Foreign Film Week: The Disturbing, Terrorizing Feminism of Dušan Makavejev’s ‘WR: Mysteries of the Organism’ and ‘Sweet Movie’



Written by Leigh Kolb

[Trigger warning: references to graphic content.]


Sometimes feminist films succeed by showing just how awful a world without feminism is. Dušan Makavejev’s WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) and Sweet Movie (1974) provide that kind of jarring commentary. 
Both of these films critique fascism, communism, capitalism and sexual repression. His films are part of the Yugoslav Black Wave film era, which featured films that employed “antitraditional form, polemical approaches, socio-critical concerns, oppositional ideology and, a fatalistic conclusion.”
WR and Sweet Movie are difficult for audiences to handle due to some graphic scenes and political commentaries. However, the fatalism of the films–the disturbing, unpleasant endings with an overall bleak outlook on modern society–is perhaps the most unsettling, and the most important aspect of the films. While we could talk at length about the politics of the films (indeed many have, better than I could), looking at the films through a feminist lens provides a deeper understanding of Makavejev’s messages about the tragedy of sexual repression (especially for women). 
The Criterion Current‘s essay on Sweet Movie provides a backdrop for both films:

“Makavejev began his career by earning a psychology degree at a leading Serbian university, studying at Yugoslavia’s national film school, and making numerous shorts and documentaries… he set to work on the 1971 genre bender WR: Mysteries of the Organism, which anticipated Sweet Movie with its collagelike meditation on maverick psychologist Wilhelm Reich and his theories of sexual liberation.
“By this time, Makavejev was a leader of the so-called Black Cinema film­makers, as they were dubbed by Yugoslav officials who didn’t like their negative view of official ideologies. The sexual politics of WR was more than those officials could take: the film was banned, and Makavejev fled the country, not working there again until 1988. He made Sweet Movie in Canada, the Netherlands, and France, with additional Swedish and West German funding. It is banned in various countries to this day.”

WR: Mysteries of the Organism is somewhat a documentary, somewhat a work of fiction. The documentary footage that provides the context for the film examines Wilhelm Reich, an anti-fascist  Freud-trained psychoanalyst whose work–which focused on anti-fascism, sexual liberation and orgasmic energy–was censored and burned by the US government and he was imprisoned. Other documentary segments include interviews with sex-positive feminist Betty Dodson, a look into Screw magazine and how dildos are created and ideas of femininity and masculinity from the perspective of Jackie Curtis, who cross-dresses and challenges ideas of gender.
The fictional story cut into this documentary footage focuses on Milena, a young Yugoslav woman who is a radical feminist and revolutionary, focusing mainly on the importance of sexual liberation (and the fact that communism would fail because free love was repressed). She lectures the crowd of frustrated workers below her apartment balcony:

Milena lectures workers about the failure of communism.
“… Our road to the future must be life-positive. Comrades! Between socialism and physical love there can be no conflict. Socialism must not exclude human pleasure from its program. The October Revolution was ruined when it rejected free love. Frustrate the young sexually and they’ll recklessly take to other illicit thrills: Pilfering, burglary and assorted crimes, knifings, alcoholism, political riots with flags flying, battling the police like prewar communists! What we need is free youth in a crime-free world! If we are to achieve this, we must allow free love!…
“No excitement can ever equal the elemental force of the orgasm… Sweet oblivion is the masses’ demand! Deprive them of free love, and they’ll seize everything else! That led to revolution. It led to fascism and doomsday. How Man Became a Giant. Deutschland uber alles!… Deprive youth of their right to the sweet electricity of sex and you rob them of their mental health!… Restore to every individual the right to love!”


Milena’s fight for free love and the perfect orgasm leads her to a Soviet ice skater, Vladimir. He represents complete allegiance to Soviet rule and Stalin-esque communism. He speaks highly of his travels to the West, highlighting to the audience America’s class divide and sexual repression. Milena seduces him, encouraging him to accept his own freedom and sexuality. He succumbs, but his repressed lust and orgasm prove so overwhelming for him that he murders her (beheading her with his ice skate). Her decapitated head narrates the rest of the story as coroners discuss the huge amount of semen that was in her vagina.

Milena sees fascism as a masculine force that represses freedom and sexuality.
Milena’s fate exemplifies the passionate pro-love speech she gave to the workers. Sexual repression leads to violence. To further prove this point, Makavejev shows a man (performer Tuli Kupferberg, member of The Fugs) dressed in military regalia walking around Manhattan with a toy M-16 gun, stroking it as if masturbating, to The Fugs’ “Kill for Peace.” This idea that violence and sexual repression are connected leads to men glorifying guns and killing, and women being punished.

“Kill for Peace” excerpt from WR: Mysteries of the Organism. 
Milena is not punished for her own sexuality, she’s punished because of the sexually repressive world she lives in. She would argue that the men suffer from this repression, clearly, and turn to violence when they don’t know what to do with the frustration.

In Sweet Movie, two women’s stories are featured. The only documentary footage Makavejev uses in this feature film are some shots of mass graves in the Katyn Forest massacre (where Stalin had authorized the killing of 4,000 Polish prisoners). For the censorship authorities in many countries, however, that’s not what made the film ban-worthy (the official “rejection” status explanation from the British Board of Film Classification doesn’t even mention it). Instead, the scenes at a commune that feature all manners of human excretory byproducts and one scene where Anna Planeta seduces young boys made the film censored and banned in many countries. The film was almost impossible to find until Criterion released the DVD in 2007. 
In an excellent excerpt from the book Terror and Joy: The Films of Dušan Makavejev, Lorraine Mortimer analyzes Sweet Movie in depth and makes some of those most uncomfortable scenes much more understandable and meaningful. The vulgarity of the commune scenes remind us of how terrorized and sickened we are by bodily functions (and they are politically subversive, in that the people are not doing what they are supposed to), and the seduction scene reminds us–or should–how much “seduction” young people, especially boys, are subject to every day. This scene is also reminiscent of Reich’s ideas about sexual expression, even in youth. Anna Planeta’s scenes are important in their deadly intersections of politics, supposed sweetness and death after love. The giant Karl Marx head on her boat, and her lover (from a failed revolution) are symbolic of Makavejev’s recurrent themes of the tragic failing of Soviet communism and the anti-human, fascist results of such authoritarian systems. 
In Roger Ebert’s 1975 review, he asserts: 
“Makavejev doesn’t exploit this material — Sweet Movie is anything but a sex film — but uses it to confront us in a very unsettling way. The unasked questions behind his film seem to be: Well, we’re all human, aren’t we? This is what we are and what we do. What do you think of these people? You go to the movies to be entertained by scenes of people killing each other, you watch wars on TV — do the basic bodily processes of these people offend you?”

Most obvious–and still timely–to Western audiences, capitalism, commercialization and sexual repression are criticized in this film, especially through the story of Miss World 1984 (Miss Canada).
The film opens with a bright and cheery game show, and Martha, an older woman (the chairman of the Chastity Belt Foundation), accompanied by men dressed as priests, is standing by and helping judge while a gynecologist checks the virginity of various contenders for the grand prize–marrying her son, milk tycoon Mr. Kapital (a.k.a. Mr. Dollars), who is a wealthy bachelor.

The gynecologist examines the female contestants’ virginity.

Martha explains that at the Chastity Belt Foundation:
“Through the guidance of our sensational method, your own body kills the animal. We advocate simple triumph of the will. It is painless and ever so rewarding. No wild dreams. No – no peculiar behavior. Solid health and purposeful direction! … If not controlled and kept at bay, wild impulses will turn everyone into beastly animals, chaotic natural beings.”

We know from WR that this is the opposite of what Reich believed and what Makavejev reveals in his films.
The scene is wildly sexist, but clearly satirizes the value that society places on female virginity. When Miss Canada crawls into the examination chair and parts her legs, a light shines from her vagina, and she is declared the most virgin, the winner. And thus she is sold to the highest bidder.
She is an object, not a subject, and what she can offer to a man as a “prize” has nothing to do with her own sexuality. As they travel to their honeymoon location and fly over Niagara Falls, Mr. Kapital talks about how he is going to buy up Niagara Falls:
“I’m gonna buy it from the Canadian Government. I will renovate it, redecorate it. Get rid of the water, turn off the falls. … I’m gonna install an electric, synthetic, laser moving image in livin’ color. In livin’ color, honey! Yeah. And we’re gonna have a huge quadraphonic sound system. Yeah!”

(Mortimer notes that “…years later, it would be comforting if this wild caricature of acquisition and ignorance were further from our own reality.”)

Miss World and Mr. Kapital.

Miss World is an acquisition to Mr. Kapital, nothing more. He preaches on purity, money, sex and waste (marriage and business seem interchangeable, all driven by deeply capitalistic and puritanical ideologies). Martha and her brigade of priests stand outside a glass plate window as the marriage is about to be consummated. Mr. Kapital disinfects himself, and rubs Miss World down with alcohol–there is nothing sexual or sensual about the scene; it’s sterile and lifeless. When he takes out his penis, it’s covered in gold, and he procedes to urinate on Miss World as she screams.

When Miss World attempts to get out of the marriage, her mother-in-law attempts to drown her and they send her away.  She speaks out and tries to have some independence, only to be punished harshly. She represents this world where girls are prized for their virginity and derided for the outcomes of this anti-woman socialization. (“This is my only property, it’s my diamond!” she exclaims of her virginity when the tycoon’s bodyguard attempts to sexually assault her.)

She is now shipped off, just one of Mr. Kapital’s failed business ventures.

She’s damaged and broken–she attempts sex with a Latin pop star only to be confronted by nuns and stuck in “penis captivus.” She’s sent to the aforementioned Otto Muehl commune to “heal.”

Religious imagery surrounds Miss World when she attempts to have sex–another symbol of sexual oppression.

By the end of the film, she’s shown writhing around in a pool full of melted chocolate for a commercial.

The camera man directs her:

“Darling, this is going to be the highlight of your career. From now on, when people eat chocolate – I mean, the brand we advertise – they will not feel the same. I want them to feel as if they’re eating you!” 

Miss World, now just using her body to sell chocolate.

And here we are: the ultimate sexual objectification (she is naked, and attempting to seduce the camera) combined with commercialism–the indulgence of sweet chocolate (reminiscent of the toxic sugar on Anna Planeta’s boat) is confused with a kind of female sexuality that is supposed to be passive and proactive all at once, but certainly not for her. It’s supposed to be for the gold-encrusted penises, or the viewers, the consumers.

Miss World looks dead behind the eyes in this final scene. Her life was decided for her in a culture that prized her virginity and beauty above all else, and she couldn’t function when she attempts to be in another world.

She is punished, much like Milena is. However, Makavejev does not want us to think that they are at fault; instead, a society that represses and commodifies sexuality is the perpetrator of violence, masculine force and female suffering.

