail and assertive power, frames her paintings like movie shots, orders men to strip and model for her, and poses their naked bodies with intense interest. Even as a girl in the repressive environment of a convent school, Gentileschi is studying and sketching her naked body with a mirror, with a heroic immunity to social pressures. She has a lively sexual curiosity, spying on a couple having sex on the beach before fitting herself into the imprint their bodies have made in the sand, and watching the older painter Agostino Tassi’s orgies with fascination. It is she who pursues Tassi to be her teacher, who strips and poses him as a model, who dictates the terms of their relationship. The film begins with a close-up of Artemisia’s rolling eyeball and it is shaped by her gaze. To see the beautiful, youthful Valentina Cervi cast as the artist instead of the muse, stripping and studying men for her own pleasure rather than being stripped, should mark Artemisia as a refreshing feminist delight. If only Artemisia herself were a fictional character.

But Artemisia is a historical figure, and transcripts from her grueling, seven-month-long rape trial have survived and are the major source for the film. It is a historical fact that Artemisia Gentileschi accused Agostino Tassi of breaking into her bedchamber and raping her. Merlet’s film follows the rough outline of what the real Gentileschi described, but reimagines it as clumsy seduction. Artemisia’s refusals are a murmured reluctance, not strong or fearful denials. She returns kisses and submits, before gasping in pain and pushing Tassi away, as he mumbles in apologetic confusion at the misunderstanding over her virginity. Not that virginity is a particularly great concern for the unbelievably socially immune Artemisia. The whole event is miscommunication more than violation. Later, the youthful Artemisia will take the controlling and guiding role in their love-making, posing the submissive and adoring Tassi for her signature portrait of “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” straddling him in seduction rather than attempted murder. For the masterful Tassi, who is accustomed to ordering around his naked female models like pieces of meat, to find himself awed and overcome by the strength of Artemisia’s personality is an interesting role reversal. When her father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi, discovers their affair, he tries to force Tassi to marry Artemisia and initiates the rape trial, despite Artemisia telling him that Tassi didn’t rape her but “gave me pleasure.”

Again, one can see a feminist message here, criticizing a society that refuses to acknowledge a woman’s sexual agency or pleasure, yet Merlet is not only twisting the facts but ignoring them, in her need to reinterpret rape testimony as romance. Her Artemisia never accuses Tassi of rape. The fingers of her artist’s hands are bound with chords and torturously squeezed, to force her to confess that she was raped, while Tassi watches in loving agony and confesses himself, merely to spare her pain. In the harsh world of historical fact, Gentileschi was indeed tortured, but it was to force her to withdraw her detailed accusations. Her society pressured women, not to make false accusations but to deny rape. Tassi, meanwhile, defended himself by alleging that Gentileschi was promiscuous and “an insatiable whore.” Whatever their relationship was, it was hardly an epic romance. Why, then, does Merlet, or her intended audience, feel such a need to reimagine it as one? Art historian Mary Garrard and feminist journalist/activist Gloria Steinem protested the film’s inaccuracies at the time of its release. But watching the film, I was struck by more than historical untruth.

I thought about the transformations Merlet had performed on the historical sources: she silenced Artemisia’s testimony, by denying it was ever given; she painstakingly reimagined the circumstances described in the rape transcripts, in such a way that they could have been romantic misunderstanding or clumsy seduction; finally, she reversed an entire society’s values, to imagine a woman pressured by law enforcement to make false accusations, rather than punished for daring to allege rape. The impulse to erase a woman’s testimony, to deny her agency and perception of the crime, while denying society’s victim blaming and bias against survivors of rape — this is the basis of what feminism describes as rape culture. Yet here it is practiced not by a misogynist man, nor by a loyal friend of the alleged rapist, but by a female director aiming to create “emphatically a feminist film.” Why does Merlet feel such a strong compulsion to defend a man who has been dead for over 400 years? Or, is it the image of a vulnerable and exploited Artemisia that she cannot tolerate? What do her rewrites tell us about the mental roots of rape culture?

In an interview by Merlet with the UK’s Independent, two possible reasons are given for Artemisia‘s portrayal. Merlet wanted Artemisia to represent “a more modern kind of feminism, fighting alongside men, not against them,” and she claims that the evidence of the trial can be read in many ways, because there is a “mass of contradictory evidence.” These suggestions need to be considered in more detail. Firstly, what is the contradictory evidence? Perhaps Merlet refers to Artemisia’s testimony that, following her painful rape, she continued to have sex with, and even love, Tassi because he promised her marriage. Regarding this as “contradictory evidence” shows an immaturity in our culture’s understanding of rape, that it must always be the isolated act of a monster, rather than a violation that can take place within a complex relationship. More than that, though, it is a denial of historical context. Deuteronomy 22:28, which claims that a man who rapes a virgin “must marry the girl, for he has violated her,” would have been generally accepted in Gentileschi’s time. To admit that Artemisia could be terrified by the thought of becoming a “fallen” or ruined woman, and could rely on Tassi’s promise to marry her as her only salvation, is to see her as an uncomfortably vulnerable human rather than Merlet’s dominant superheroine. It was during this period, before the trial (not afterwards, as Merlet’s film suggests), that Gentileschi painted her famous portrait of “Susanna and the Elders,” depicting Susanna’s naked body contorted in horror and writhing away from the staring, whispering judgments of the elders looming over her. It is a powerful portrait of female vulnerability under patriarchal scrutiny, but that is precisely the vulnerability that Merlet does not allow Artemisia to feel. So, we return to the question that opened this post: is it possible to admire a woman’s art while denying its meaning?

Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” which she painted directly after her humiliating rape trial, is one of the most violent expressions of female rage in art. In contrast to the timid Judith that Caravaggio portrayed, Gentileschi’s women are filled with strength, solidarity and resolution, dominating Holofernes (whose face resembles Agostino Tassi’s) as the male elders had dominated Susanna. Merlet actually cites the power of this painting, and her shock at its female authorship, as the trigger that began her fascination with Gentileschi. Yet she strives to tame the image, presenting it as a loving collaboration between Artemisia and Tassi. By such painstaking reimagining, Merlet reveals the key feature of the 1990s’ “more modern kind of feminism” (or “girl power”): not its willingness to “fight alongside men” (and why should one rapist be representative of “men”?), but its discomfort with female anger and vulnerability. Like Merlet’s film, “girl power” celebrates the positive sexual freedom of women to desire and seduce, but not their negative sexual freedom to refuse and define boundaries; their positive freedom to take charge, not their negative freedom to protest poor treatment. In that, it resembles the freedoms promised to women by the “free love” culture of the 1960s, whose abuses and exploitations prompted second-wave feminism.

Artemisia’s art is certainly celebrated by Merlet’s film through luscious costumes and Caravaggesque lighting, but without its meaning, the art seems hollow and disconnected from the painter herself. When we see Tassi’s image in the real Artemisia Gentileschi’s paintings, as the sleeping man whose head is about to be chiseled open by a smiling woman in “Jael and Sisera,” as the leering satyr in “Corisca and the Satyr,” and in numerous variations on the Judith theme, are we to ignore the repeated violence, to allow it to communicate nothing about the feelings and intentions of the woman behind the brush? Women threatened by voyeurs, like Corisca, Susanna and Bathsheba; women escaping male clutches through heroic suicide, like Cleopatra and Lucretia; women murdering men, like Judith and Sisera — these are the figures that populate the paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi. To deny her rage and vulnerability is to deny the passion and power of her art. Agnès Merlet’s film Artemisia is a beautiful celebration of the positive freedoms of women, that forms a kind of feminist ideal. But without the willingness to explore suffering, or to express anger, it is only half-alive, and a disservice to the full-blooded achievement of Artemisia Gentileschi.

