2012 Oscar/Indie Spirit Series – Page 2

Indie Spirit Best Feature Nominee: ’50/50′

When I look at the sloppy homemade label on my screener of 50/50, it looks like it says, “so-so.” Despite solid reviews and the year-end awards nominations, that pretty much sums up how I feel about the movie.

“‘Oppression’ Is in the Bathroom”: 50/50’s Condemnation of Women as Mothers, Artists, and Professionals

“Liberation”

This is a guest review by Josh Ralske.

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When I look at the sloppy homemade label on my screener of 50/50, it looks like it says, “so-so.” Despite solid reviews and the year-end awards nominations, that pretty much sums up how I feel about the movie.

I’m not one of those people who thinks Judd Apatow is some kind of woman-hating comedy anti-Christ. I mean, the guy is partly responsible for the existence of Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini on Freaks and Geeks), one of the richest, most beautifully written and played female characters I’ve ever seen on television. So the presence of massive-erection-concealer Seth Rogen, or the fact that the film was billed as a kind of amalgam of an Apatow-style dude comedy with a serious, realistic drama about facing cancer didn’t put me off the film.

And yet, something did. Even before I saw 50/50, I had this irritated feeling about it. There was something self-congratulatory in the way the film was being promoted, as though the idea of mixing comedy—sometimes bawdy comedy!—with a drama about cancer was something completely new and original, and anyone who doesn’t realize that having cancer can be funny is kind of a square, right? I mean, almost every movie about every disease, except maybe Love Story, has some humor in it. This is a very traditional human coping mechanism. I guess what separates 50/50 is simply a matter of degree.

Well, that, and the fact that screenwriter Will Reiser was writing from personal experience, and that co-star Seth Rogen plays what I hope is a very fictionalized version of himself in the movie. The film is presented as an honest and realistic depiction of how a serious, likeable young man deals with a potentially terminal illness. Disappointingly, despite its efforts at hip, low-key credibility, 50/50 lapses too frequently into cliché and worse.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Adam, who works for Seattle public radio, and finds out he has a rare form of spinal cancer that he has a 50% chance of surviving. Adam is the type of guy who takes care of himself and is almost pathologically averse to risk. This is illustrated by his refusal to cross a deserted street against the light, and by his lack of a driver’s license, which he attributes to a high risk of accidental death. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think etc. The film depicts Adam’s efforts to cope with his illness, and the effects of treatment, as his personal life also undergoes an upheaval.

The film’s honesty doesn’t extend to the knotty issue of the American health care system. Adam doesn’t seem to be especially wealthy, but he lives in a rich person’s fantasy world where no one worries about how they are going to pay for cancer treatments, let alone where the treatment one chooses might be circumscribed by an insurance company’s bureaucracy. I guess I can accept the argument that the film is supposed to be about Adam’s emotional journey, but I assume that the thought of how Adam’s treatment is being paid for will cross other peoples’ minds, as it did mine.

Adam doesn’t seem to have much of a social life. His only good friend is the loutish, abrasive Kyle (Rogen), his mother is a stereotypical overbearing worrywart (Anjelica Huston), and his girlfriend is played by Bryce Dallas Howard, which means we already know she is essentially a monster.

50/50’s treatment of its women characters is more problematic. His mother is apparently well-meaning, but she narcissistically draws Adam’s attention back to herself. While he deals with his potentially terminal disease and the severely debilitating chemotherapy, she makes him feel guilty for not letting her “help” enough. There’s also a key scene where she insults a hospital worker because the waiting room temperature is too cold. She puts her own needs first, instead of focusing on Adam. It’s understandable that he does not want to involve her any more than he has to. This characterization isn’t especially hateful or unrealistic; it’s just a bit hackneyed, and in the context of the film, considered among its other depictions of women, it fits in with a disturbing pattern.