Makavejev’s films are representative of Black Wave sensibilities, especially in the critique of current society and the nihilism of the films’ endings. There are no clear answers here, just the reassertion that oppressive societies hurt everyone. In WR and Sweet Movie both, however, women are shown to suffer greatly at the hands of authoritarian, sexually repressive societies. 

At the end of WR and Sweet Movie, all of our main characters suffer. Milena dies; her killer is still repressed, and now a murderer; Reich dies in prison; Planeta is arrested, her victims lined up by the river; Miss World is broken and no longer has her “diamond,” so she has no self-worth. The characters have been created and persecuted by their societies. And we still haven’t seemed to move past the cult of masculinity and gun violence or puritanical views about sexuality.

However, if we are to find any bleak hope here, it’s this: at the end of WR, Milena’s head is speaking to the audience, as if her life isn’t really over. At the end of Sweet Movie, Planeta’s victims are resurrected and brought back to life. Maybe–just maybe–Makavejev is showing that it’s not too late to find life in repressive societies and giving us the answer to Sweet Movie‘s lyrical refrain, “Is there life on the earth?

Is there life after birth?” Makavejev would say yes, but only if we can break free from authoritarian  and repressive social ideals that have led to a cycle of repression, seduction and destruction.

—–

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. 

Foreign Film Week: ‘Lemon Tree’ Unites Two Women from Palestine and Israel

Written by Megan Kearns. Originally published at The Opinioness of the World. Cross-posted with permission.

Arab culture has always captivated me. In college, I took classes on gender and Islam, Arab women’s movements and Middle Eastern History — classes which opened my eyes to diverse cultures and perspectives. People possess passionate opinions about the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel. With so much chaos and oppression, observers as well as those personally involved may not truly comprehend the other side’s plight.

The film Etz Limon (Lemon Tree) attempts to bridge the divide and present both sides of the story through two women’s lives.

Starring the always powerful Hiam Abass (The Visitor, Amreeka), she effortlessly exudes dignity and grace no matter the role. She captivates the audience, fully expressing her thoughts and feelings with her eyes, never having to utter a word. Abass won several awards, including Best Actress Award of the Israeli Film Academy, for her portrayal of Salma Zidane, a Palestinian widow who tends a lemon grove that’s been in her family for generations.

When the new Israeli Defense Minister moves in next door to her (on the Israeli side of the border) with his wife, Mira Navon (Rona Lipaz-Michael), the Secret Service advises him that the lemon trees are a security risk. Fearing a sniper could be obscured by the trees, the Defense Minister orders Salma to cut them down.

Salma (Hiam Abass) in Lemon Tree

A woman who’s lost her husband, who’s children have grown up and moved away, Salma is not about to lose her source of income nor her identity. With quiet yet fierce determination, she enlists the help of a young lawyer to fight the court order. Her decision to go against the State of Israel sends ripples throughout the lives of those involved.

Simultaneously, Mira faces her own struggle as she attempts to adapt to life in her new home and her new role as a politician’s wife. She’s often in solitude as her daughters are married, her son lives in the U.S. and her husband is preoccupied with his career. She ultimately becomes an unlikely ally in Salma’s crusade. As the court case gains more notoriety, Mira gives interviews speaking in favor of Salma, defying her husband, much to his chagrin.

Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael) in Lemon Tree

Directed by Eran Riklas (The Syrian Bride), this beautiful and understated film, based on a true story, simultaneously conveys the daily oppression of the Palestinians as well as the fears of the Israelis. Discussing the film, Riklas said,

“The Middle East is constantly changing although when you really think about it, perhaps it isn’t…hope, optimism, pessimism, breakthroughs, new horizons, a new day, the future, the past – all words used on a regular basis to describe the situation in a region that has seen it all. Trees have always been around to witness what mankind has been doing…this is really a film about solitude as it is reflected in the lives of the two women – Salma on the Palestinian side and Mira, the Defense Minister’s wife, on the Israeli one…as well as all the other characters involved who somehow represent so many issues and subjects but all of them suffer from a kind of loneliness which is part of their lives on a personal and national level.”

I was pleasantly surprised at Lemon Tree‘s balanced treatment of both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives, considering the volatile and intertwined history of religion and bloodshed. No stereotypes exist here. No judgments passed on who’s right and who’s wrong.

While not originally intended as a feminist film, Lemon Tree ultimately is as we see the world through each woman’s eyes — we see their battles, their journeys. Too often, there’s a fallacious stereotype that exists in the U.S. that women in the Middle East are passive or subservient. Not true. In the film, both Salma and Mira find their voice and fight for what they believe.

Salma and Mira are both neighbors and mothers. Two separate scenes in the film show each woman climbing over the wire fence to the other side’s border, perhaps symbolizing their ensuing empathy for each other and their desire for liberation. Separated by language and the physical wall between Palestine and Israel, Salma and Mira remain united in their bond of compassion and respect for each other.

Each woman contends with loneliness as they find their inner strength, striving to navigate their lives in the constraints of their imposed physical and emotional boundaries. Each woman struggles to literally and metaphorically tear down confining walls with the hope of achieving freedom and peace.

Foreign Film Week: As a Collector Loves His Most Prized Item: ‘Gabrielle’ (2005)

Isabelle Huppert stars in Gabrielle
Guest post written by Amanda Civitello
Gabrielle is a beautifully complex film, the kind of movie that begs to be watched with attention. Starring the unparalleled Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory, who each deliver spellbinding performances, and based on the short story “The Return” by Joseph Conrad, Gabrielle tells the story of a well-to-do woman, the wife of a successful businessman in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Paris, who one afternoon makes up her mind to leave her husband, writes him a note to that effect, leaves – and then, three hours later, returns. It’s a film with disconcertingly ambiguous characters who alternately elicit frustration, antipathy, disgust, and sympathy from the audience. There isn’t really a heroine to this film, but neither is there an anti-hero; the strength of Gabrielle is in its rendering of utterly perplexing, thoroughly human characters. Patrice Chéreau could not have chosen a better pair of actors to anchor his film. Huppert and Greggory shine in roles that rely primarily on non-verbal acting, embodying their characters with achingly subtle realism. The film suffers from some stylistic problems – it’s sometimes difficult, for example, to know what Chéreau intends when the film switches abruptly from black and white to color – but is, ultimately, a beautifully shot and well-acted film whose complex, disquieting story is all the more harrowing couched as it is in such lovely photography.
We are introduced to our eponymous protagonist in Gabrielle‘s opening scenes: we meet her through the eyes of the antagonist: her husband Jean. We learn why he chose his wife – her impassivity being her chief attribute – and we observe her. We watch her across the dinner table as he watches her each evening; we appraise her as he does; we do all this without hearing her say a single word. She is objectified and we are as guilty of her objectification as her husband. Though he takes pride in his reserved stoicism, he nevertheless insists on having fallen in love with his wife. Later, however, he qualifies this: “I love her as a collector loves his most prized item. Once acquired, it becomes his sole reason to live.” But Gabrielle isn’t his reason to live, of course: he’s not motivated by love or desire for his wife, but rather by the desire to possess her. Having won her, he wants to keep her; it’s meaningful that the room which he enters after pronouncing these words is essentially a sculpture gallery: busts of beautiful women, perhaps won at auction, which Jean would certainly love to keep. Jean’s love, further, is lacking in intimacy, which is not to say that it’s lacking in sex. He deems his desire “assuaged” and that they “know each other enough,” but that he insists on their sharing a bedroom. He says this with a degree of pride in the fact that it’s he who wants to share a bedroom with his wife, but of course, it’s not out of love for her – it’s just another manifestation of his almost obsessive possessiveness. He goes so far as to equate the sharing of their bedroom with the sharing of a grave; he wants to keep his Gabrielle. 
Gabrielle, in these opening scenes, is very much an ice queen, for all that she’s a consummate hostess. We learn, however, that she does have interests outside of entertaining: Jean acquiesces to her desire to “give her individuality fair play,” and he finances her philanthropic efforts to fund a newspaper and goes along with her evening Salons. He’s pleased with his investment when the newspaper turns a profit, but, as before, his pride in her is possessiveness trussed up as love.
Jean Hervey (Pascal Greggory)

But Gabrielle is not precisely a sainted, long-suffering martyr, and it’s revealed that she was as coolly calculated in her decision to marry Jean as he was in his. In a brilliant use of cinematic parallelism, Chéreau turns the tables of the opening scenes on Gabrielle, so that she is the one watching, instead of being watched. She observes her servants as hawkishly, as silently as her husband studied her over dinner. “You’re devoted,” she declares to the young women attending her before her bath, “but you don’t enter my life.” Jean might have said the same words about Gabrielle herself in the film’s opening scenes, and the viewer has the sense that while Gabrielle is addressing her maids, the faraway look to her expression and the listless monotone of her voice mean that she might very well be speaking about her husband.

So Gabrielle is a beautiful, fragile-looking woman, who decides to leave her husband for her lover and then, perplexingly, chooses to return. Perhaps she never meant to permanently leave: perhaps the idea of leaving, the act of stepping through the door and venturing just a bit before turning homewards, was enough. What matters, of course, is that she chose to return to her husband. Jean wants an explanation, but Gabrielle isn’t one to justify herself. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a charged scene in which Jean confronts her angrily – then tells her, somewhat grudgingly, that she has his forgiveness. Gabrielle immediately bursts out laughing, and Jean is confused and enraged by her reaction. She laughs because she hasn’t apologized, perhaps because she doesn’t want his forgiveness and certainly because she doesn’t feel she needs it. He protests, his magnanimity patently insincere; her laughter grows more maniacal. Infuriated, he grabs a glass of water and tosses it in her face. Gabrielle blinks, silenced, and Huppert sinks ever so slightly back against the cushions, her expression regaining the impenetrable passivity from the film’s early scenes, this time laced with a practically tangible misery.
Perhaps some of her melancholy derives from those who try to convince her that her decision to leave and return was anything but her own. First Jean, who thinks she’s taken leave of her senses; then Yvonne, the maid, who argues that Gabrielle is not at fault because Jean had allowed a man into his home who didn’t “respect the rules.” Gabrielle is so sadly resigned to her fate in part because no one, not even her servants, accords her the recognition that she did something of her own will. We discover, over the course of her discussion with Yvonne, that she took up with her lover because he made her happy, at least for a time, and because she fell in love. The fact that she recognized the impetuosity of her choices and chose to return to her unhappy marriage doesn’t nullify her three hours of independence. But faced with such a dismissal of her feelings, it’s not surprising that the fight seems to leave her. In a further blow, she’s denied the recognition of her actions, the acknowledgement of her agency, by maid and husband alike.
At dinner, that evening, Jean expresses his determination to forget the incident entirely, but his generosity, his forgiveness, is passively aggressive, and when Gabrielle finally offers him some insight into her thinking, he’s angrily dismissive. Gabrielle explains that she suffered when he left her alone after their marriage, that she was disillusioned and disappointed by it. “And look at the new Gabrielle,” Jean says, dismissively. “It’s not much of an improvement.” Resolved, Gabrielle enlightens him as to the reason for her return: she knew that he would take her back. She anticipated his reaction – the anger, the insistence on forgetting the afternoon – and returned, safe in the knowledge that he would accept her back, that she would continue to live as the socially prominent wife of Jean Hervey because he would so fear the social ostracization that would ensue.
Gabrielle is a strong woman, of course; she does know her own mind and acts accordingly. She pursues the relationship with her lover (incidentally the editor of the Herveys’ newspaper) because of her own desires and passions. Can she be faulted for falling in love, and pursuing it? Pursuing it while married isn’t right, of course, and Gabrielle is clever enough to know that, but a female character, in a period piece, who does something simply because she wants to is refreshing. Gabrielle Hervey is an interesting character in a genre in which many female characters are simply quite bland. She’s a strong woman, then, but not an especially nice one.
At their Salon the following evening, Jean corners Gabrielle during a vocal recital, detailing how he will torment her with guilt until he feels that ‘his’ Gabrielle has returned, at which time he may or may not tell her that her suffering has ended. Unimpressed, Gabrielle retorts that she sees his appreciation of her suffering, and therefore, her mask of sadness will be the only face he sees, even when she is no longer miserable. The moment in which Jean tossed water in Gabrielle’s face seemed, at the time, to be entirely out of character is now revealed to be but the harbinger of further, more serious abuse to come.

