The radical notion that women like good movies
As each male character tackles a personal problem which has either implicit or explicit links to normative constructions of successful masculinity, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ examines the burden of this masculine ideal. So difficult to maintain yet so embedded in the social, cultural, economic, and political conceptualization of “manliness,” men who fail to embody this ideal inevitably become marked out as “losers.”
‘Birdman’ bears striking similarities to ‘Black Swan,’ both in the broad strokes—each follow their protagonist’s slipping grip on sanity in the days before a high pressure stage debut—and in a strange number of superficial details—hallucinations of menacing black winged creatures, “surprise” lesbian scenes, and ambiguous suicides at least partially showcased on stage.
In the great monster mash team of terrifying children, the vampire girl is varsity captain. On the one hand, they are dolls forever: trapped in their prepubescent bodies for hundreds to thousands of years without a single curl losing its bounce. On the other hand, with hundreds of years of life come hundreds of years of experience, knowledge, even maturity.
‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit,’ a BBC production from 25 years ago, adapted by author Jeanette Winterson and based on her own autobiographical novel, is one of the few films in theaters or on TV which contains both a coming-out story and another parallel, equally compelling story. Seven-year-old, red-haired “Jess” (played as a young child by Emily Aston and as a teen by Charlotte Coleman) grows up in a small town in Lancashire, in the north of England, with her strict Pentecostal adoptive parents; her father, always in the background, is silent and her mother (Geraldine McEwan), front and center, quotes the Bible and denouncing the “heathens” all around her.
Gina Price-Bythewood: “It’s a love story first, but for me as a filmmaker, I never just want to make a movie that entertains. It should entertain first, but I think it should say something and this was an issue that was important to me, the way woman are objectified. The way that women don’t have a voice. As an artist I was able to put that into the film as well as someone who has something to say and sometimes it’s a struggle to get the chance, to just inspire women, also men, to have their own voice.”
I’d really like to see more introspective films about the human experience where the humans experiencing things look like me.
Firstly, ‘The Babadook’ complicates the depiction of women as primarily victims by presenting Amelia as a complex and multi-faceted figure. For one, she is a not a young big-breasted girl but a mother and fully grown woman. This is not necessarily groundbreaking in itself.
A Peter Pan syndrome, or in Jungian terms, the “puer aeternus” complex (forever young), is active here for Megan’s character as she fears personal and professional commitment; the term is “puella aeterna” for women. The appeal of this complex is to stay “forever young,” a girl-woman without adult-level commitments. Her complex is strongly activated by her friend Allison’s (Ellie Kemper) bridal shower and large wedding.
To my fellow Americans, happy election week! (Or, depending on your politics and your jurisdiction, unhappy election week.) I thought I’d celebrate by revisiting one of my favorite political thrillers, 2000’s ‘The Contender.’ I’m not sure if it is a credit to this film or a knock against America politics that it holds up so well 14 years later. When ‘The Contender’ was released, Hillary Clinton was in the midst of her first Senate campaign. Now, she’s the front-runner to be the democratic nominee in the next presidential election. But ‘The Contender’ still feels extremely relevant.
In making ‘The World Before Her,’ Pahuja chooses to walk the neutral line by avoiding a personal stand and trying to hold up a mirror instead. In an interview with ‘First Post,’ she says that she made this documentary in an attempt to create a dialogue. Her humanizing, vérité cinema approach works to that effect.
The songs allow the audience access to the inner minds of the characters, which is especially helpful for a secretive character like Eve. The songs swirl into a beautiful world where shining girls dance through the streets of Glasgow like it’s their own personal playground, always dressed for a costume party in enviable vintage. Songs cut into elaborate sequences of the band playacting on golden hills in school uniforms and battling with umbrellas on courthouse steps, that seem like mini-music videos. The film is so stuffed with beauty and whimsy that it often seems hard to make room for the parts of the story that are truly ugly.
It has been dissected time and time again on the way the horror genre has misrepresented women both on the screen and off, but whenever a film comes along and represents a female character as something different, we immediately bring praise to the filmmakers. While this practice is admittedly problematic, the only reason we stress the importance of these “strong female characters” is in large part due to the lack of positive female representation.