Anjelica Huston as Diane in 50/50

Shortly after Adam is diagnosed, he visits with the hospital therapist, Katherine, played by Anna Kendrick. I have been a fan since I saw her in Camp. Kendrick is a terrific actor, with a great, naturalistic sense of comic timing, and her scenes with Gordon-Levitt have an energy and charm that elevate the film. Boyish, wounded Adam and sincere, fumbling Katherine are an adorable couple, but the issue is that if Katherine was any good at all at her job, they wouldn’t ever be a couple. Years of education and, presumably, some professional training have left the amiable Katherine, the world’s worst therapist.

I suppose it’s understandable that she’s a bit unsure of herself, and Kendrick plays that uncertainty realistically and appealingly. But again, in the context of the film, the message that comes across is that she is a terrible therapist in part because she is a young woman. One of the stereotypes about young women perpetuated by mass media from its beginnings is that they are excessively emotional. Katherine cannot put her emotions aside in her dealings with Adam. She doesn’t appear to understand basic concepts of transference. If she were a competent therapist, perhaps she would not be put in the position of having to serve as Adam’s only reliable emotional support when he finally does break down. Katherine is a likeable character, largely due to Kendrick’s charm, but we can’t respect her.

Anna Kendrick as Katherine in 50/50

The movie’s biggest prolonged sour note is its conception of the character of Rachael, Adam’s girlfriend. Woody Allen has taken a lot of flack for the characterization of women in his films, and as The Opinioness points out here, the horrifically two-dimensional, shrewish Inez (Rachel McAdams) from Midnight in Paris is no exception. The makers of 50/50 seem to have pretty much gotten a pass from critics, however, for the misogynistic creation of Rachael.

This is such a problematic character that I barely know where to begin. She’s a straw man. There’s no compelling reason that we see for Adam to be with her, other than her physical beauty, but Adam is not presented as a shallow man who comes to appreciate a woman’s inner beauty through this traumatic experience. He’s essentially presented as a perfect boyfriend, making all the right moves toward a committed domestic relationship.

But then, Rachael is an abstract painter, and while Adam pretends to be interested in and supportive of her work, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t actually give a crap. He shows the painting in their living room to his mother, mistakenly calling it “Oppression.” Rachael points out that the actual title is “Liberation,” and Adam remembers that “Oppression” is the painting in their bathroom. Rachael’s high-minded artistic aspirations are essentially treated as a joke, even before we understand what an awful person she is. She’s just a pretty, solipsistic, talentless airhead. Again, this brings up the question (as with Owen Wilson’s Gil in Midnight in Paris) as to what the poor, sensitive protagonist sees in her.

Bryce Dallas Howard as Rachael in 50/50

Naturally, after gamely taking on the responsibility of being Adam’s caretaker, Rachael fails him in every way, at one point leaving him waiting for hours before picking him up after a chemo session, and betraying him with another man. She’s a hateful character. Adam even says to her at one point after they split, as Rachael, now vulnerable due to career troubles, is trying to apologize and reconcile with him, “I’m sorry I didn’t come to your opening. It’s just ’cause I hate you so much.” This, and a subsequent scene in which Kyle and Adam destroy Rachael’s painting, “Liberation,” are clearly meant to be cathartic moments for the audience. We’re not meant to have any sympathy for Rachael.

Seth Rogen as Kyle and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Adam in 50/50

Kyle also fails Adam, manipulatively and opportunistically taking advantage of Adam’s condition to aid his own pursuit of impossibly credulous young women. Kyle is essentially an asshole. He treats women condescendingly (and this is always presented as humorous and without negative consequences for him), and he’s often insensitive to Adam’s needs. But as with Rogen’s character in Knocked Up, Ben Stone, the presence of a few appropriate self-help books in Kyle’s apartment serve to indicate that, well, at least he’s trying. Like Rachael, Kyle tries and fails to be what Adam needs him to be, but, in the filmmakers’ view, Kyle is redeemable, and Rachael is not.