Jean threatens Gabrielle

It all comes to a head after the Salon: as the party disbands, Gabrielle puts on her evening cape and makes as if to leave. Jean grabs her violently, demanding that she not go to him. But she wasn’t going to her lover, she declares: she was leaving alone. Finally, in the moments that follow, each of them sat on the floor opposite the other – with Jean having practically wrestled her there in the first place – we learn why Gabrielle decided to leave and return. It’s not as simple as banking on her husband’s good nature: “when you don’t matter,” she says, “you can come and go.” She was a woman trapped in a marriage in which she felt unseen; she was a nonentity. She left, we realize, not just out of passion, but out of desperation; she returns not out of love for her husband or remorse for her infidelity, but because her life with Jean is easier. She knows her role; she knows what he expects from her, and she knows what she expects from him, and chooses that. Her decisions have the air of deliberation and calculation about them; we have the sense that she, up until this point, believed as we did in Jean’s placidity.

Throughout the film, Huppert’s Gabrielle maintains her even tone of voice and her expression of sad resignation, conveying Gabrielle’s changing emotions with only the subtlest of changes in expression. But Jean is enraged by this, and the sight of Gabrielle’s lover at their Salon, and the knowledge of their lovemaking pushes him over the edge. [Trigger warning.] In a terrible moment, Jean rips away the bodice of Gabrielle’s dress and forces up her skirt, and rapes her against the stone staircase. With a final shout, Gabrielle runs away, her steps echoing loudly on the stone floors. Huppert and Greggory handle the moment very carefully: this is an utterly terrifying scene in an otherwise slow-paced film, and it has much to do with the sudden onslaught of emotion from the two leads.
He returns to the bedroom the next morning, seemingly broken, yet offering excuses and wondering, impossibly, if she still loves him. It’s to Greggory’s credit that Jean is believable in this moment. Practically in response, with an utterly tired expression, Gabrielle moves to the bed, reclines, and pulls her clothes away from her body. “Come,” she says. “Lie down. Perhaps if you did, I could…now.” Despite her words, there’s nothing at all desperate about her in these moments: she’s a woman in control, who meets Jean’s gaze challengingly, who bares herself because she chooses to, she who, we come to learn, had been reticent to make love with her husband; who takes control of her sexuality and leverages it. Finally, it’s Gabrielle who sets the tone, in an utter reversal of the movie’s early scenes. He sits beside her and his hand trembles on her breasts; he lies on top of her; she doesn’t respond in the slightest to his touch. He wrenches himself away, his face twisted with emotion, in stark contrast to Gabrielle’s mask of placidity. “You could, like this, without love?” he asks, stunned. “Yes,” Gabrielle replies, simply. It’s a scene that’s incredibly difficult to watch, thanks to Huppert’s commanding performance. While before we gazed at her across the dinner table, admiring her, studying her, objectifying her, now it’s Gabrielle who dares us to look by offering herself to Jean – and to the audience’s gaze. And this time, we look away.
In the end, in the film as in the story, it’s Jean who leaves, slamming the door of the great house behind him, never to return; does that mean that it’s Gabrielle who won? The melancholic resignation that pervades the film’s final scenes seems to suggest that there are no winners in a story like Gabrielle: there are no winners just as there are no heroes in a marriage that falls apart because of the failings of both husband and wife.

Gabrielle
Amanda Civitello is a Chicago-based freelance writer and Northwestern grad with an interest in arts and literary criticism. She has recently written on Jacques Derrida and feminist philosopher Sarah Kofman for The Ellipses Project and has contributed reviews of Rebecca, Sleepy Hollow, and Downton Abbey to Bitch Flicks. You can find her online at amandacivitello.com.

Foreign Film Week: Growing Up with ‘Les Demoiselles de Rochefort’

Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)

Guest post written by Lou Flandrin.

This masterpiece by Jacques Demy is definitely the most important movie of my childhood. Part of it is probably due to the hours I spent listening to the cheerful singing while going away on vacation with my family. Singing in the car is the best remedy to car sickness and boredom, and so the whole family would happily sing along these tunes about dreams, true love, and living life to the fullest.

While I love this movie because of the catchy lyrics, colourful clothes and the giddy state in which it turns me, I also appreciate its depiction of women’s lives and family bonds. I am grateful to have had these depictions to look up to when I was growing up, of sisters and friends who didn’t fight against each other, but worked together towards their dreams to have an artistic career and to find happiness.

The plot of the movie is quite simple: the main characters, Delphine and Solange, are twins who are tired of their provincial lives and decide to go to Paris to start their artistic career. As they plan their departure, the summer fair is settling in the beautiful city of Rochefort – which was painted in pastel colours for the movie – and fair workers, sailors and musicians will cross their path, webs of stories will get intertwined, resulting in a wonderful puzzle of emotions, songs, and choreographed happiness.

A Celebration of Love in All its States

While this movie is about soul mates finding each other, it is above all a celebration of love in general, love of life and of all the little things that makes the world so amazing. A perfect illustration of this is the song that the twins perform for the fair’s big show, “La Chanson d’un Jour d’été” which is all about loving life, and as they sing it: “loving the world in order to be happy.” This positive philosophy is a recurring leitmotif in the movie. Two fair workers – played by George Chakiris and Grover Dale – contribute to the theme by singing about the joys of travelling and living life to the fullest in every city they visit, “running from one happiness to the next.” With such a positive outlook, it’s no wonder this movie makes me want to smile and dance around like a maniac!

Being in love is obviously still a major theme, but it is presented as a complement to this love of life and freedom. Most of the characters are on a quest to find their true love in their own different ways. Yvonne, the twins’ mother, is longing for her lost love, whom she rejected years before because of his ridiculous last name. Andy, an American composer, is feeling incomplete after spending his whole life focusing on his musical career. Simon Dame, the dissed lover with a ridiculous name, is now back in Rochefort when he once was in love with Yvonne. Maxence, a young artist doing his military service in Rochefort, dreams about his feminine ideal, painting her portrait that looks eerily like Delphine.

Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) discovers Maxence’s painting

There is no distinction between a feminine or masculine depiction of love, as lovers’ voices share the same intensity, and their songs echo each other. Love “is the sole authority” and erases the discriminations of gender, social class or even moral virtue.

The twins have their own expectations about love. While it is no secret that they have had their share of lovers – as sung in their famous “Chanson des Jumelles,” they are now both looking for someone to share their lives with, and will take action towards this goal. At the beginning of the movie, Delphine dumps her phony and creepy boyfriend Lancien in an amazing break-up song, in which she reproaches him of treating her like “just another doll” and not understanding anything about her dreams. Lancien gets a few lines in the song as well, but he misses the point entirely. He mistakes his desire to own Delphine with love, and will try repeatedly to get her back, including with a poor attempt to convince her that she would need someone like him to look after her in Paris. But Delphine knows better than that, and replies that she never wants to see him again. Good riddance!

A Celebration of Friendship and Family Ties

What I like about this movie is that it’s not all about true love, as friends and family are shown as equally important parts of life. The two sisters live together in harmony, they confide in each other, share their joys and fears, and sing to each other about everything. Another interesting duo is that of the two girls who were supposed to sing and dance at the fair. After discussing it with each other, they decide to leave Etienne and Bill, the two fair workers, because they are tired of being exploited and want to live their own lives. Sure, they have their own superficial reasons (Bill doesn’t have blue eyes, sailors are better lovers…) but still, the message is out there, they want to free themselves and they do it together.

Guys are not excluded from this friendship pattern. Etienne and Bill have known each other for years, they travel together and share the same adventures and heartbreaks. They sing about their undying friendship, describing themselves as penniless knights with hearts of gold running from cities to cities. When the girls leave them for blue-eyed sailors, they echo their previous song about freedom, and leave the scene smiling at each other. Later on, when they very awkwardly ask the twins if they want to sleep with them and get rejected, they sing together about their bad luck with women.

True bros wear tight jeans and white boots, it is known. (George Chakiris and Grover Dale)

As for family ties, they are not limited to the sibling relationship between Delphine and Solange. Their mother Yvonne has raised three children on her own, sacrificing her life in order to help her family become well-read. She owns a café, and spends her days behind the counter. While she is at work all the time, in what she calls her “aquarium,” the café becomes the family home. The twins come and go to chat, Yvonne’s father spends his time in a corner constructing models, and Booboo, the youngest son, is always brought from the café to school and vice-versa.

A Celebration of Art

Art is what allows the characters to escape the mundanity of their daily lives, as when Maxence evades from the army barracks every night to paint in his studio. Art and love are pictured as complementary. While Andy is a successful composer, he feels a void, and realises that Solange might be the one who can fill it. They fall in love at first sight, and their idyll is written in F-sharp minor, just like Solange’s concerto that she accidentally drops on the ground when they meet, and that will further charm Andy.

Andy (Gene Kelly) singing about his love for Solange and her concerto

Art can be used negatively, for example in the case of Lancien, Delphine’s ex, who owns a gallery, and “creates” abstract paintings by shooting at balloons full of paint over white canvasses. Unlike the other characters, his art is depicted as destructive, and is echoed in his negative discourses on how he wants to own Delphine and control her life.