Brigit McCone is still mad she wasn’t taught more about Artemisia in art class. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and getting lost in Vieira da Silva paintings.

The Women Men Rescue (or Choose Not To): ‘The Witness’ and ‘Disorder’

Saving a beautiful woman from danger is such a pervasive male fantasy that right now, no matter where you are you could probably see an example of this trope by randomly flipping through channels or wandering into a multiplex. But what if the man was never able to save the woman? Or what if he has problems of his own that keep him from being a stereotypical hero?

Written by Ren Jender.

[Trigger Warning: discussion of explicit, fatal violence against women and rape]

You’d never know from watching movies that statistically men are much more likely to harm women than rescue them. Saving a beautiful woman from danger is such a pervasive male fantasy that right now, no matter where you are, you could probably see an example of this trope by randomly flipping through channels or wandering into a multiplex. But what if the man was never able to save the woman? Or what if he has problems of his own that keep him from being a stereotypical hero? Two new films, respectively James D. Solomon’s documentary The Witness and Alice Winocour’s French thriller Disorder, attempt to answer these questions.

The Witness tracks Bill Genovese, a Vietnam veteran and a person with an amputation who uses a wheelchair, as he tries to find out 40 to 50 years later (the film took a decade to make) what really happened the night his older sister, Kitty Genovese, was stabbed to death (and although it’s not included in the film also raped by her murderer) in front of her own Queens apartment building in 1964. Kitty Genovese’s killing became the stuff of front page headlines and sociology classes when an apocryphal story in The New York Times stated that 37 (the number was later amended to 38) of her neighbors, awakened by her screams, saw her being stabbed from their bedroom windows but none called the police or offered any other help which might have saved her life.

The truth, uncovered in more recent articles is: although neighbors heard her screams, nearly none of them knew what was going on (some thought she and her killer were a drunk married couple having an argument) especially since the scene was quiet and Kitty was out of sight for some time between her murderer’s initial attack (interrupted when a neighbor shouted at him through the window to get away from her) and when he fatally wounded her (after which a woman neighbor and friend of Kitty’s held her in her arms as she was dying).

The original news story was a manipulation of facts that made a compelling resume builder: Abe Rosenthal, who later became the long-reigning executive editor at The New York Times wrote a sensationalistic book based on the fabricated story. When Bill interviews Rosenthal, he still insists the original account was the correct one. Some other journalists who covered the story when it was still new, like the late Mike Wallace, are more philosophical. “It was a fascinating story,” he says, one that was apparently too good to let the facts get in the way.

What actually happened is more complex. One surviving neighbor Bill interviews on camera says, “I heard someone yelling, ‘Help, help,’ and I called the police,” though no records of her call are on police logs. As Bill explains to us in his narration, we don’t know if the station neglected to write down the call or if the woman is telling this story to make herself feel better about her own actions (or inaction) that night.

We also see, unlike in most narrative films, how uninterested some people are in the truth. Kitty’s killer, Winston Moseley (he has since died) who raped and killed at least one other woman and later, in an escape from prison, raped another and held hostages at gunpoint, refuses to meet with Bill and instead offers in a letter an obviously fictitious story about being framed. Moseley’s son, who was 7 at the time of the murder, is a minister who wears a shiny cross, but seems to believe another of his father’s stories (that contradicts everything we know about the case): that Kitty called him a racial slur and he snapped. The son also seems unwilling to accept that his father was responsible for the other murder (which, like Kitty’s, he confessed to after he was arrested for stealing a television) in which he set fire to his victim while she was still alive. Instead, the son states that, for years, he and the rest of family had believed that Kitty was related to the infamous New York Mafia Genoveses (she was not).

Because most of the memories of Kitty and the analysis of her death come from men, we feel a little removed from her. When one man talks about how his mother (the woman who held Kitty in her arms as she died in the hallway) often had coffee with Kitty and would “talk about whatever women talk about,” it’s as emblematic of the film’s distanced viewpoint, as the blurry, nearly faceless image we see of Kitty in clips from an old home movie which are interspersed throughout the film.

Bill is in nearly every frame of the film’s live action — most of the recreated scenes are rendered in the delicate, evocative animation of The Moth Collective. Even as we see him moving in and out of his wheelchair, wearing gloves to pull himself up the stairs to an otherwise inaccessible apartment and narrating the film, he remains something of a mystery. Why does he wait to find out the real story until 40 years after his sister died? By the time he tracks down the witnesses who testified at the trial, most are long dead. One of the only insights into his mindset comes from his wife: “The choices that he made in his life were all related to the fact that no one helped his sister.”

Bill also has a willful obtuseness when he wonders why Kitty, whom he was close to, never came out to him at a time (she died five years before Stonewall) when people who told their families they were queer were disowned. Kitty being a fairly out queer person (in a highlight, after her partner, Mary Ann Zielonko, tells Bill that the patrons at the bar where she worked didn’t know Kitty was queer, two of them tell Bill everyone at the bar knew and considered her “one of the boys”) makes me wonder if Karl Ross, one of the only witnesses who did see what was happening and was close enough to halt the murder, failed to do so because of homophobia — or a fear of police since he too may have been gay. Mary Ann says of Ross, “He knew us.” He owned the pet shop where Kitty bought a poodle for Mary Ann as an apology after an argument.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4irXjYt_LM”]

In Disorder, co-written and directed by Alice Winocour (the co-writer of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Oscar-nominated Mustang), the woman in peril is Jessie (Diane Kruger), the wife of a shady and very wealthy businessman, and her protector is a paid bodyguard, Vincent (Matthias Schoenaerts) back from a stint in Afghanistan and suffering from PTSD (as well as some hearing loss, the doctor at the beginning tells him — and us).

We see Vincent try to do work as he deals with the sounds (all the electronic beeps and boops of modern life) and sights that trigger him. Wariness is actually part of his job description, but at first we’re unsure if Vincent’s has more to do with his internal struggles than it does with anything going on around him. Silly us: this film is a thriller. Of course the main guy’s paranoia is justified.

The film manages to squeeze a surprising amount of tension out of a not-terribly-original situation before its first violent incident (which is punctuated, stunningly, by a cracked windshield and a brief blackout) but falls apart soon afterward. The film has lots of overheard conversations and pieces of information that never really come together in coherent form, which might reflect what a paid protector would overhear and understand but doesn’t really engage the audience. The violent aggressors are the opposite of a menace in their cute, black, ninja outfits and masks. No matter what Vincent’s skills as a fighter (never impaired by psychological problems so obvious that Jessie asks his coworker directly, “What’s wrong with him?”) always flatten them, so the action becomes monotonous.

Winocour’s film was apparently influenced by her suffering PTSD from a traumatic childbirth experience (she and her daughter are fine now), a phenomenon women I’ve known have also experienced, but something I have never seen captured on film. I desperately wished Disorder was about women’s trauma instead of the tired cliché of a male soldier’s suffering. The film also doesn’t give us any insight into Jessie’s point of view. She looks great in the backless floral evening dress she wears to a party early in the film, but in every scene she is so much an object she might as well be tied in pink ribbon. This lack of attention to the character is especially shocking and disappointing because Winocour co-wrote Mustang, an instant feminist classic that is flawlessly attuned to its girl protagonists.