50/50 has its low-key charms, and moments of grace, many provided by Kendrick, but the question that continues to nag at me is: Why is it necessary for a purportedly realistic film about a young man dealing with cancer to have a cartoonishly evil villain?

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Josh Ralske is a freelance film critic based in New York. He has written for All Movie Guide and Critical Mob.

Oscar and Indie Spirit Best Actress Nominee: Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn

This is a guest review by Danielle Winston.

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“My Week With Marilyn” is set in 1957 London; the film is told through the eyes of Colin Clark, a twenty-three-year-old Londoner who lands a gopher job as a third assistant to the director, Lawrence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) working on a film that would later become “The Prince and the Show Girl.” There he meets Marilyn Monroe, newly married to Arthur Miller, and has a relationship with her that lasts a week.

In the film, Michelle Williams resists the urge to make Monroe into a familiar cartoon, even though the script is rich in both the icon’s clichés and complexities, with expected poses, lines and mannerisms we’ve come to know as Marilyn-isms.

Williams–who has a naturally earthy presence–digs beneath Monroe’s facade and chips away at the woman underneath. In a subtly drawn performance, she lets us a glimpse into the personal world of not just the movie star–but also the massively powerful woman. This Monroe, with her soft whispery voice, does not lull us into thinking her a victim. Instead she portrays a woman so uncomfortable with her own strength, she’s continually battling opposing forces inside her own psyche and projects the demeanor of a frightened child, wrapped in an overtly sensual woman’s body. We have the sense that she is always silently asking permission for something–but we’re not sure what or why. With her pale blue eyes and sweet girlie smile, Williams’ Monroe is eternally blameless for her actions, no matter how she inconveniences those working with her: forgetting lines, showing up hours late or not at all…it seems as though she could set the film set on fire and we would find a way to excuse her.

Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe

So raw, sensitive and utterly vulnerable, Monroe has us and the characters in the film, wound around her finger so airtight, it leaves us wondering if it’s all just a clever act, and if there isn’t really a manipulative diva in there someplace, acting her pants off just to get what she wants. But then…she twists us yet again, and we decide, no woman could really be that good. Or could she?

Not quite everyone is so accepting of Marilyn’s careless ways. Olivier is at his wits end trying to direct her and repeatedly tries to wrangle Marilyn into his version of what he expected he was getting when he ordered up this particular blonde bombshell to star in his film. He doesn’t realize how terrified she is of him: in awe of his talent, Monroe’s hoping to learn all she can from such a great master. Unfortunately, when she bumbles lines in rehearsal, on the verge of tears, Olivier interprets it as a personal affront and never truly understands how much respect she has for him.

When Marilyn is running late for the first table read, young Clark, smitten with Marilyn on sight, goes to her dressing room and finds her acting coach Paula Strasberg, standing guard at the door. Strasberg attempts to shoo him away like a mosquito, but Marilyn, seated by her mirror, studying her lines, barefaced, smiles at him kindly and says, “Excuse the horrible face.” It’s as though she revealing a secret: she’s unacceptable in her own skin, and asks to be forgiven the discretion of being human.

Williams’ Monroe is a riddled with contradictions. Without any attempt to hide her insecurities, she’s a woman on a path to self-discovery. Even while being subdued by her handlers with pills and alcohol, she still yearns to be more than a male-centric view of femininity. And yet interesting enough, it’s that very fabricated celluloid image, which she switches off and on like a neon stop sign, skillfully working to her advantage.

After only being married three weeks to Arthur Miller, the couple have a nasty argument: Monroe feels betrayed and believes Miller’s stolen bits of her for his writing. Frustrated with his new wife and her unruly personality, Miller leaves the set, and Marilyn, to her own devices.

We’ve all seen those blasé versions of Monroe where she can’t exist without a man to fill the void and they make us wonder how much was true…here’s where the film takes on a different tone: no longer the plaything to be conquered by an older man, this time Monroe decides to call the sexual shots. After discovering Colin is only twenty-three, she tells him, “I’m 30. I guess that makes me an old lady to you.” In ‘57 being thirty was a milestone in a female’s life. No longer thought of as a blushing girl, Monroe was now a mature woman who had already been married three times.