A Celebration of Freedom

What makes all the characters of this charming tale so unique is that they are all striving for freedom, and taking action to achieve their independence. Delphine doesn’t want to become Lancien’s doll and decides to leave to Paris to become famous on her own. While her reasons were questionable, Yvonne’s refusal to marry Simon can also be interpreted as a way to stay independent: she didn’t want to become Madame Dame, and chose to struggle on her own rather than becoming his wife.

Throughout the movie, the twins keep saying what comes to their mind, and doing what they want. When the fair workers come to the twins’ door to ask them to take part in their show, they imply that they need their help to go to Paris, which scandalises the sisters. They don’t want to be patronised and don’t want to be mere substitutes either, which is why they will participate to the show in their own way. Delphine buys revealing dresses that she thinks are beautiful, and Solange wonders: “Aren’t you afraid we might look slutty?” Delphine dismisses the comment, and they end up wearing those dresses on stage, showing everybody that they do not care about what people might think. Similarly, Solange couldn’t care less that her dress’ lining is showing, despite everybody insisting on reminding her. The twins’ indifference to other people’s judgement is also seen in their anthem, in which they proudly sing that they were born from an unknown father, and that they had lovers at a very young age.

Who doesn’t love characters who sing in the face of slut-shaming? (Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac)

Freedom is celebrated through the characters’ ability to travel the world to their fancy, like the fair workers who are happiest when they travel, or the sisters who decide to try their luck in Paris. Lack of freedom, for instance in Yvonne’s case, stuck in her “aquarium”, is depicted as the culmination of misery. She evades by dreaming of Pacific beaches, and will only be happy when she manages to get out of her café and find her former lover in front of Booboo’s school.

The musical has some darker notes, with the side story of a sadistic killer who killed a woman and cut her in little pieces because she refused his love for 40 years. Lancien’s obsession with Delphine echoes that of the killer, and we can only hope that he will not follow her to Paris to copycat the tragic event.

Paint Life in Pastel Tones

Haters will diss the cheesy dialogue, the ridiculous plots devices used to make characters miss or meet each other, and the overly cheerful singing. People might also argue that this movie is offering a false depiction of life, in which true love can always be found if one sings about with enough passion, and roams prettily the streets of France while dancing in colourful clothing.

But this very naivety is what makes Les Demoiselles de Rochefort so brilliant. Everything in the movie makes it clear that it is only a wonderful tale, far from reality. If you look at it that way, and decide to immerse yourself in Demy’s pastel singing city, you will end up happier and confident that while real life doesn’t have the same splendour, the ideals it promotes are very real.

Lou Flandrin is a French graduate in languages and international politics. Currently living in Chengdu (China), she is a volunteer translator and author at Global Voices Online, and sometimes tweets about Sichuanese food, robots, and other stuff.

Foreign Film Week: Remembering, Forgetting and Breaking Through in the Female Narrative of ‘Hiroshima mon amour’



Written by Leigh Kolb


Hiroshima mon amour debuted in 1959, 14 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. Alain Resnais’ first feature film explores memory, forgetting and tragedy on an individual and worldwide scale, largely through the lens of Elle (“Her”), played by Emmanuelle Riva.

While Resnais had signed on to do a documentary about the atomic bomb, he concluded that it should be fictional and “that the impact of Hiroshima would be refracted through the viewpoint of a foreign woman,” according to critic Kent Jones. Resnais wanted Marguerite Duras, a French writer and later film director, to write the screenplay. 
Duras’ command of literature, dialogue and feminist sensibilities resonate in the film (Duras was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay). Hiroshima mon amour, which grounds itself in the brief affair of a French woman and a Japanese man (Lui, “Him,” played by Eiji Okada) in Hiroshima, is as much about the growth and healing of an individual in a partnership as it is about nations healing after the second World War. 
Marguerite Duras wrote the screenplay, a stream-of-consciousness conversation with a focus on the feminine.

This juxtaposition of the feminine (love, emotion, peace) and the masculine (war, possession, destruction) shows that neither exists in a vacuum. 

The first section of the film shows Elle and Lui’s naked bodies intertwined, and their dialogue–dominated by her thoughts–is accompanied by increasingly awful footage of the aftermath of the bomb. She talks about how she visited the museum in Hiroshima: “… the reconstructions, for lack of anything else… the explanations, for lack of anything else.” She looked at the photographs and the scorched metal. She says, “What else can a tourist do but weep? I’ve always wept over Hiroshima’s fate.” As she “remembers,” Lui interjects that she remembers nothing, that she knows nothing and that there was nothing for her to weep over.

Elle was a young woman in occupied France (Nevers) when she learned the bomb dropped. Lui was fighting in the war, and his family was in Hiroshima. As the narrative unfolds and Elle comes to terms with her past, her youth and madness that she had in Nevers was due to her intense love with a German soldier–the enemy–who was killed right before they were set to leave together.

Lui’s story doesn’t seem as important as hers. We know he’s married (they both are), and that he’s a successful architect and involved in politics. His role in the film is that of a lover, of course, a pursuer and a listener. 

Elle, fighting Lui’s claims that she doesn’t know anything about Hiroshima, stresses that she does know. She says she knew that women risked giving birth to “monsters,” men risked becoming sterile, huge amounts of food had to be thrown away and that the “principle of inequality” kept advancing–between races and classes. He tells her she knows nothing, but we hear her concern with the traditionally feminine, even feminist, cultural and human ramifications of this new warfare. 

Her memory and knowledge, from a French perspective, also symbolizes the difficulties that others have in attempting to remember and to understand tragedies on foreign soil. 

When this introductory collage of words and images ends, the couple’s faces are shown, laughing in bed. They are individuals now, not just ideas. 

He asks, “What did Hiroshima mean to you in France?” 

She answers, “The end of war. I mean, completely.” She couldn’t believe they did it and that they succeeded. 

“The whole world rejoiced, and you rejoiced with it,” he says. 

Elle and Lui share passion and memory.

Their conversations, although heavy, are rooted in a desire and growing love for one another. The beginning conversation sounds uncomfortable since Lui is denying Elle’s memory and understanding, but they weave themselves together and her memories become lucid as the story unfolds. And Lui listens and falls deeper in love with her.

This prevailing theme of memory and understanding, and the limitations of both, are a product of a unique film production–Japanese and French companies and crews produced it, and the producers demanded that one star be French and the other Japanese. Even the production of the film highlights this partnership and what can be possible when cultures partner. Resnais and Duras, the creative team, show the great power of giving creative license to both the masculine and feminine.  
Elle is in Hiroshima acting in a film about “peace,” and when Lui finds her on set, they are filming actors protesting with signs about nuclear testing and photos from after Hiroshima. Much like the setting of Hiroshima itself, these scenes provide a backdrop to the individual love affair of a couple while reminding the audience of worldwide pain and tragedy.
Elle describes her memory of her past in Nevers (after Lui asks her about it). When she first asks why he asked about Nevers, Lui says he understands that she “was young, and didn’t belong to anyone in particular. I somehow understand that you began to be who you are today.”

She fell in love with a German soldier, and he was killed. She stayed by his cold body while the cathedral bells celebrated the liberation of Nevers (again, showing the complex perspectives of victory for some and tragedy for others). Her family is shunned since she was a “disgrace,” and her head is shaved. When she screams, she’s locked in the cellar until she becomes “reasonable,” and her mother sends her to Paris.

When she arrives in Paris, Hiroshima is “in all the papers.” She says, “Fourteen years have passed–I still remember the pain a little bit, but one day  I will no longer remember it. At all. Nothing.”

Lui asks if her husband knows this story, and she says no. “So I’m the only one?” he asks, and she replied that he is. He is elated, and embraces her. His possession of her memories signifies a deepening of their relationship and a new found trust. That, or he’s simply happy to have something of hers that only he possesses.
In an internal dialogue after leaving Lui (who begs her to stay), Elle speaks to her German lover, and says that she’s found another impossible love, and that she’s told her story. She is terrified of forgetting him.
Elle splashes water on her face and she is reborn after telling the story of her “youth” and “madness” in love.
When she and Lui walk the streets together and her thoughts dominate the narrative, scenery from France and Japan flash back and forth, confusing time and place. Elle says, “I meet you. I remember you. This city was tailor-made for love. You fit my body like a glove. Who are you? You’re destroying me. I was hungry. Hungry for infidelity, for adultery, for lies and for death. I always have been. I had no doubt you’d cross my path one day…”
She is attracted to and comforted by Lui, but her journey is much more introspective. He continuously chases after her, but she knows that “staying is more impossible than leaving.”
Her climactic thought is “Silly little girl who died of love in Nevers–I relinquish you into oblivion.”
She doesn’t really, though, nor should she.
They visit a cafe late at night (Casablanca, a clear nod to another film of “impossible love”), and the sun  begins to rise overhead. Lui follows Elle back to her hotel room. She cries, “I’ll forget you! I’m forgetting you already!” This is a threat and a mournful realization all at once. She says, slowly, “Hiroshima,” and he covers her mouth. “Hiroshima,” she repeats. “That’s your name.
“Yes, that’s my name,” he says. “And your name is Nevers. Nevers in France.”
The sweeping narrative begins with discussion of place, of warfare and mass casualties narrows in on a couple, and a woman’s struggle with remembering, forgetting and mourning her past. At the end, they are again representative of their places in the world, and a complex, difficult history.
Hiroshima mon amour, as a cornerstone film in the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s and 1960s, offers us no answers or prescriptions for life. Instead, we are left aching–both for the “impossible” romance and the pain and emptiness of modern war.
The beginning of the film inundates us with images from after the bomb. As we drift farther into the narrative and farther away from those horrifying images, we forget what we saw. We forget the horrors. Hiroshima mon amour forces us to reflect on the power of memory, and more so, the power of forgetting.
Throughout the film, the relationship between the masculine and the feminine, remembering and forgetting and dealing with war from different perspectives tugs and pulls at Elle and Lui and at the audience. At the end, the impossible is made penetrable by accepting and absorbing these complex relationships all at once.

—–

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. 

Foreign Film Week: ‘The World is Ours,’ A Feminist Film

Guest post written by Eugenia Andino Lucas. 