Additionally the husband and his cohorts are all from the Middle East: the only person of Middle-Eastern descent who doesn’t seem sinister is Ali, Jessie’s Keane-eyed, curly-haired, young son. France’s traditional anti-Arab sentiment and more recent anti-Muslim policies (on the same beaches where Jessie and Ali frolic) make the ethnicity of the bad guys seem not strictly coincidental and more than a little racist. Skip this film and see Mustang (again) instead.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMThvaCTAm0″]

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

Women in Film at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne

The theme at this year’s Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) is “women’s empowerment.” If you will be in the Melbourne, Australia area, here are all of the women-directed films and women in film panels you should check out at the 2016 Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, which runs from August 11 through August 21.

The theme at this year’s Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) is “women’s empowerment.” In honor of that theme, there will be many narrative, documentary, and short films screening directed by women filmmakers, including Deepa Mehta (Beeba Boys), Leena Yadav (Parched), Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami (Sonita), and Oscar-winner Sharmaan Obaid-Chinoy (Saving Face).

IFFM is also hosting panels with directors (Leena Yadav), actors (Sara Haider), producers (Sue Maslin, Jenni Tosi), film critics, and more that will discuss how film can spur social change and how sexism impacts women in the film industry. There will be a conversation with Bollywood actress Richa Chadha where she will share her personal experiences and talk about feminism, body positivity, and the “pressures and expectations” women face in the film industry.

If you will be in the Melbourne, Australia area, here are all of the women-directed films and women in film panels you should check out at the 2016 Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, which runs from August 11 through August 21.

Parched
Director: Leena Yadav
August 11, 7:30pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“An exciting contemporary melodrama, Parched is set in an isolated North-Indian village where long-uphold customs are slowly changing.

“The widowed Rani seeks a bride for her young son, adhering to societal norms and expectations surrounding traditional arranged marriage. Rani and her friends, the spirited Lajjo, and exotic dancer Bijli, begin to yearn for more than what life has given them; setting in motion a series of events with the potential to change each women’s circumstances. Vibrant, colorful and sensual, and shot by Titanic cinematographer, Russell Carpenter, Parched presents a sharp portrait of gender inequality, and a stirring portrait of liberation.”

A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers
Directors: Geeta Gandbhir and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
August 12, 9pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“Shattering stereotypes, Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers is a stirring documentary that presents a bold viewpoint of women uniting for a global cause. Directed by two-time Oscar winner, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the film follows a group of Bangladeshi policewomen who join a UN peacekeeping mission to Haiti, and allows us an immersion into the lives of modern Muslim women, who are so often depicted negatively in the media. Journey of a Thousand Miles offers a close-up look at the lives of these breadwinners, mothers, soldiers, and follows them throughout their journey to Haiti, and back again to Dkaha, where they face fresh challenges.”

In Conversation with Richa Chadha: Bollywood & Body Positivity
August 13, 5pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“Join bold Bollywood actress, Richa Chadha, for a conversation on her experience in the showbiz industry. Known for her unconventional roles and strong feminist ideals, Richa has been an outspoken advocate for greater equality in Bollywood: and embodies a spirit and strength relevant to upcoming generations of aspiring Bollywood actresses.

“‘Eating disorders are the best kept secret of Bollywood.’

“Richa speaks candidly about her experience as an actress in Bollywood: reflecting on the pressures and expectations directed towards women in the industry.”

Art and Realities: Cinema for Social Change
August 14, 11am | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“What role does cinema play in facilitating social change? What impact can cinema, and screen content, have upon the ideas and behaviours of society?

“Join a panel of decision makers, and filmmakers to discuss cinema’s role in affecting change, and influencing, and impacting upon behavior.

“Panelists include: Gurmeet Sran (Director, The Hidden Truth), Tim Watts (Federal Labour MP), Roshan Bhandary (Program Manager, InTouch), Cynthia Karena (Journalist and Film Critic) and Srijit Mukherji (Director, Rajkahini).”

Wild Women in Cinema
August 14, 12:30pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“Busting myths: FEMINISM is not a radical word.

“In the wake of Screen Australia’s ‘Gender Matters’ funding, designed to offer greater funding opportunities to women in the film industry, what does the future hold for women in film? How does the industry need to adapt and change to best exemplify an equality of the sexes?

“Join IFFM for a discussion on the female in the film industry, as women from both sides of the camera discuss opportunities in the Australian and Indian film industries. How does sexism affect women in the industry? How can we combat this, and create a positive change and positive action?

“Hosted by Rajeev Masand (Entertainment Reporter and Film Critic) and with panelists including: Leena Yadav (Director, Parched), Jenni Tosi (CEO, Film Victoria), Sara Haider (Singer and Actress), Michelle Gater (GM of Programming and Content HOYTS Entertainment) and Sue Maslin (Producer, The Dressmaker).”

Sonita
Director: Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami
August 14, 12:45pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“Winner of the Grand Jury Prize (World Cinema – Documentary) and Audience Award at Sundance, Sonita is an exhilarating and memorable film about the eponymous Afghani refugee. Living in Tehran with her sister and niece, the fiery Sonita dreams of becoming a star, but her mother, and the Iranian regime, have other ideas. Provocative and inspiring, Sonita is a lingering film that challenges the definition of what documentary film is or should be.”

Under Construction
Director: Rubaiyat Hossain
August 14, 1:45pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“Struggling to find herself in the chaotic sprawl of Bangladesh, Roya is an actress struggling to thrive in an industry preoccupied with age and beauty. Striving for recognition, Roya is axed from her reoccurring role for being too old, and is urged by her husband to retire to a position of motherhood. Afforded an opportunity to leave the confines of her old life, Roya embarks on a journey of identity and freedom. With a strong female cast and powerful feminist message, Under Construction reflects a wave of exciting female content emerging from the subcontinent.”

Waiting
Director: Anu Menon
August 14, 6:30pm | HOYTS Highpoint
August 16, 7pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“A warm and thought-provoking drama, Waiting contemplates life, love and loss… all in the confines of a hospital waiting room. Starring Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki Koechlin as the waiting partners of comatose patients, Waiting is a study of friendship, and individual grief; and allows a contemplation of universal human circumstance.”

Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Director: Sharmeet Obaid-Chinoy | Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary Short
August 19, 7pm | HOYTS Highpoint
August 21, 2:30pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“Winner of the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary, A Girl in the River is an urgent and powerful documentary that examines honour killings in Pakistan.

“Each year, over 1000 girls and women are victims of honour killings; and director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy explores the simmering tensions between modernity and tradition in modern day Pakistan. The film follows Saba, a young Pakistani woman, and survivor of an attempted-honour kill perpetrated by her family. Saba fights for her life, her personal dignity and for justice, for an entire generation of women.”

Saving Face
Director: Sharmaan Obaid-Chinoy | Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary Short
August 19, 7pm | HOYTS Highpoint
August 21, 2:30pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“Sharmaan Obaid-Chinoy won the first Oscar for Pakistan with this powerful, and lingering, documentary about violence against women.

“Shedding light on the brutal, and underreported, crime of acid attacks, most commonly perpetrated against women; Saving Face follows the lives of two women as they fight for justice, and strive to move on with their lives. The film follows London-based Pakistani surgeon, Dr Mohammad Jawad, as he travels back to his home country to offer free reconstructive surgery to those afflicted by acid violence. Focusing on the courage of the victims and the strength of those who help them, Saving Face considers the social issues inherent within Pakistan, and offers some hope for the future.”