Monroe was older, yes, although nearly as ancient as Olivier’s wife, Vivien Leigh, who at 43 was considered too over the hill to reprise the role which she originated on stage in, “The Prince and the Showgirl.” When Monroe tells Olivier she thought Leigh was wonderful in the role, he quips that she’s far too old for the film. At that moment, we see sadness wash over Monroe’s carefree expression, and we’re not sure whether it’s compassion for her fellow actress she feels or the impending sting of her own expiration date looming on the horizon.

As we watch Monroe ensnare the naive Clark within her charming web, we know he doesn’t stand a chance against this force of womanliness; all we can do is hope she’ll be kind when she’s finished with him. The seduction begins when Clark innocently walks in on her naked in her dressing room. Instead of covering up, she very slowly wraps her towel back on, making sure he’s had an eyeful first, and then asks, “Are you afraid of me?” And even though he answers “no” we wonder if he should be.

When Clark is ordered not to see her or he’ll be fired, Monroe takes the upper hand once again, showing us she’s not one to be pushed around. In a ballsy move, she hides in the backseat of a car and has Clark picked up and whisked away to a nearby lake where she takes him skinny-dipping. Whimsical and irresistible are her methods, but after Clark is warned to stay away from her or risk getting his heart shattered, it’s clear that while Monroe may’ve looked soft and delicate, this blonde sure wasn’t stupid, and she was much more resilient than she appeared.

In 1957, women didn’t have meetings or marches to unite them; instead they were separated, competitive and envious of the physical attributes of each other, left to suffer in isolation at the hands of men who shaped their images, dictating what was “desirable.” Monroe took that glittering image, ran with it and used it to become a sensation.

Monroe’s sexual onscreen presence, combined with her blonde hair and baby-voice had studios and audiences typecasting her as dumb. In her own quiet way, she had been studying method acting with Lee Strasberg at the actor’s studio for quite some time, hoping to elevate her stature as a serious dramatic actress. Even though she was already a movie star, at the height of her career, she saw the chance to work with Olivier, one of the greats, as her chance.

Monroe and her teacher, Paula, Lee Strasberg’s second wife, had a strong mother-daughter dynamic in the film. Strasberg, an earnest, and intelligent woman, greatly admired Monroe’s raw talent. However when she’d express herself, telling Monroe she was truly a brilliant actress, Monroe would simply listen politely but took her words as no more than generous flattery.

Monroe’s dedication to method acting is a constant annoyance with Olivier. Not at all what he envisioned the kittenish actress would be; he was baffled by her contrary behavior. Stuck in old-school actor mode, he tells her, “Just be sexy. Isn’t that what you do?” Perhaps that’s one of the things she was apologizing for: not always being sexy.

While acting, with great focus, she searches for the truth in every line. To such an extent, if the realness isn’t there, she can’t even utter the words. Often what’s perceived as, “difficult behavior” is actually Monroe’s sincere desire to understand her role and deliver the best performance possible.

Marilyn Monroe

Ultimately her involvement with Clark is a very safe choice. It borders on passionless, and seems to be more a spiritual connection than a physical one. In the end Clark is able to give the world’s biggest star a rare gift: solace in his innocence. And for a brief point in time the chance to recapture her own adolescence.

When Monroe asks if he’s in love with her, Clark replies, “You’re like some Greek Goddess to me.” In many ways Colin isn’t so different from all the other men Monroe has known; he still sees her as larger than life.

She tells him, “I don’t want to be a goddess. I just want to be loved like an ordinary girl.”

Marilyn may believe she longs for normalcy but what she demonstrates is the opposite; when Clark tries to rescue her by saying she can quit working and he’ll take care of her–without hesitation she refuses–not even sure what he’s saving her from or why. Clark tells her, maybe then she’d be happy. But Marilyn is confused. She already believed she was happy and doesn’t want to stop acting. Right then, Monroe is not a child but a strong woman who knows exactly what she wants.