[Original post en Español follows English version.]
Last summer, a Spanish film had a modest success at the cinema: El Mundo es Nuestro (The World Is Ours), directed by Alfonso Sánchez, starring himself and Alberto López. The origin of this film is in a series of shorts released on Youtube, produced in the simplest way and showing the solid education in independent theater of the performers; one fixed camera and two guys, sitting in iconic places of Seville, chatting about this and that and nothing in particular. The one thing setting them apart from regular stand up comedy was that in each of the first three shorts, the two friends were characterized as a local stereotype: in “This isn’t what it used to be,” canis (somewhere between working-class and petty criminals), 
The first of the original shorts (unsubtitled Spanish).
That’s the way it is stars upper-class, conservative men with a very distinct set of local idiosyncrasies, and It was different, back then has hippies, for lack of a better word (in a different country or year they would have been hipsters: guys of middle-class origin with a snobbish mix of liberal values). As I write, the original video has more than 1,268,000 Youtube views and the second one, more than 2,625,000. The canis and the posh guys appeared in different sequels, and after some intensive and creative crowdfunding, Alfonso Sánchez directed his film, with the original petty criminals, Culebra and Cabeza, as protagonists. 
The World Is Ours
The plot is not the most original in the world: Seville’s favorite crooks plan a bank robbery that goes wrong when a mysterious third man takes the entire bank office hostage, including them, and demands to appear on TV to give a very important message. As a fan of the original shorts, I went to see the film. And at the box office, I took a look at what other options the multiplex was giving:
  • A woman wants to kill another one because she’s younger and prettier.
  • Two men save the world from the evil plans of another man.
  • A prison mutiny. It’s a man’s prison and there is one woman as hostage. Naturally.
  • A war flick with big macho guys.
  • A handful of brats give a party.
  • If he stalks you, it means he loves you.
  • Girl is infatuated with guy who still remembers his ex. Said ex is baaaaaad and meeeeeeean.
And The World is Ours, a film that I was looking forward to, but which didn’t seem very promising from a feminist perspective. In fact, I assumed the film worked on the premise that I don’t exist, because in the Youtube videos, women are entirely absent, as characters and even as mentions. Luckily, I was wrong. If feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings, The World is Ours is a wonderfully feminist film. 
When was the last time that you saw a film that didn’t just pass the Bechdel test, but also had female characters that were not victims of sexual violence? How many films do you remember in which some of those female characters were simultaneously kind and clever? How many films with supporting female characters that aren’t the hero’s girlfriend? 
A woman enjoying lunch. It is not a major plot point.
In The World is Ours, you can find almost anything you could wish in a comedy portrait of women in Southern Spain. First of all, quantity: male and female roles with dialogue are in a 13:8 proportion. Not bad!
Characterizations show a bit of everything: people are kind or disgusting, clever, naive, or stupid. People, men and women, do their jobs with varying levels of honesty and efficiency. The problems shown are human, and often universal. Consider these; some of them feel particularly local to me, but anyone could relate:
  • An exploited intern.
  • Unemployed, on the dole, with bits of illegal work on the side (think British social comedy).
  • Working for two because your partner is unemployed. Being partly proud and partly resentful of your head-of-the-family position.
  • Queer and gradually out of the closet.
  • A wormy, servile coward; bully to the weak.
  • A good, rational professional adjusting badly after a transfer at work. It’s not really their fault. A bit like in Northern Exposure.
  • Friendship from the cradle, passionate and unconditional.
  • Someone whose grey, boring job is embittering every aspect of their lives.
Five hostages.
Can you guess the sex of any of the characters from my descriptions? You can’t? That’s the best test of this film’s feminism: if we took all of them and switched, it would work just as well.
It’s not perfect, but it’s so enjoyable that I don’t care. In the words of my husband, who saw the film with me and doesn’t have any gender studies on his CV, “it’s a film with real women, who are human.” Thanks, Alfonso Sánchez, and the rest of the team.
Culebra and Cabeza.

El Mundo es Nuestro, esa película feminista.

Estaba yo en la puerta del cine para entrar a ver El Mundo es Nuestro y me fijé en lo que había en la cartelera. Os doy un resumen rapidito:
  • Una mujer quiere matar a otra porque es más guapa.
  • Dos hombres salvan el mundo del plan de otro hombre.
  • Un motín en una cárcel. De hombres. Con una mujer de rehén, claro.
  • Una de guerra con soldados machotes.
  • Unos niñatos dan una fiesta.
  • Si te acosa es que te quiere.
  • Chica pierde el culo por un muchacho que todavía se acuerda de su ex. La ex es mala y tontita.
Y El Mundo es Nuestro, una película que no prometía mucho como reflejo de que yo existo. Porque en los vídeos on Youtube de mundoficción las mujeres están ausentes, como personajes o como menciones. Afortunadamente, me equivocaba. Si el feminismo es creer que las mujeres somos seres humanos, El Mundo es Nuestro es una película maravillosamente feminista.
¿Cuándo fue la última vez que viste una película con más de dos personajes femeninos, ninguna de las cuales era víctima de violación, ni de maltrato doméstico? ¿Cuántas en la que algunas de esas mismas mujeres son listas y buenas personas a la vez? ¿Cuántas en las que los personajes femeninos son algo más que la novia del protagonista?
Pues El Mundo es Nuestro tiene casi todo lo que se podría desear en un retrato cómico de las mujeres en España. Para empezar, la cantidad: los personajes masculinos y femeninos con diálogo están en la bonita proporción de 13 a 8. No está mal.
Sobre sus caracterizaciones, entre ellos y ellas hay de todo: gente indeseable y encantadora, gente lista y tonta, gente que hace su trabajo con dosis variables de ética y de eficacia. Los problemas son humanos, y universales: ser un becario explotado. Estar en paro. Trabajar por dos porque quien está en paro es tu pareja. Salir del armario. Ser un pelotillero cobarde y miserable. Sentirte fuera de lugar en una cultura ajena, después de un traslado por motivos de trabajo. ¿A que no adivinas cuáles de estas situaciones corresponden a un hombre o a una mujer en la película? Ese es el mejor test: con todos los sexos cambiados, la película funcionaría igual de bien.
No es perfecta, pero se disfruta tanto que da igual. En palabras de quien me acompañó al cine, “una película con mujeres de verdad, que son personas”. Gracias, Alfonso Sánchez, y a todos los demás enteristas.
Eugenia Andino Lucas is a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in Spain. She’s also working on a PhD on Gender Violence in the novels of Charles Dickens. You can follow her on twitter: @laguiri and on her blog: eugeniaandino.bachpress.org.

Foreign Film Week: ‘War Witch’: Finally, a Movie About Africa Without the Cute White Movie Star

Guest post written by Atima Omara-Alwala.
So if something happens somewhere in Africa, and a white person is not there, do people hear it? well, according to Hollywood at least, no. There is an obsessive need in Western films to legitimize the African story and life through the existence of a major white character in the movie like The Last King of Scotland with James McAvoy or Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio, or even the The Constant Gardener with Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes. These movies attempt to chronicle the horror of civil war or corruption that leads to major conflict in African nations. As the daughter of African immigrants who both lived their lives in a war torn country, I am grateful these stories are even being told but it’s a shame that the existence of attractive white movie stars is necessary to tell the story. Even more the reason, War Witch pleasantly surprised me. War Witch is a story from the perspective of one young African girl’s journey to reclaim her life in the face of war and sexual assault.
Primarily filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, War Witch is a 2012 Canadian drama film written and directed by Kim Nguyen. According to Canadian news The Globe & the Mail, Nguyen himself part Vietnamese and French was inspired by a Burmese story he read about child soldiers. Nguyen’s inspiration became War Witch. The story of a 12 year old Komona (Rachel Mwanza) who lives in a rural village in Africa when civil war in her country interrupts her childhood. Rebel forces invade her village, in a very painful scene, Komona’s induction into warfare is choosing between shooting her own parents (by the orders of the rebel commander) or watching them die a painful death at the hands of a machete. The scene is already heart wrenching but it becomes even more so when her parents say to her soothingly, “it’s okay” if she shoots them. After she kills them, she is taken from the only home she’s ever known to become one of rebel forces many child soldiers. 
The film walks you through what life is life as a child soldier with rebel forces: waging guerilla warfare at any given moment, sleeping in the woods, eating rations. Komona adjusts to her new existence with a depressed and stunned silence. A fellow child soldier and albino boy named Magicien (Serge Kanyinda) befriends her and occasionally sneaks her food through their journey.
Aided by “magic milk” or a hallucinogen from a tree sap, that Magician finds for his fellow child soldiers to drink. Komona begins to see her parents and the ghosts of others killed by rebel forces who tell her how to avoid surprise attacks. She becomes so good at predicting surprise attacks she becomes the prized “war witch” to the rebel forces and particularly the “Great Tiger” the leader of the rebel forces played by (Mizinga Mwinga). In an interesting twist, on an attack gone awry one day, Magician convinces Komona to leave the rebel forces with him, confessing his love for her and desire to marry her.

What I love is despite what life has thrown at her Komona is a determined girl. While clearly drawn to Magicien, she refuses to marry him unless he can find a white rooster, which in her culture her father said, “when a man can find a white rooster, he can marry you”. Probably between her desperation to cling to family traditions, and to set some standards for herself she sends Magicien on what is a hilarious rooster chase (and a much needed lull from the horrors of war). Even though she finally consents, to marrying him without the white rooster (as he has become family to her while on the run), Magicien remains determined to find a white rooster, to prove he is worthy of her, which he does.

 Afterwards, Komona and Magicien marry and they arrive at Magicien’s Uncle’s home. Magicien’s Uncle is called “Boucher” which is French for “butcher”. Boucher (Ralph Prosper) cuts meat for a living. It is learned the Boucher watched his entire family being butchered by a machete. Boucher’s trauma from watching his family cut to pieces is so strong he needs an empty pail next to him while he cuts animal meat, so he can vomit in pail due to the memories. This shared trauma bonds him and Magicien and Komona together like a family. And for a time, Komona is happy.

An abrupt turn of tragic events places Komona back in the hands of rebel forces and this time becomes the sex slave of the rebel commander. Komona is barely able to take it upon learning she’s pregnant as a result of continuous rape and exacts an excruciating painful revenge on her assaulter.
The rest of the movie focuses on her life post her second escape from the rebel forces. She returns to stay with Magicien’s Uncle, Boucher. Like Boucher she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. But they live in a world where rape is not even discussed (let along counseling services provided), and post-traumatic stress disorder is even less understood, Komona wrestles emotionally for peace. She sees a priestess to atone for her murders of countless people including her parents. The ghosts of her parents still haunt her dreams and she has regular nightmares of being attacked. And on top of everything else, she grapples with the expected anger and horror of being pregnant by her rapist. This is a lot to deal with for a woman of any age let along a young girl like Komona.

Why do I love this movie? It is a Western film of a civil war in an African nation told through the eyes of not just the Africans living through it, but through an African girl living the trauma and grappling with resolution for herself. Director Kim Nguyen came up against challenges in the film industry because of this take. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Nguyen said: “I had brutal answers that would tell me a Black main actor doesn’t sell.” This makes it even more outstanding that War Witch not only swept, Jutra, the Quebec film awards but was a contender for the Golden Bear (equivalent of Best Film) at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2012. For her work, Rachel Mwanza won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin festival and Best Actress at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. War Witch also received the much coveted Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film of 2012.
It is amazing that for such an award-winning film, War Witch is not legitimized through the presence of a white European spectator (like in all the previously aforementioned Western films) who observes the tragedy and participates in what can only be called self-flagellation about why they can’t be a better “Great White Hope” for the poor Africans.
Another reason I love this movie? The men in Komona’s life do no legitimize her either. It is Komona’s journey alone, on her own defined terms, to redefine her life when for so long it was defined by her captors and everyone around her. It is also her journey to womanhood. It is interesting how Komona reaches some peace finally at the end of the movie, but the viewer is secure in knowing that it is her resolution and no one else’s.