Beeba Boys
Director: Deepa Mehta
August 20, 6pm | HOYTS Melbourne Central

“Award-wining director, Deepa Mehta (Midnight’s Children, Elements trilogy), writes and directs this crime thriller that explores the shadowy happenings of the Canadian underworld. Jeet Johar (Randeep Hooda) is a devoted family man, a loving son, a proud and observant Sikh, and, also, a tough gangster who fronts a gang of charismatic, unyielding youth, the Beeba Boys. Based on the true story of notorious crime lord ‘Bindy’ Singh Johal, Beeba Boys is a provocative and exciting thriller that allows us an immersion into a dark and illicit world. With a strong theme of family running throughout the film, Beeba Boys offers an exciting story of violence, discrimination and social issues.”

For the Love of a Man
Director: Rinku Kalsy
August 20, 6:45pm | HOYTS Highpoint

“The madness of South Indian fandom makes for entertaining and compelling viewing in this colorful documentary. Former bus driver, Rajinikanth, now a living legend, is literally worshiped as deity by Tamil Nadu’s impoverished masses. Profiling the lives of fans and their families, the audience is privy to a mimicry and adoration unique to Indian film culture. Jaw-dropping and shocking, For the Love of a Man celebrates the distinctive enthusiasm of Indian cinema fans.”

K2 and the Invisible Footmen
Director: Iara Lee
August 21, 4:30pm | HOYTS Highpoint

“Welcome to K2: the 2nd highest mountain peak in the world. The road to the top is often treacherous and unforgiving, and the conditions wild and unpredictable. Indigenous porters guide the road to the peak, carrying provisions for foreign climbing companies and enduring harrowing conditions. Without proper equipment, the porters support foreign climbers to the peak of the ‘Savage Mountain’, saving the minimal wages to support their families. This cinematic documentary explores the courage and sacrifice of the indigenous porters who guard the sacred peak, and, like Jennifer Peedom’s Sherpa, urges us to consider the lives of the true heroes of the world’s tallest mountains.”

The New Girl in Class
Director: Amrita Dasgupta
August 21, 6pm | HOYTS Highpoint

“A moving and powerful documentary, The New Girl in Class explores the possibility of mainstream education for children with autism. Neeraja is a dedicated and resilient mother, and has struggled for years to enroll her daughter in conventional schooling. Uplifting, personal and challenging; The New Girl in Class immerses us in the challenges and triumphs experienced by mothers around the world.”

Spice Sisters
Director: Sheila Jaydev
August 21, 6pm | HOYTS Highpoint

“Rohini, a former Bollywood star, is bored with her life in suburbia. When a popular reality show announces a call for contestants, she leaps at the opportunity to make a change. Spice Sisters is poignant comedy about family and friendship, and having the courage to make a change.”

Playgrounds
Directors: Shamik Sen Gupta and M.D. Pallavi
August 21, 6pm | HOYTS Highpoint

“After a long shift, a rickshaw driver is shocked to discover a young boy asleep in the back seat of his auto. The two struggle to communicate, but venture on a journey to return the boy to his family. Set across two working-class neighborhoods, Playgrounds examines the harsh realities of India’s urban sprawls.”

Posters and descriptions of films and panels courtesy of Indian Film Festival of Melbourne

Bluestocking Film Series Showcases Complex Female Protagonists

I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Kate Kaminski, Bluestocking Film Series Founder and Artistic Director. We talked about the need for more complex female protagonists, ensuring diversity, women’s representation in film, and what she hopes to accomplish with the film series.

I’m forever looking for more women-centric films, especially considering that only 22% of protagonists are women in the top-grossing films. But I don’t want just any female characters; I crave complex, nuanced, and diverse female protagonists in film and television. This is why I’m delighted to attend the Bluestocking Film Series in Portland Maine, running from Thursday, July 14 through Saturday, July 16.

Bluestocking Film Series “is an exclusive showcase for provocative, well-produced films that feature complex female protagonists driving the narrative and leading the action.” All of the narrative short films they screen must have a woman lead and pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test. It’s also the first U.S. film event to receive Sweden’s A-Rating. The team behind Bluestocking “believe that audiences love a good story no matter what the lead character’s gender is.”

Bitch Flicks: Could you talk about the importance of the Bluestocking Film Series? Why did you start the film series?

Kate Kaminski: I started Bluestocking Film Series because something was missing from festival screens in Maine. What had happened to those festivals I’d been part of (as a filmmaker) that celebrated women? And where were the female-driven films I was craving to see as an audience member? I wondered: what if I created a women in film event with the mission of exclusively screening female-driven films that pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test? If I built it … would they come? Well, I built it and people have shown up, each year in greater numbers.

Bitch Flicks: What does Bluestocking Film Series mean for women’s representation in film? Why do you think we need more complex female protagonists?

Kate Kaminski: Every year, Bluestocking Film Series proves that female characters can be (and do) so much more than what we currently see on-screen. Female characters deserve to be portrayed with as much complexity as their male counterparts but that is rarely allowed — or celebrated — whether in the mainstream or in the indie world. Bluestocking exists to amplify diverse female voices and stories because culture can’t evolve or flourish if those voices and stories are missing from cinema, our most popular art.

Bitch Flicks: Why do you think the Bechdel-Wallace Test (where two named female characters talk to each other about something other than a man) matters?

Kate Kaminski: I’m a believer in the power of the Bechdel-Wallace Test (and its other iterations like the Mako Mori and Lauzen-Silverstein) as a jumping off point for initiating conversation about the ways women and girls are portrayed in film. The Bechdel-Wallace Test obviously doesn’t measure quality — and as we all know, is a low bar — but what it does, is point out how, more often than not, female characters are used in film to simply amplify and support the lead male character’s story. If the female characters in a film are only talking about the male characters, what message does that send to young girls and boys? It erases 50% of the population and makes insignificant the reality that we have lives of our own, rich, inner lives and meaningful, complicated relationships with each other.

Bitch Flicks: What steps do you take to ensure that Bluestocking Film Series is diverse in featuring work by women filmmakers and female protagonists who are women of color, LGBTQIA+, older women, and women with disabilities?

Kate Kaminski: Absolutely every step I take as a curator is about #filminclusion. I look far and wide on my own for films from across the globe that feature diverse female characters who embody something new or surprising. I’m drawn to characters who are not entirely knowable, and who are complex, and whose undeniable needs and wants drive the story. I also query my colleagues in the women in film world about what they’ve seen, who is up and coming, and I even have spies who refer films/filmmakers they’ve seen along the way. Social media for a movement like this is absolutely critical. I’d feel lost without the people I’ve met through social media who, like me, see female-driven films not as a niche, but as rightfully taking their place in the marketplace. In a way, I’m committing Bluestocking to being as far out on the cutting edge of what female characters can be by screening filmmakers who are real risk-takers. We need those creative people to enliven what has become so stale and predictable. Do we want to influence the larger world of film? YES.

A huge thank you to Kate Kaminski for taking the time to speak with me. You can find out more about the schedule, filmmakers and special guests attending, and the panels and films screening at Bluestocking Film Series, as well as purchase tickets.

Revisiting ‘Desert Hearts’ and Its Lesbian Romance

This guest re-post written by Angela Beauchamp appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

We all hold dear particular films that made an indelible impression on us. Somehow they connected to us as a viewer on an emotional or even a spiritual level; we identified with the story or characters in unusual ways; or we appreciated the craftsmanship so much that we could recite lines or remember the sequence of shots and all of the details in a scene. That ability to touch individuals while also reaching very large groups of viewers is part of what makes film such a powerful medium.

Desert Hearts is one such film for me. In the fall of 1986, still a kid of 22 who had just moved to the city from Podunk, Indiana, I went to the theater in a Boston suburb. There I remember looking around at the audience. I had a hard time believing that I was watching a lesbian romance film in a public place. I don’t think I breathed during the love scene. For the first time in my life, in a mainstream movie theater, I watched a film that gave me a model for what love could be. It made me want to fall in love, to find my own Cay or Vivian, and hop on the train to start a life together.