Ultimately Williams’ portrayal of Monroe is so understated it appears effortless. It’s a performance that could only emerge by finding the character’s inner truth within each word, a thought-provoking performance that Monroe herself, who struggled to understand the realness in her acting, and her own life, would likely appreciate and perhaps even envy.

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Danielle Winston is a Manhattan based screenwriter and playwright. Her articles are regularly published in regional and National Magazines. She’s also a yoga teacher and creator of Writer’s Flow Yoga.

Indie Spirit Best First Feature Nominee: Margin Call

This is a guest review by Jessica Pieklo.

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It’s hardly a surprise that a movie chronicling life inside a major financial firm during the 24 hours before the Wall Street collapse of 2008 would be dominated by men. Margin Call boasts a stunning ensemble cast featuring Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, and Demi Moore as a group of investment bankers, analysts and traders at fictitious financial firm, loosely based on Lehman Brothers, as the bottom falls out of the mortgage-backed securities market.

Moore plays Sarah Robertson, the steely head of risk management and only woman on the management team. We don’t actually see Moore or meet Sarah until close to midway in the film and she’s given sparse dialogue. As the film unfolds we start to see why.

Demi Moore and Simon Baker in Margin Call

Instead, the film opens in September 2008 as this unnamed investment firm is in the process of terminating 80 percent of its risk-management team. The terminations are executed with the cold precision that only corporate HR professionals can muster and magnified by the self-importance that fuels Wall Street corporate culture. It’s an assembly-line of assets in and liabilities out and even from the beginning we see the a shedding of “waste” that frames the rest of the drama.

Senior risk analyst Eric Dale is one of those fired. Dale, played brilliantly by Stanley Tucci, gets the news just as he’s about to discover that the company is recklessly over-exposed in bad mortgages. Dale’s termination, and his behavior in handing over a flash drive full of damaging information to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) telling him to “be careful,” initially sets the story up to suggest Dale was fired just before becoming a whistleblower but instead suggests the fate that awaits anyone else who might question the culture of risk at the firm.

It’s not until the junior analysts have put together the pieces laid out by Dale and alerted their bosses that the real faces of the financial crisis emerge and among them, Sarah Robertson. We first meet Robertson in an emergency middle-of-the-night meeting with upper management to discuss the firm’s exposure and create a strategy to handle it. The strategy, the firm decides, is to dump the bad debts and offer up an executive sacrifice as the face and blame of the disaster.

Of course they choose Robertson.

Kevin Spacey in Margin Call

The writing is on the wall and it’s clear in Moore’s performance that it’s an outcome Robertson must have been bracing for her entire career. During the meeting Robertson points out, firmly but not too aggressively that she had warned the firm of problems with the mortgage-backed securities and nothing was done. The men in the room just look at her. It’s clear. She’s going down for the whole thing.

Almost the rest of Moore’s performance consists of Robertson sitting in her office, looking out across Manhattan both a part of Wall Street and isolated from it’s upper reaches–the logical and final destination for female executives in this world.

Writer/director J.C. Chandor’s father spent almost his entire career working for Merrill Lynch and its obvious he understands Wall Street culture. Bright ambitious talent gets wooed away from careers that better serve society like engineering and the sciences, to make buckets of cash moving around buckets of cash. There’s a sense of conspicuous waste in nearly every scene. Boxes line empty trading cubes as nameless traders cycle in and out. Nothing’s permanent and nothing’s real except for the stories of all that cash.