———-
Atima Omara-Alwala is a political strategist and activist of 10 years who has served as staff on 8 federal and local political campaigns and other progressive causes. Atima’s work has had a particular focus on women’s political empowerment & leadership, reproductive justice, health care, communities of color and how gender and race is reflected in pop culture. Her writings on the topics have also been featured at Ms. Magazine, Women’s Enews, and RH Reality Check.

Foreign Film Week: Realistic Depictions of Women and Female Friendship in ‘Muriel’s Wedding’

Guest post written by Libby White.
The first time I saw Muriel’s Wedding, I went in expecting a Cinderella-esque romantic comedy about an awkward girl who transforms her life into one filled with success and romance. I was definitely ready to indulge in your standard ‘feel-good chick-flick.’ Two hours later, as I sat surrounded by a pile of tissues, having cried myself into a near comatose state, I realized that Muriel’s Wedding has one of the most deceptive posters ever.
The film starts at a wedding in the small Australian town of Porpoise Spit, where we are introduced to the film’s titular character, Muriel Heslop. The wedding day is filled with disasters for Muriel: She catches the bridal bouquet and is forced to give it to another woman; she discovers the groom and the bride’s best friend fooling around; and is accused of having stolen from a local store.
As Muriel is carted home by the police, we see a glimpse of her highly dysfunctional family life. Ruled over by their tyrannical politician father, the Heslop children are a collection of deadbeats and slackers. Muriel herself hasn’t worked in over two years, and continues to live out of her childhood bedroom. Their mother, Betty Heslop, is little more than a slave to the family’s whims, and has visibly checked out from her surroundings. Attempts to communicate with her take several tries, and her brief moments of pleasure are quickly squashed by her husband.
It soon becomes apparent that Muriel’s thieving is a common occurrence, as her father handles the police with relative ease, and is able to use his power to keep them from pressing charges. Muriel waits calmly in her room as he dances the familiar steps with the officers, only to be verbally attacked in front of her father’s business guests and family later that evening. Bill Heslop seems to have no trouble belittling his family publicly, calling each of them “useless” repeatedly before being interrupted by a “surprise” visit from his obvious mistress, (an event which occurs with alarming frequency.) The night only gets worse from there, as Muriel’s so called “friends” accidentally let slip that they were going on holiday without her. The situation snowballs, leading the four women to kick Muriel out of their group.
Under the guise of travelling for a job, Muriel follows the women to an island resort, still believing that she can convince them to take her back. There, Muriel runs into an old high school classmate, Rhonda. The two women spend the rest of the vacation together, and instantly become best friends. They dance to ABBA together, they move to Sydney together, and generally bring out the best in one another. Rhonda’s support and independence also help Muriel to break out of her shell and begin living life the way she has always dreamt it. Eventually, Muriel finds herself a job at a local video store, and is asked out by a shy customer. The two date briefly, and share one of the movie’s most unforgettable and hilarious scenes when they attempt to be intimate.
Unfortunately, the good times don’t last, and Muriel is dealt a series of harsh blows by reality. With Rhonda becoming paralyzed from a spinal tumor, and Muriel’s lies becoming exposed; Muriel’s dream life begins to unravel. In a desperate attempt to break her father’s hold on her and live her dream, Muriel agrees to marry an attractive South African athlete. The man, David Van Arkle, let’s his displeasure about the arrangement be well-known, but needs to marry in order to stay in the country. When their wedding day rolls around, David looks as if he’s going to be sick. Muriel is completely oblivious however, basking in the attention of the media and her former friends. So oblivious in fact, that Muriel completely leaves out her mother from the event. In a tear-inducing scene, Betty rushes to the wedding, glowing with pride, only to have Muriel walk right past her without noticing. Still holding her daughter’s wedding gift in hand, Betty can’t help but cry as the guests dissipate.
When Muriel arrives at her new home with her husband, the fantasy of the day fades, and David accuses her of being nothing more than a gold digger. He divides their lives in half, and sends Muriel to her room alone. Soon after, Muriel receives a call from her sister, informing her that their mother has died.
Rushing home for the funeral, the house is just as Muriel left it. Her siblings laze about the living room; their father calculating the effect of Betty’s death on his political campaign. One sister is truly upset though, and confides in Muriel that their mother died of an overdose of sleeping pills. Their father, fearing his image, hid all evidence of her suicide. It is then that Muriel discovers what occurred on her wedding day, and realizes how her lies had helped to destroy her mother.
David appears at the funeral, sympathetic to his wife’s pain. The two return home together and make love, only to have Muriel ask for a divorce in the morning. She admits that her life has become a lie, and that she never felt anything for David. He agrees, and the two part ways.
In the last scene of the film, Muriel returns to Porpoise Spit, where Rhonda has had to return to her mother’s care. Forced to endure the pity of her former enemies, Muriel’s apology is readily accepted, and the two escape back to Sydney together.
And though I may have gone in expecting Hollywood’s attempt at pigeon-holing Muriel’s Wedding as a rom-com, I still came out loving this film. It takes a brutally honest look at the ripple effect of emotional abuse throughout a family, and delivers all too real characters who you can’t help but become emotionally invested in. The women of the film in particular are wonderfully refreshing, led by the endearing Toni Collette. Her portrayal of Muriel is definitely an unforgettable one. Whether it be her natural, un- glamourized looks and figure, or her very human flaws, the character of Muriel feels intensely genuine. While Hollywood films often use clumsiness to disguise the unachievable-ness of its movie’s heroines, Muriel’s Wedding instead prefers to tell it like it is. Everyone’s choices lead to consequences, and the end of the film does not mean the end to their problems.
The Muriel we are presented with in the beginning of the film; a girl who is desperate for attention, mildly delusional, and devoid of self-respect; is almost meant to be underestimated. We are shown all her worst qualities in a matter of minutes, and lead to pity her circumstances. As the movie progresses and Muriel grows, she becomes more outgoing and self-sufficient, but her lies remain. When her father threatens her new lifestyle, Muriel initially responds by entreating further into her fantasies, only to have them come crashing down upon her. Once she confesses to David and finally begins to admit the truth, we come to realize just how much Muriel has grown. Now confident and self-aware, she is able to stand up to her father’s demands and fearlessly return to her old life.
The friendship between Muriel and Rhonda is one filled with ups and downs, but is still the most genuine relationship in the film. While Rhonda becomes repeatedly frustrated with Muriel’s lies, the two are ultimately accepting of one another, and deeply loyal. Rhonda herself is a free spirit who speaks her mind and does as she pleases. She gleefully stands up to Muriel’s friends, and later takes home two men at once. Even when she receives her diagnosis, Rhonda remains determined to be independent. While she is eventually forced back into her mother’s home, she doesn’t stay long; returning to Sydney with Muriel in a matter of weeks. Rhonda’s fearless embrace of her life and choices, compared with Muriel’s sweetness and hope, make the two a perfectly balanced pair.
However, the women Muriel call her friends are the more stereotypical “mean girls.” They are portrayed as vapid, conniving, promiscuous, and cruel. Even after repeated physical and verbal attacks, Muriel invites them to be bridesmaids at her wedding, if only to show off her success at finding a famous and handsome husband. But even by the film’s end, their stunted growth remains, leaving them as flattened villains.
Muriel’s mother, Betty, is the true reason that this film breaks my heart. Having witnessed a near identical situation in my grandmother’s life, the inclusion of her storyline is especially meaningful. At no point does the director show her any kindness; from her husband’s blatant affair, her children’s indolence, being accused of shoplifting, to Muriel’s own snubbing of her; Betty endured a terrible existence. Spoiled by the happy endings of American cinema, I had internally begged for a magical fix to her suffering; some kind of ‘hallelujah’ moment where we were assured everything would be alright.
When Betty eventually suffers an emotional break down and commits suicide, it is only Muriel and her sister who show any concern whatsoever. The other siblings are completely unaffected; the youngest girl gossiping on the phone with her friends the morning after her mother’s death. Bill Heslop, who selfishly tries to cover up his wife’s cause of death and his part in causing it, uses the sympathy of the press to further his career.
Betty’s story is one that never allows the viewer any release. Instead, it speaks of a harsh reality where there is no sudden intervention of fate, moments of enlightenment, or redeemable villains. We never get to see Bill Heslop punished for his cruelty, or Betty rewarded for her love for her children. And it is because of such that I think Betty Heslop is a fantastic female character. While she may not be the empowered woman who takes back her life from an abusive husband, she is a real woman, with real emotions, and a painfully real situation.
In the end, whether you’re interested in a good laugh, cry, or simply want to watch wonderful film, I highly recommend Muriel’s Wedding to you. Its realistic portrayal of women and their emotional experiences make it a gem in anyone’s collection.
———- 
Libby White is a self-proclaimed cinephile and Volunteer Firefighter who currently works as an Armed Guard for Nissan’s headquarters in Tennessee.

Foreign Film Week: BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

The 27th BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival: 14 – 24 March 2013
From the press release:

The 27th BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (LLGFF) is back at BFI Southbank London with a festival of 11 days and a new look programme that’s packed full of films, special guests, events, workshops, and music. 

[…] 

There are over 100 titles in the festival offering a dizzying variety of films reflecting the LGBT community around the world.

Here are a sampling of films playing.

Facing Mirrors
Aynehaye Rooberoo
Director: Negar Azarbayjani
Producer: Fereshteh Taerpoor
Screenwriter: Negar Azarbayjani, Fereshteh Taerpoor
With Shayesteh Irani, Ghazal Shakeri
Iran-Germany 2011
102 min
Sales: The Film Collaborative
Rana, a conservative woman with traditional values, is secretly working as a taxi driver (driving is taboo for women of her class) in Tehran to support her family while her husband is in a debtors’ prison. Rebel with a cause, wealthy Edi/Adineh, is desperately trying to get a passport in order to return to Germany to have gender reassignment surgery whilst avoiding an angry father wanting to marry his daughter off as soon as possible. The State may sanction gender reassignment in Iran but that’s not to say it’s accepted in general society. As Edi’s father says, ‘I wish she was blind, dead, handicapped but not disgraced.’ Fate brings Rana and Edi together and an unlikely friendship develops, transcending social class and ethical differences. Facing Mirrors is a bold, exciting, seat-of-the-pants ride through contemporary Iran.