For heterosexual women, movies and television series show them every day what a loving relationship is and what the expectations are to grow up, fall in love, and find a handsome prince (however flawed that may be). For lesbians prior to Donna Deitch‘s Desert Hearts, nothing of the kind existed on-screen. We relied on romance novels from mail order houses like Naiad Press and feminist bookstores if we were lucky enough to live in a large college town or progressive city. Desert Hearts had a limited distribution (i.e. it was not shown in Podunk, Indiana), but it did find an unheard of large audience on screens across the country and abroad.

It is a conventional romance, which is one of the reasons that it is so successful. As Jackie Stacey points out, “it uses the iconography of romance films: train stations, sunsets and sunrises, close-up shots, rain-drenched kisses, lakeside confessions, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’ orgasms.” It is those Hollywood conventions that conjure shared memories of hundreds of heterosexual romances. Thus the filmmaker uses what are sometimes clichés as shortcuts to elicit particular emotions and reactions from the audience. Although the world of 1959 would certainly have been more challenging for these two lovers in the real world, the cinematic world Deitch created signals that there is an all-important happy ending coming up: a romantic Hollywood ending.

Deitch’s use of music also contributes to the romance convention. The country songs of Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash are very emotionally evocative. In particular, they evoke a feeling of wanting that comes from knowing the themes and voices that accompany these artists’ work. The soundtrack, which took up a large portion of the film’s budget, makes brilliant use of the audience’s previous knowledge. We know how we should feel before the scene plays itself out.

Placing the film’s setting in Reno also taps into our shared impressions of the West from movies and popular culture. It is a place in which one can start a new life and throw caution to the wind. The chances for romance certainly would not have felt so hopeful without the wide open spaces and bright, beautiful colors of the Nevada desert. Cay’s cowboy boots and western clothes make her the equivalent of the cowboy who sweeps the newcomer to town off of her feet. It’s the wild westerner who charms the shy school marm, just like we’ve seen a million times in the movies.

Others (like Mandy Merck) discuss Desert Hearts as conventional, criticizing it for not being challenging enough, not tackling issues of lesbian identity, for example. For me, that criticism totally misses the point. Deitch intentionally did not make an issues kind of film. She took a Hollywood formula and tilted it on its ear, creating a lesbian love story that audiences still crave today.

Angela Beauchamp is a cinema lover, film scholar, and most recently, a zombie mashup junkie. She is preparing to teach a course on Post-Apocalyptic Cinema in the fall.

‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’: The Confidence and Wisdom of Linda Barrett

Phoebe Cates brings life to the energetic, worldly, confident-yet-vulnerable Linda. Her character is the heart and soul of the movie, as she gives Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) advice on sex, relationships, and navigating her way through high school. … The film never takes a judgmental attitude towards these young women, their sexual activities, and their frank discussions of sex.

This guest post written by Angela Morrison appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

The only thing people seem to remember about Amy Heckerling’s 1982 film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is Phoebe Cates emerging from a swimming pool in her red bikini, removing her top as she tells Brad (Judge Reinhold) how cute she always thought he was, The Cars’ “Moving in Stereo” playing on the soundtrack. First of all, this is ridiculous because the entire movie is memorable, and there are much better scenes than Brad’s masturbation fantasy. Secondly, it is completely unfair to reduce Phoebe Cates’ character to a mere sex object, existing only for male viewers’ pleasure.

Phoebe Cates brings life to the energetic, worldly, confident-yet-vulnerable Linda. Her character is the heart and soul of the movie, as she gives Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) advice on sex, relationships, and navigating her way through high school. Linda is a few years older than Stacy, so she takes on the role of mentor, passing on her knowledge about the world to her younger friend. She is also Stacy’s number one supporter when her heart gets broken by both Ron Johnson (D.W. Brown) and Mike Damone (Robert Romanus).

One of the most striking things about this film is the casual way that Linda and Stacy discuss sex. Linda often expresses surprise at 14-year-old Stacy’s sexual inexperience, and she quickly reassures Stacy that “it’s just sex.” Linda’s attitude toward sex – which she passes on to Stacy – is that it needn’t be a big deal, but rather, should be seen as a fun and pleasurable activity for young women such as themselves. Part of the fun for Linda is deciding who she wants to have sex with – she assures Stacy that if she was not in a relationship with an older boy named Doug, she would go after Ron Johnson herself. She urges Stacy to make her own decisions, letting her know that she has the power to decide who she wants to have sex with, and when. The film never takes a judgmental attitude towards these young women, their sexual activities, and their frank discussions of sex.

Stacy takes Linda’s advice and has sex (for the first time ever!) with Ron Johnson. For some people, having sex for the first time is a big deal, an important event in their lives. However, Linda lets Stacy know that it is okay for it to not be a big deal, for it to just be a pleasurable part of going on a date – it does not mean she has to get married, and she does need to be in love with her sexual partner. Having sex with Ron Johnson is a positive experience for Stacy, although she ends up feeling rejected when he does not call her for another date. Linda is right by Stacy’s side as always, supporting her and telling her that she can do better than a 26-year-old stereo salesman. Linda lets Stacy know she is loved and supported, and that she need not worry about Ron Johnson disappearing from her life. This film portrays women supporting women, and the power of female friendship.

Most 1980s teen movies feature female characters who are insecure for any number of reasons – films such as Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club portray characters who are unsure of themselves and the world they are growing up in. While these films are realistic in their portrayals of the pain that comes with being a teenage girl, Fast Times at Ridgemont High gives us a character such as Linda, who exudes confidence in everything she does. She gives Stacy expert advice on how to give a blowjob, she lounges by the swimming pool and tells Stacy she and Doug always climax simultaneously, and she moves through the school hallways and her job at Perry’s Pizza as though she always knows what she is doing. When Damone does not show up to drive Stacy to the abortion clinic, Linda does not hesitate to call him out publicly, and humiliate him by telling the school he is – and has – a “little prick.”

Of course, Linda is a more complex character than simply being “confident.” She has a vulnerable side, which is evident at many points during the film. Stacy points out discrepancies between Linda’s claims about Doug – that he lasts 30-40 minutes in bed, rather than 20-30, as she previously said. After she tells Stacy that she and Doug always climax at the same time, she follows up with “I think…” And at the end of the movie, when Doug does not show up to her graduation, she is seen crying in the bathroom, reading an angry letter to Doug out loud. She confesses that she wrote two versions of the letter, one in which she calls Doug an “asshole.” Stacy assures Linda that the first version is more “mature” – Stacy knows that Linda only wants to portray herself as mature and self-assured, and she is there for her friend in her time of need, as Linda was for her. Just like everyone else, there are times when Linda is also unsure of herself – but she does not let that stop her from dancing elatedly at the prom, and going on to have a relationship with her abnormal psych professor in college, as the epilogue informs us.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High remains one of the most honest, smart, and funny teen comedies of the 1980s. The frank portrayal of female sexuality sets this film apart from many of the other “classics” of the teen movie genre. The film ends with Stacy deciding that she’d rather have romance than sex – she decides that anyone can have sex, but she wants to find someone she can connect with on every level. Linda of course has one final gem of wisdom to impart on Stacy: “You want romance? In Ridgemont? We can’t even get cable TV here, Stacy, and you want romance!”

If only we all had a Linda to guide us through our lives.

Angela Morrison is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto Cinema Studies program. She loves classical Hollywood, French cinema, John Waters, and feminist film theory. She hopes to one day be a Cinema Studies professor, one who will not teach movies made solely by boring straight white males. She writes about cinema on her blog Les Demoiselles du Cinema.

‘Crossing Delancey’: Isabelle Needs a New Perspective on Life and Love

This romantic comedy has always been more of a cult classic. But it was unusual in its female writer and director, along with its distinctly Jewish cultural setting, its generational custom-clash regarding matchmaking, and its conflicted independent protagonist, Isabelle, who could be read as a late 1980s precursor to ‘Sex and the City’s protagonist Carrie Bradshaw.

This guest post written by Susan Cosby Ronnenberg appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Crossing Delancey (1988) is a romantic comedy featuring Amy Irving, directed by Joan Micklin Silver and written by Susan Sandler, based on her original play of the same title. The tagline was, “A funny movie about getting serious.” This rom-com has always been more of a cult classic. But it was unusual in its female writer and director, along with its distinctly Jewish cultural setting, its generational custom-clash regarding matchmaking, and its conflicted independent protagonist, Isabelle, who could be read as a late 1980s precursor to Sex and the City’s protagonist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). An independent, straight single woman with a successful career, Isabelle has professional and romantic options, ambitions, and flawed preconceptions about the incompatibility of those options and ambitions as she tries to decide between an internationally acclaimed poet or a neighborhood. Yes, you read that correctly: poet or pickleman.

Isabelle “Izzy” Grossman (Amy Irving) is irritating and relatable at the same time. She’s an ambitious and successful publisher in Manhattan, where, as she insists to her grandmother, she organizes “the most prestigious reading series in New York City.” She sees herself as modern, forward-looking, cultured, and sophisticated. But she’s also self-centered, snobbish, dismissive, and deceitful. While she possesses many fine attributes, she’s flawed; I like both of those aspects of her that make her fully human. At 33, with one of her peers becoming a new mother, Izzy looks around at her life, wondering about advancing her personal life as she has her professional one. This is a common theme among 1980s romantic comedies, such as Baby Boom (1987) with Diane Keaton and Working Girl (1988) with Melanie Griffith. One of her romantic prospects, a novelist, quotes Confucius to her at dinner one night, “Ripe plums are falling. Now there are only three. May a fine lover come for me”, adding reassuringly, “Lots of ripe plums left on your tree, Izzy.” He seems to recognize her distraction over the passage of time and still being single, which has become an issue with her grandmother.

Izzy has three men in her life: Nick (John Bedford Lloyd), an old boyfriend/friend with benefits, now married, but who crashes at her place on a regular basis when he and his wife fight; Anton Maes (Jeroen Krabbe), a NYC-based Dutch critically acclaimed novelist, also married but separated, famous, creative, cosmopolitan, and intellectual; and Sam Posner (Peter Riegert), who lives and works on the Lower East Side near her grandmother’s home, the owner and operator of his father’s pickle shop on Delancey Street. Sam and Izzy meet through the pressure of her grandmother, “Bubbie” Kantor (Reizl Bozyk), and Mrs. Mandlebaum (Sylvia Miles), a traditional professional Jewish matchmaker.

To Izzy, to cross Delancey is to return to the past, “100 years” and “a million miles away” from her own life, to her grandmother’s world. She does so often and willingly, providing company and care for her beloved grandmother. But she has no interest in a man who has chosen to remain in that neighborhood, doing the same food sales work that his father did, and, she assumes, contracting a matchmaker to find a bride. It clearly seems archaic and a little desperate to her.

The setting takes place half in Manhattan — in Izzy’s apartment, her place of employment, and out socializing with friends — and half on the Lower East Side — in Bubbie’s vibrant and diverse neighborhood, historically a predominantly Jewish community. It’s clear that, in trying to leave the old world and its ways behind as she makes her way in the new, modern world, Izzy has made some arrogant and faulty assumptions that will require Bubbie’s willingness to interfere.

Passing the Bechdel test, Crossing Delancey features conversations between Isabelle and Bubbie about Bubbie’s health, the neighborhood, Izzy’s dreams and what they might mean, and Izzy’s parents. Izzy actively seeks to support her friend Rickie’s new role as a single parent with a sometimes supportive boyfriend. She also supports her publishing colleague Chinchilla Monk’s new public access show on the local performance art scene, which features a feminist performer.

Izzy attends a bris for the baby of a high school friend of hers, where the film shows us a group of four women in their thirties sustaining a friendship from their teenage years. Two are single, one is married, and one is a new mother with a boyfriend. One of the women refers to the bris as, “Our first baby!” We see the women friends together in varying pairs throughout the film. This group resembles Sex & the City’s foursome of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda, minus the multi-thousand dollar stylish and sexy wardrobe. Marilyn, in particular, reminds me of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld, which debuted a year after this film came out.

The film’s costuming is refreshing given the frequent sexualization of women in film through wardrobe today in most mainstream movies. The late 1980s is the era of the three-quarter or tea-length casual dress, with both dresses and shirts buttoned to the top, but without appearing constricting. Izzy’s clothes are appropriate for her varied activities: jogging, working at the bookstore, spending time with her grandmother, going on a date. What struck me most was that she looked nice and comfortable and her shoes were practical; she was dressed as many women in real life dress. There were no extra tight outfits, short-short skirts, stiletto heels, or plunging cleavage — at her place of employment or anywhere else. She was obviously meant to be doing things, not just to be the object of the Male Gaze: on display but not functional.

Crossing Delancey and Sex and the City share parallels as both Izzy and Carrie Bradshaw are thirty-something straight white women with successful careers and a support network of female friends. Both long for romance, question the idea of meeting someone who meets their requirements for a boyfriend, much less a husband, and both make selfish and deceitful decisions.

Izzy decides she doesn’t have chemistry with Sam but she likes him, so she attempts to set him up with her high school friend Marilyn, who recently complained that on a given first date she has “forty-five minutes to make this guy think I’m great, when I’d rather be home in my pajamas watching baseball.” But Izzy doesn’t tell Sam that she’s setting him up. Instead, she offers an apology for some of the things she said to him earlier and invites him to have dinner. She plans with Marilyn to “run into her” at the end of dinner, then leave her with Sam. Only the more Izzy talks to Sam, the more she likes him, and the longer she delays the introduction until Marilyn calls her on it and introduces herself. Sam feels used, but blames Izzy, not Marilyn, demanding “What’s there to be sorry about? She’s funny, direct, honest,” with the clear implication that Izzy is lacking in the latter two areas in particular. Afterward, Izzy pines after Sam with her other friends and her grandmother, until Bubbie brings Sam back into contact with Izzy.

Despite things finally seeming to click with Sam, Izzy allows Anton to persuade her to stay late after work to read part of his new novel. He flatters her and, knowing she has a date with Sam, encourages her to make him wait. Foolishly, she does, despite having spent time and money purchasing a new dress for the date and being eager to see Sam. Izzy realizes belatedly her error, in thinking that the mysterious and suave Anton wants a romantic and professional relationship with her when he’s looking for a part-time assistant and a convenient casual sex partner. Astonishingly, Sam has waited for her. He’s a man with the patience of a saint, but he’s not a doormat. In some ways this is a gender-reversed romantic comedy. It’s Izzy who races frantically across town, having come to the belated conclusion that she has been grossly overlooking, underestimating, and underappreciating who Sam is and what he has to offer.