Mosquita y Mari (2012)

Mosquita y Mari

Director-Screenwriter: Aurora Guerrero
Producer: Chad Burris
With Fenessa Pineda, Venecia Troncoso, Laura Patalano
USA 2012
85 min
Sales: The Film Collaborative
Mosquita y Mari is a gorgeously realised and tender coming-of-age story set in the Chicana neighbourhood of Huntington Park, Los Angeles. Fifteen-year-old Yolanda is a sweet-natured only child who gains straight As and stays out of trouble until she has her head turned by Mari – a tough, cool girl who moves in across the road. Mari is the eldest daughter in a single parent, undocumented family struggling to make ends meet. She is at first uninterested in being friends with her neighbour, but an incident at school pushes the pair increasingly together – sharing homework, music and secret spaces and an intense connection develops between the two girls. Guerrero’s debut feature is assured and subtle, confidently creating a teenage world of awkward affection, lingering gazes and new desires.
Je, tu, il, elle
Director-Producer: Chantal Akerman
Screenwriter: Chantal Akerman, Eric De Kuyper, Paul Paquay
With Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire Wauthion
France-Belgium 1976
85 min
Akerman’s first feature includes one of the earliest depictions of lesbian sex in cinema but it has rarely been seen at queer film festivals. We are excited to be screening this still startling and now deeply influential work as part of our strand considering Akerman’s impact on queer cinema. The film focuses on a woman who remains in her empty room for over a month narrating her minimal actions via a disjointed voiceover. Eventually she travels with a trucker who tells her about his life and arrives at the home of a woman who tries to send her away but then feeds her before they make love.

Lesbiana: A Parallel Revolution (2012)

Lesbiana: A Parallel Revolution

Lesbiana: Une révolution parallèle
Director-Screenwriter: Myriam Fougère
Producers: Pauline Voisard and Myriam Fougère
With Alix Dobkin, Crow Cohen, Imani Rashid
Canada 2012
63 min
Sales: Groupe Intervention Video
Immensely enjoyable documentary following key players in the North American East Coast feminist movement from the 1970s to mid 1990s. Fougère meets lesbian writers, philosophers, activists and musicians who took part in and helped create the second wave feminist community and culture that focussed on women-only spaces in places like Montreal, New York and of course the Michigan Women’s Festival. Comprised of archival footage, photographs and inspiring interviews with the women involved – many in their seventies and eighties now, but still sporting some pretty great dungarees and labryses – the film considers the legacy of this type of sisterhood and lesbian identity in a celebratory but thoughtful, and sometimes critical way. This is an important piece of herstory for all feminists.

She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column
Director: Kevin Hegge
Producer: Kelly Jenkins
Screenwriters: Kevin Hegge, Oliver Husain
With G.B. Jones, Bruce LaBruce, Kathleen Hanna, Caroline Azar
Canada-Germany-USA 2012
64 min
Sales: VTape
Hegge’s documentary about the groundbreaking queer feminist all-female art band Fifth Column – who were at the centre of Toronto’s influential Queercore scene in the 1980-90s – explores the band’s impressive legacy and considers why you might not have heard of them. Featuring interviews with Bruce LaBruce, Vaginal Davis and Kathleen Hanna mixed with rare archival photos, footage of the band performing live and of course new interviews with the key members, Hegge builds an exciting picture of visionary punks living outside of the system in crumbling buildings – making art, music, film and starting fanzine wars.

Foreign Film Week: Sexism in Three of Bollywood’s Most Popular Films

Guest post written by Katherine Filaseta.
It is no secret that India has problems when it comes to the status of women. Everyone heard about the gang rape in Delhi in December 2012; it was broadcast in America so much that some people didn’t even know about the events in Steubenville, but knew all about India. There is a common perception in America these days that women in India are seen as “sub-human” by all of Indian culture, and this is entirely false. However, it is true that I do not feel safe being a woman and walking down the streets of India alone, and this is a problem. 
I adore Bollywood; it allows me to watch an entire generation evolve on the silver screen, no matter what country I’m currently living in. I even love the fact that some Bollywood love stories are more romantic than the sappiest fairytales. However, some of these love stories come with the price of reinforcing terrible patriarchal standards – and any story that makes sexual harassment appear commonplace and “okay” isn’t romantic, no matter how charismatic the leading man is. 
Which Bollywood films become hits and which become flops can be indicative of which values Indian society places the most importance on. Perhaps if the right films are successful, the next time I go to India I’ll feel safe walking down the street alone – maybe even at night. Safety for women doesn’t have to be some elusive fantasy, and Bollywood can help us create this change. 
Terrible Films That Everyone Loves 
There are a lot of films in India which have been wildly successful, but which have also been detrimental for the feminist agenda in India. All of the films that follow are in this category. These three films together encompass all three major Bollywood stars and are on the must-watch list for anyone interested in Bollywood. I am also convinced that every single one of these films has played a role in shaping the way Indian society thinks, making it more difficult for women to live safely and comfortably in India. 
Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, 1995 

To give you an idea of just how wildly successful DDLJ is: it has been running in some theaters for 900 weeks straight as of January 11, 2013. People love this film. Shah Rukh Khan plays Raj, a charming douchebag; Kajol plays opposite him as Simran and is stunning and loveable as usual. It is one of the first films to address the problems that affect NRI’s (Non-Resident Indian, or Indians living outside of India), as well as the conflict of “tradition vs modern” faced by Indians in the 1990s as everyone tried to reconcile their family’s values and traditions with the growing influence of Western culture – and it does an amazing job portraying each. 
What it also does, though, is help to solidify a patriarchal standard. This film tells people, through the love story of Raj and Simran, that with enough persistence, harassment, and stalking, a man can convince any girl to fall in love with him. A girl is a prize to be won, and sexual harassment is the way to win her. Not only that, but the ultimate way to show respect for a woman is by refusing to marry her until her father literally hands her over to you – solidifying the female’s complete lack of choice in the scenario. 
(Spoilers follow the images) 
How Simran feels about Raj before intermission
How Simran feels about Raj after intermission

Raj spends the entire first half of the film harassing Simran non-stop throughout Europe. They are trapped together in the most unfortunate of circumstances, but Simran remains wonderfully strong. Soon, however, Raj professes his love for Simran – and she, apparently suffering from some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, returns his love. However, Simran and Raj can’t be together; Simran has already promised to follow through with a marriage her parents have arranged for her back in India. 

Raj follows Simran to India, but they can’t just run off together. Simran has been won and is willing to leave her family behind forever to spend her life with Raj, but unfortunately for her Raj still has another challenge to complete before he can run off with his prize. Simran is still owned by her father, and Raj is too decent to steal an object from another man. He has to convince Simran’s father to give her to him, and so commences the second half of the film. Of course it turns out well for the couple, as after and hour and a half of convincing and fifteen minutes of dramatic tension, Simran’s father literally allows her leave his hands and run into Raj’s. 
Every single line used by Raj in his harassment of Simran over the course of this film has also been used on me in India. By Raj succeeding in marrying Simran, her discomfort at his harassment is transformed into simply a girl playing “hard to get”. DDLJ has helped shape my coarse response to similar harassment into nothing more than encouragement for men to try harder. 
Aamir Khan in Lagaan

Lagaan, 2006 

Lagaan is only the third film out of India to be nominated for an Oscar. It didn’t win, but it put India on the map for the first time since the 1980’s as a place where legitimate films are made. It is set during the British Raj, where an insufferable British officer is abusing his power over the local villagers by imposing a land tax they can’t afford to pay. They end up placing a bet over a cricket match: If the villagers, with a strong-headed patriot named Bhuvan at the lead, can learn the game and defeat the British officers, they will not have to pay the tax. It is a very well-made film starring Aamir Khan, who is known in India for fighting for social change across the country. 
There are a lot of good things about the film, and it deserves most of the positive attention it has garnered. However, there is a major problem with the film as well: there are only two female characters, and both of them serve the sole purpose of fawning over the male lead. Elizabeth Russell is a very kind British woman who sneaks out of her house to teach the villagers the game of cricket, despite the language barrier and opposition from her family. Essentially, the instant she meets Bhuvan, she forgets her greater purpose of helping the fight against injustice and falls head over heels for him. She even professes her love for him, but of course Bhuvan can’t speak English so doesn’t understand what she is saying. Elizabeth’s opposition is Gauri, a village girl who is also in love with Bhuvan, but who has never told him. She has, however, shown her love through making him rotis, as any good Indian wife should. (Spoiler alert ahead!) In the end, Bhuvan marries Gauri and Elizabeth moves back to England to be single for the rest of her life. 
Elizabeth Russell singing about how much she loves Bhuvan

Gauri singing about how much she loves Bhuvan

In a typical move of exoticizing the other, there is a common stereotype in India of white or “Westernized” women being sexual to the point that they have already given their consent for anything a man might want to do to them. We did the same to them by popularizing and exaggerating the kama sutra, so you can’t blame them too much – but by creating Elizabeth Russell, this stereotype is only being reinforced. White women clearly all come to India for the sole purpose of falling in lust with men they can’t even communicate with, but Indian women shouldn’t worry – men will always marry the proper Indian girl who makes delicious rotis in the end. 

Salman Khan in Dabangg

Dabangg, 2010 
I could have easily and accurately instead said “every movie starring Salman Khan in the past few years,” but Dabangg was the beginning of the movement. I was in India when Dabangg came out, and the excitement over Salman Khan’s comeback film was pervasive and insane. This is a ridiculous film starring a man who epitomizes a certain standard of masculinity: Chulbul Pandey has bulging muscles, a propensity for fighting, and an ability to woo girls by harassing them until they fall in love with them (a la DDLJ). Chulbul Pandey’s signature dance move is the hip thrust, and he uses it every chance he can get. 
If Dabangg did anything right, it was play to Salman Khan’s strengths. This is a man who has gotten away with killing a man while driving drunk, and who has a restraining order placed against him by his ex-girlfriend whom he used to physically abuse. He was the first Bollywood star to really “bulk up,” which has helped him win over a few of the most lusted-after Bollywood starlets. Chulbul Pandey has testosterone flowing in every inch of his body, and Salman can play this character perfectly. 
There are essentially two females in this movie: the one Chulbul woos by harassing her until she feels she has no choice but to marry him, and an item dancer – a girl whose sole purpose is to appear in one song wearing close to nothing while a bunch of drunk men (Chulbul included) fawn over her oozing female sexuality. Other Salman Khan films since, including the Dabangg sequel, haven’t been any better. 
Mallika Sherawat dancing her item number, “Munni Badnaam Hui”

(For a well-written, feminist perspective on Dabangg 2, see Priya Joshi’s review for Digital Spy) 

Is There a Bright Side? 