The film presents us with three vivid visual images of groups of women in the city: at the senior center the women’s defense workshop that Bubbie participates in as Izzy watches in amusement; the after-work crowd in the deli/grocery, which includes Izzy, selecting dinner for one to-go from the salad bar; and the long line of pregnant women who file past Izzy and Sam in the entrance to her apartment building. These seem to suggest possible futures for Izzy: older, alone, and in need of self-defense; a solo continuation of her life as it is, focused mostly on work, eating deli take-out at the end of a long day; or preparing to become a mother when paired with Sam.

To choose one is to leave one unknown. Izzy doesn’t want to choose wrongly, or perhaps Izzy simply doesn’t want to choose at all. She’s mistaken in her arrogant and condescending assumptions about Sam, though, when she believes him to be not well read, inarticulate, and not cultured. When she mentions feeling ambivalent and then offers a definition, he interrupts to say that he knows what the word means. He adds, angrily, “You think my world is so small, so provincial? You think it defines me?” His defense of himself moves her as much as learning that he was interested in her because he had seen her around the neighborhood with her grandmother long before Mrs. Mandlebaum showed up with a picture of her (given by Bubbie) to peddle to him. He’s not trapped in the past as Izzy believed.

Although Sam suggests that Izzy needs a new perspective (i.e. a new hat), the Harry Shipman story doesn’t make that point clearly. In the story, Shipman’s new hat allowed the girl he had his heart set on to see his eyes for the first time. She couldn’t see his face for his original hat. But it isn’t Izzy who needs a new hat to be viewed differently. Instead, she needs a more realistic view of him, rather than her preconceived and uncompromising one as she’s frustratingly obtuse when it comes to Sam. She’s selfish in her decisions to keep juggling all three of men and she’s ultimately dismissive of her friend Marilyn after setting her up with Sam.

In some ways this is a film about narrative, including the stories we tell ourselves. We’re given multiple smaller narratives within the main narrative. The excerpt from his novel that Anton reads to the bookstore audience; Sam tells Izzy the Harry Shipman-hat story; Mrs. Mandlebaum peddles other peoples’ stories, poet Pauline Swift’s only referenced story of her, the four men, and a cabbage; Sam’s story of how Izzy came to his attention; the story of Sam’s father, who did a Milton Berle impression in drag, recalled by Nick to Sam and Izzy; and Bubbie’s story of meeting her husband, which she tells Sam. Izzy’s description of Anton’s fiction also describes her story in this film: “Deceptive accessibility. Reads like pulp fiction, but then you hear music.” Some lines are so lyrical they sound like poetry. Some are poetry. And they don’t all belong to the novelist.

The film ends refreshingly only with the promise of a continued dating relationship between Izzy and Sam, no grand declarations, promises, sex, or vows. Sam’s question to himself, to her, “How do I talk to Isabelle?” is an invitation, an openness to collaborate, to teach one another how to better communicate. Although Bubbie seems assured that a wedding will be taking place for them in the future, neither of them takes it that far. They like each other, they’ve admitted that, kissed, and agreed to see one another again. And for this charming romantic comedy, that’s more than enough.

Susan Cosby Ronnenberg is a transplanted Southerner in the upper Midwest, where she has been an English professor for 16 years, specializing in the English Renaissance and Early Modern Women Writers. Currently working on a book through McFarland on Shakespeare and the HBO western series Deadwood. Email: sgcosronn@gmail.com Twitter: @Ouachita9 Blog: Caustic Ginger.

Reagan’s America: Waiting to Die in ‘Testament’s Radiation Zone

‘Testament’ is primarily about women’s suffering, yet this very acknowledgement of women’s powerlessness in a world that patriarchal governments have just blown up is feminist at its core. … This 1983 film created by women gave the audience such a grim picture of the near future, without the excitement of special effects or the hope brought by overcoming obstacles, that it was a call to action, a message to avoid this outcome at all costs.

This guest post written by Angela Beauchamp appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Zombies, plagues, nuclear destruction — nightmares of a catastrophic future are all the rage in recent cinema. Most often, we see bleak, desolate landscapes in which a masculine or androgynous action hero emerges to save the day, aka Mad Max or successor Furiosa. However, in the shadow of President Ronald Reagan’s aggressive anti-Soviet rhetoric and a doubling of the Pentagon budget in the early 1980s, a different kind of post-nuclear story emerged on television in the U.S. and the UK. The fictionalized present, rather than futuristic science fiction, introduced a cinematic living hell, not spectacular or heroic, nor hopeful for humanity’s future. On November 20, 1983, The Day After portrayed the realistic aftermath of nuclear war to an ABC audience of over half of the U.S. adult population. BBC’s Threads (1984), an even more brutal portrayal of life after the bombs, went on to sweep the BAFTA awards.

PBS American Playhouse produced Testament (1983), the third in this nuclear disaster triad, so impressive that Paramount picked up the film for theatrical release before it screened on television. A domestic drama about a northern California family dealing with the effects of radiation sickness and one death after another, Testament garnered a Best Actress Oscar nomination for lead Jane Alexander. In his 2002 book Atomic Bomb Cinema, Jerome Shapiro disparagingly designates this woman’s story as a “postnuclear feminist weepie” — the kind of language that calls feminists to take a closer look. Carol Amen published the original short story in Ms., and Lynne Littman directed the film, already with four Emmys and an Academy Award for documentary under her belt.

Shapiro disregards Testament because it is primarily about women’s suffering, yet this very acknowledgement of women’s powerlessness in a world that patriarchal governments have just blown up is feminist at its core. Acts like carefully sewing a shroud for her teenage daughter’s body displays the female protagonist’s courage. Perhaps it is just that no one had ever seen a post-apocalyptic movie before (or few since) without male protagonists or protagonists who take violent action to survive. Not many of us are a Furiosa at heart, but Testament is about an ordinary woman whose struggles might empower an ordinary viewer in the United States to take steps to join the nuclear freeze movement working to prevent a nuclear war. Children, seniors, women, and ethnic minorities are the survivors we see after white male authority figures disappear; the very people whose lives are usually subordinated are those who carry on.

It is hard to recreate the nuclear anxiety of this era now after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1990, but Ronald Reagan and his administration actually spoke of limited nuclear attacks as a legitimate military tactic in the early 1980s. Anti-nuclear activism and marches on Washington were at their peak, and as a nineteen-year-old, I remember having a nightmare about waking up to a nuclear winter. When I actually awoke and looked at the florescent bulbs above the bed in my dorm room, I was unsure about the literal state of the world. The threat was real, and unlike our current cultural obsession with zombies (which likely serve as a reflection of fears of terrorism, pandemic, and the like), complete nuclear annihilation was a nightmare with time to prevent it from actually happening.

In Testament, Carol (Alexander) is a 1980s mom whose life revolves around her household, with three children and a husband (William Devane) who is, frankly, a jerk who rarely listens to either wife or kids. Later it becomes evident that he is a symbol for those in power who don’t listen to constituents. Carol’s small, northern California town is very white and middle-class, but Carol and her 13-year-old son Brad (Ross Harris) are differentiated by their friendship with Mike (Mako), a Japanese-American man who owns the nearby gas station. His son Hiroshi (Gerry Murillo) has Down’s syndrome and is an obvious metaphor for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On one normal day when the kids are fighting over the television set and they are waiting for dad to return home from a business trip to San Francisco, the unthinkable happens. Flashes of intense light, the bombing of American cities, cut off a broadcast alert about a nuclear attack.