For the most part, last year was a great year for Hindi films. February gave us Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, winning the feminist audience over with its ending, in which the central relationship is left to proceed on the girl’s terms. March gave us Kahaani, an amazingly well-made movie with a strong, central female character. In October, we were brought something amazing through English Vinglish: a female-directed film with a strong female lead, which beautifully addresses some of the issues middle-aged Indian women are facing both in India and abroad. Previously, the cut-off age for female leads in Bollywood has been around 30, so Sridevi’s starring role in this film in itself is an additional breakthrough on the feminist front. 
I haven’t watched anything promising yet in 2013, but given the success of more progressive films in 2012, we can remain optimistic. In Mera Naam Joker, there is a female character named Meena who pretends to be a man and carries a knife, which she pulls out at the tiniest threat to her safety – simply so she is able to live alone in Bombay. Even though this film is over 50 years old, I have spent a lot of time myself wondering if I could pull off what Meena did. The situation now isn’t much better, but it can be. We can control our own future as women in India, and Bollywood can help us – not just hold us back. 
Katherine Filaseta is a recent graduate of Washington University in Saint Louis whose life has somehow managed to become constantly split between the United States and India. She really likes Bollywood, education, feminism, zoos, and the performing arts. Follow her on twitter.

Foreign Film Week: Red, Blue, and Giallo: Dario Argento’s "Suspiria"

Written by Max Thornton.
I started getting into film when I was a teenager. Growing up with daily power cuts, both scheduled and unscheduled, is not conducive to childhood as a cinephile, and anyway my parents did not consider film a “real” art like literature or music – I can vividly remember being forced, at age seven, to quit Video Club and join Chess Club instead, because my mother did not think that sitting around watching videos constituted a worthwhile extracurricular.
(I am still breathtakingly terrible at chess.)
So, partly as the cultivation of an indoor hobby in response to the unpleasant British climate, and partly as the world’s meagerest teenage rebellion, I started watching films. In particular, I sought out horror films, thanks to the friendly proprietor of our local video rental store (now sadly gone the way of all such places in the Netflix age), who would happily rent the bloodiest, goriest, most revolting 18-ratedmovies to an obviously-14-year-old me, always with a cheery, “Enjoy!”
Most of these.
 
I was neither a discerning nor an educated viewer, but even so I quickly cottoned on to the fact that certain Italian directors had produced some above-average horror flicks in the 1970s, characterized by a cavalier attitude toward nudity, pervasive Catholic imagery, and lashings of gore. Ignorant of the term giallo, I proceeded to dub this subgenre “spag-horror,” which isn’t actually an awful name for it.
As my initiation into the worlds of sex and violence, many European horror films of the 1970s no doubt occupy a Freudian subspace of my psyche. Probably the Ur-example of this genre and its strange, ambivalent attitude toward women and sexuality is Dario Argento’s 1977 meisterwerk, Suspiria.
From its kickass score by prog-rockers Goblin to its borderline incomprehensible plot, I love damn near everything about Suspiria. For starters, it’s set in a ballet school, which is a direct line to my heart; and it features Udo Kier (UDO! KIER!); plus, it’s a strikingly female-dominated story. Argento says of the film: “there are only three men in it: one is blind, one can’t speak and the other is gay. It’s the women who have the power.” Which is such a problematic statement on so many levels, but let’s just focus on the undeniable fact that the film is mostly about women.
The film opens with American dancer Suzy Banyon (played by a young Jessica Harper – did you know she writes children’s books and has a cookery blog now??) arriving at a German airport on a rainy night. Pretty much the first thing we see is her repeated attempts to hail a taxi; her young face, rain- and wind-swept above the virginal whites of her clothes, expresses a vulnerability that will recur throughout the movie. Her big, frightened eyes peer out of the taxi at the gushing storm-drains, the phallic tree-trunks in the spooky woods, the bright red facade of the ballet school (on the subtly named Escher Strasse). Untoward goings-on, shockingly enough, are underfoot at the school, and Suzy soon finds herself completely out of her depth as things get steadily creepier.

Suzy and Sara, swimming.
What’s particularly interesting about Suspiria, especially in relation to the giallo genre as a whole, is its lack of nudity or overt sexuality. There’s a pretty good reason for this, as Argento explains:
To begin with, I imagined the story set in a children’s school, not of teens. I thought that it could be interesting that the school was for very young girls, eight, ten years old. This was the first version. The distributor strongly opposed this choice, and the film was made also with American money, from Fox, and they were against that too. So I changed the script and raised the girl’s age, but I kept a sort of childish attitude, so the characters behaved like children. The decor too… I used little tricks, for example the doors have the handles not at a normal height, but at face level, the height at which a child of 8 years old would find the handle. It gives the impression of dealing with children, even though they have adult bodies.
I don’t think it’s reading too much into the film to find some Freudian undertones in the whites and reds, in the repeated motif of water, in the pivotal role of irises. There is a strong fairy-tale quality to the film’s artifices, its primary colors, scenes awash in blue or red; the story of the young girl entering a world of danger and threat carries echoes of Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White – Bruno Bettelheim would surely have something to say about that.
Make no mistake, this is a pretty violent movie. There are some quite fantastically grotesque murders. Within the first fifteen minutes, we see a still-beating heart stabbed and a woman’s face split in two by plate glass. Throughout, the lily-white garments of the murdered women are streaked and splattered with bright red blood. We also get a revolting maggot infestation, some magnificently scary chase scenes, and a truly bonkers climactic sequence.
Red, the color of a very murdered woman.
And yet Suzy retains a sense of childlike innocence and vulnerability throughout, relating to her friends and teachers like the little girl she was originally written to be. It’s a very weird juxtaposition, and I think it crystallizes the strange combination of female empowerment and ingrained misogyny that characterizes classic European horror. What, in the end, are we to make of stories where women are both the brutally murdered corpses and the proactive investigators of the mystery; both the pure childlike heroine and the monstrous villain; both desexed and penetrated by sharp objects; both agents and victims?
It speaks volumes to the general lack of such female-dominated stories in our broader culture that I even find myself asking this question.
———-
Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Foreign Film Week: Gender, Family and Globalization in ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’

Chef Chu and his “middle daughter” Jia-Chien in Eat Drink Man Woman

Guest post written by Emily Contois. A version of this post previously appeared at her blog.
In Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), director and co-writer Ang Lee expertly tells the story of changing family dynamics in Taipei, Taiwan during a time of rapid modernization, employing a universal medium — food. Through Chef Chu who has lost his sense of taste and his three adult daughters, this film addresses many themes, chief among them gender roles, family, and globalization, which each progress forward in divergent, but equally valid and flexible ways.
Starting from its dichotomous title, gender and authority come to the fore in this film, issues that also greatly shape the roles of women in the public world of food where men in general are more likely to hold positions of power. Such is the case for Chef Chu. While he no longer works full time at The Grand Hotel, he acts with assured confidence when he is called in one evening to help the all male staff to rectify a dish that is being served at an important dinner.

Chef Chu presenting the “saved” shark fin soup, transformed into a lucky dragon
The traditional, powerful, masculine role of “The Chef” is complicated in the film, however, as Chef Chu’s authority is not well recognized by his daughters. Furthermore, as he parents alone, Chef Chu serves as both mother and father and performs many conventionally feminine duties, such as feeding his daughters, folding their laundry—even waking them up in the morning. Throughout the film, Chef Chu prepares elaborate family dinners, which his daughters attend, but half-heartedly and with a degree of frustration, irritability, and irreverence.

Chef Chu serving dinner to his three daughters early on in the film
Further complicating Chef Chu’s authority, his “middle daughter” (Jia-Chien) aspires to be a master chef like her father. Chef Chu dissuaded her from following a culinary career, however, encouraging her to attend university instead. Jia-Chien had assumed her father did this based upon conventional views that women do not make good chefs, but that proves to not be the case. A close family friend reveals that what Chef Chu wants for his daughter is an easier and better life away from the kitchen. Interestingly, it is Jia-Chien’s return to the home kitchen and cooking for her father that brings back Chef Chu’s lost sense of taste. This act can be read as either thwarting or promoting feminist views, as her cooking can be interpreted as the provision of conventionally feminine nourishment or as a demonstration of female culinary power.
Jia-Chien cooks for her father, causing the return of his lost sense of taste

Beyond transforming gender roles, Eat Drink Man Woman also discusses family, again focusing on transition. Though he is unable for much of the film to communicate with his own daughters—through food or otherwise—Chef Chu is able to connect with his (somewhat secret) fiancé’s daughter. For her, he prepares lunches so elaborate that they elevate her status at school, nourishing her both emotionally and physically. In this way, these special noontime meals are similar to obento in that they aid a child as she makes a transition that could be difficult, not from the home to school, but from a single-parent family to a new one that includes Chef Chu. Six family meals around the table punctuate the film, as the changing participants and their relationships to one another demonstrate the transition within this family, as well as in Taiwan as a whole.

As the Chu family evolves, the contrasts from scene to scene also depict the theme of generational gaps, conflict, negotiation, and change. Busy streets scenes filled with the mechanical hum of cars and motorcycles represent the growing and changing nature of Taiwan; these visuals are juxtaposed with the pastoral, traditional, and idyllic entrance to the Chu home, where Chef Chu prepares meals in the traditional style—scenes aptly termed “culinary pastoral.”

While Eat Drink Man Woman discusses transitions in gender roles and family structure through food, the film’s overarching theme is not food itself, but rather the forces of modernization and globalization that bring on these changes. For example, Chef Chu’s elaborate traditional family meals, the luxurious cuisine of The Grand Hotel, and the fast food restaurant where his youngest daughter works all coexist, representing the contemporary state of globalized Taiwan. The film also portrays a variety of new, “non-traditional” relationships and family structures. For example, Chef Chu’s youngest daughter gets pregnant while still a student and subsequently marries her boyfriend, leaving her father’s home sooner than expected. Chef Chu also negotiates a new familial structure when he marries a younger woman and moves out of the family home, charting a new future.

The transformed Chu family eating a meal near the end of the film

Perhaps Jia-Chien best embodies these forces of change, however, as she has achieved the career her father hoped for her — she works in a highly globalized field, holding a managerial position with an international airline. At the same time, she aspires to cook professionally. In this way, Jia-Chien most fully expresses the complexity and ongoing negotiation of these global transformations. Through her — not coincidentally the “middle” daughter — Lee’s film portrays a character caught between the fluid states of tradition and modernization, family obligation and independence, who eventually finds balance and solace in food. In this way, food—so oft considered a conventionally domestic, maternal, feminine concern — emerges as a powerful and dynamic symbol of change in all its complexity, and ushers in evolving gender roles, family structures, and global life.

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Emily Contois works in the field of worksite wellness and is a graduate student in the MLA in Gastronomy Program at Boston University that was founded by Julia Child and Jacques Pépin. She is currently researching the marketing of diet programs to men, and blogs on food studies, nutrition, and public health at emilycontois.com.