There are no mushroom clouds, no other immediate horrors, just the loss of electricity and a man who never comes home from his trip. Carols writes in her journal, “I’m so afraid. Everything looks the same.” They notice a strange dust on the next morning’s breakfast plates, the neighbor’s newborn quickly dies (a very young Kevin Costner has a bit part as the baby’s father), and then rationing food and batteries becomes a concern. Soon radiation sickness becomes apparent, as youngest child Scottie (Lukas Haas) succumbs after spending the night hemorrhaging in his mother’s arms, and since the graveyard is full, the family buries him in the backyard, wrapped with a child’s colorful bedding. Next, teenage daughter Mary Liz (Roxana Zal) passes away. This we know after watching Carol stitch the body into a crisp, white sheet.

The orphaned neighbor boy, the Asian gas station owner, the older man who runs the short wave radio, the elderly European piano teacher … everyone is dying. We know that Carol, Brad, and the ultimate innocent, Hiroshi, will die in the end, but they don’t give up. As director Littman said many years later, “I identify with the mother in the story, except especially as portrayed by Jane. She was much braver than I could ever be.” The story is about an everyday homemaker who spends her last days burying her children as she goes hungry and loses her hair, yet this woman is an inspiration. She doesn’t fold even after seriously contemplating suicide; she doesn’t lie about the future; she faces this end of life, end of her family, with an emotional honesty that is not the melodrama of the soap opera or a Lifetime movie. We don’t all have children and might live very different lives, but this 1983 film created by women gave the audience such a grim picture of the near future, without the excitement of special effects or the hope brought by overcoming obstacles, that it was a call to action, a message to avoid this outcome at all costs.

The initial story came to writer Carol Amen in a dream. In the DVD extra “Testament at 20,” Jane Alexander talks about her own nightmare of going on a camping trip and not being able to get home because of radiation. She felt the film was a catharsis for that nightmare, a working out of those fears, and soon after filming, she became a spokesperson for Physicians for Social Responsibility, an important activist group at the time. An adult Lukas Haas reads a letter that he dictated as a five-year-old to President Reagan, asking him “not to do the bombs.” He talks about fearing that every airplane overhead might be the one dropping a nuclear weapon.

Watching the film today calls back those fears, and although a homemaker as the protagonist may seem a bit old-fashioned, it is the long takes, slow pace, and muted colors that really call back to this period (a pleasure for those of us who enjoy “slow movies” and editing before shorter attention spans). Jane Alexander had already received an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt, went on to win two Emmys, and became the director of the National Endowment for the Arts during its particularly embattled period in the mid-1990s. Testament was about facing the unthinkable in 1983 and being called to do something about it. Although replaced by other serious maladies, today we can count our lucky stars that those nightmares of full-scale nuclear war have largely gone away.

Angela Beauchamp is a cinema lover, film scholar, and most recently, a zombie mashup junkie. She is preparing to teach a course on Post-Apocalyptic Cinema in the fall.

The Feminisms of ‘Born in Flames’

It’s no coincidence to me that three years later Lizzie Borden would direct ‘Born in Flames,’ a film that depicts a collection of different feminist voices all aligned in a common goal of resisting what bell hooks terms the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.

Written by staff writer Heather Brown, this re-post appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

What is the role of difference in feminism? When in doubt, ask Audre Lorde. In 1980, she delivered a lecture entitled “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” (later published in Sister Outsider) in which she states, “There is a pretense to homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.” It’s no coincidence to me that three years later Lizzie Borden would direct Born in Flames, a film that depicts a collection of different feminist voices all aligned in a common goal of resisting what bell hooks terms the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.

The film takes place 10 years after a social revolution in the United States (!). However, despite the political structure of a socialist democracy, social, and economic justice for the historically marginalized is still a long way off. Filmed in cinema verité style with non-professional actors and against the backdrop of Reagan-era New York City, the post-revolution future looks appropriately gritty, unflinching, and chaotic — much like the film’s narrative. So, too, are the voices of feminist activists that structure the film. First, we meet Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield) an African American woman who, along with Hilary Hurst (Hilary Hurst), a white woman, leads the Women’s Army. Both are disenfranchised by the government’s “work-fair” program, and we see them work to mobilize their respective communities across racial lines. And most importantly, we see them disagree about how to do it. Adelaide, influenced by her mentor Zella (played by the late feminist activist Florynce Kennedy), weighs the necessity of the Women’s Army to take up arms against the state, which has only ever perpetuated militarized violence toward women, lesbians, communities of color, and the poor in general. Zella tells Adelaide, “All oppressed people have a right to violence.”

In addition to seeing women converse with and debate one another, we also see them speaking from dedicated feminist platforms on pirate radio. Isabel (Adele Bertei), the DJ of Radio Ragazza, is an outspoken critic of the Women’s Army. She and her community represent the white, anarchist-punk perspective that promotes creative resistance through art. Then there’s Honey (Honey) of Phoenix Radio, a DJ who Adelaide seeks as an ally by extension of overlap of their membership in Black communities. Yet another voice is the Socialist Youth Review, a liberal magazine whose reporters (white women, including a young Kathryn Bigelow) occasionally weigh in to critique the Women’s Army for its agenda and question the need for it to exist at all, given the social gains achieved by the revolution. And finally, a distinctly anti-feminist perspective that provides a counter-narrative to the action unfolding is the voiceover of FBI agents, who aim to take down the Women’s Army, starting with Adelaide Norris. We hear them remark, “We don’t know who to find out who is charge” and “it’s not clear how they function.” These statements reveal just how confounding it is to the very centralized government that a social movement could share authority amongst its members.

One of the ways that the Women’s Army shares this authority is shared is through collective anti-street harassment activism and anti-rape squads. In a harrowing but triumphant scene, a woman is being assaulted by two women on her way to the subway, and out of nowhere appears a fleet of women on bicycles, blowing whistles and circling the men. The men leave the scene and the Women’s Army come to the aid of the attack victim. What is particularly important about this scene is not just how little things have changed when it comes to the endurance of street harassment and violence against women, but that the Women’s Army creates its own policing solutions to these problems. Instead of acting out carceral feminism, which relies on law enforcement and state violence to combat violence against women, the feminisms of Born in Flames create justice rather than restore “order.”

Though much is made of the differences between the activist groups, one thread runs through the film: the shared experience of work. There are several montages — set to the soundtrack of Red Krayola’s “Born in Flames,” which will get lodged in your brain for weeks — in which close-up shots of hands and all kinds of bodies are engaged in all kinds of labor. From bagging groceries, to child care, to sex work, each act is equated as valuable in its own right. One of the acts of resistance occurs after Adelaide, like many other women who are lower in the social caste, is laid off from her construction job and organizes a demonstration to fight for jobs that have the potential for growth.

The film’s rising action occurs when Adelaide is detained by the FBI on suspicion of arms trafficking — a fabrication intended to stamp out her and the Women’s Army. Without spoiling the film, let’s just say that the different feminist subgroups are called to combine their efforts and create Phoenix Regazza Radio to stand in solidarity as they enact a final act of terrorism. While this particular act is a bit chilling to watch post-9/11, it powerfully symbolizes the danger that will befall society should the marginalization of women and the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy persist.

Heather Brown is a Bitch Flicks staff writer. She grew up in Connecticut but hopes that having lived in Virginia and North Carolina — and being married to an Arkansan — gives her occasional license to have a Southern accent. She recently fled a full-time job as a professor in central New Jersey, where she taught classes in gender studies, feminist theory, linguistics, and rhetoric. Long story short, she decided to leave the ivory tower to have more fun on the outside. Now she teaches online part-time, works as a freelance writer and instructional designer, and is currently pursuing professional coach certification training in Chicago, Ill., where she moved at the end of 2013 with her partner and cat, Edie. She lives for live music, road trips, and good movies. She blogs sporadically at PhDilettante.