Given Chandor’s intimacy with Wall Street life it’s hard not to see some deliberate choices behind Moore’s character. Shortly after the 2008 collapse some of us started asking if the financial crisis would have been mitigated, or perhaps avoided all together, had more women served in executive functions and on boards of directors. It was hard not to broadly generalize but the major Wall Street Firms–Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America–the list continues–all firms where women were virtually absent in leadership and culture building. In their place was a testosterone-fueled culture of rampant greed and avarice, a world where 25-year-old traders were promised million dollar bonuses over t-bones and strippers and nobody blinks. It’s hard to imagine that culture existing so robustly with a lot more women involved.

Jeremy Irons in Margin Call

And that hypothesis seems to infect Moore’s character and her performance. She’s at once tough, ambitious and intensely insecure. You get the sense she’s used to having her work more heavily scrutinized, less-readily trusted. At first during the emergency meeting Moore comes off as emotionless and cold, almost robotic in the face of catastrophe as if aware that showing any emotion as the only woman in the room would automatically kick her out of the club. Later when she’s waiting out the night in her office Moore offers us a woman tragically isolated and coming to terms with the fact that her brief foray into the forbidden world of male privilege has officially ended with not much more to show for it except a severance package that will ultimately cost her reputation and sense of dignity.

The fact that Moore’s character had warned of the crisis approaching and was alternatively ignored or blamed for not warning emphatically enough also perfectly captures the bind so many women in corporate culture face. As head of risk management Moore’s character was in charge of managing exposure and was the voice responsible for setting the culture and appetite for risk. It was the woman who first saw problems, tried to draw attention to them but was ultimately not taken seriously and was dismissed. Rather than push the issue Robertson knew what she had to do–push ahead like the men around her.

By the end of the film there’s not much left to Moore’s character. She’s practically an afterthought as daylight breaks and the trading panic ensues and we close with a sense that nothing much will change even after the house of cards comes crashing down.

Links of interest:

“Could Women Have Avoided the Financial Crisis?” by Jessica Pieklo for Hegemommy

“Gender, Testosterone, and Financial Risk” by Paola Sapienza for Kellogg School of Management

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Jessica Pieklo is a lawyer and writer blogging at Care2.com and Hegemommy.com. Her work focuses on women’s rights, ethics and the law.

Oscar Best Actress Nominee: Rooney Mara in ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is up for four Academy Awards in addition to Rooney Mara’s nomination for her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander: Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing. It has received numerous other awards and nominations.

This piece, by Megan Kearns, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on January 10, 2012.

Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Lisbeth Salander consumes my thoughts. I’ve spent the last year and a half reading, writing, analyzing, debating and discussing the punk hacker. As a huge fan of the books and the original Swedish films, I was NOT excited to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Hollywood remake.

Plagued by sexist marketing that seemed to focus solely on Mikael and depict Lisbeth as a sexpot damsel in distress, I feared Hollywood would wreck one of the most unique female protagonists in pop culture. With trepidation, I watched David Fincher’s take on Stieg Larsson’s epic. While some gender problems arose, I’ve got to admit I was pleasantly surprised. And it all hinges on Rooney Mara’s performance.

For those who don’t know, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first part in the global phenomenon of The Millennium Trilogy, features disgraced crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and brilliant researcher Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) who unite to solve the mystery of a woman who disappeared 40 years ago. The gritty, tense plot fuses with social commentary on violence against women, sexuality and gender roles.

Do we really need an American remake? Fincher, a notoriously obsessive and detailed filmmaker, creates a gorgeous film evoking a macabre ambiance. Trent Reznor’s eerie and haunting score punctuates each slickly stylized scene perfectly. Phenomenal actors fill the screen: Craig, Robin Wright (who I will watch in absolutely anything), Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgaard, Vanessa Redgrave. While everyone does their best, the remake isn’t quite as compelling as the original. I never really felt invested in any of the characters. Except for Lisbeth. The sole reason to see the film is Mara’s stellar portrayal.

Click here to read the full piece.

Oscar and Indie Spirit Best Picture Nominee: The Artist: "Peppy Miller, Wonder Woman"

This is a guest review by Candice Frederick.

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You know what they say—behind every man is a great woman.

And that’s made evident in the 1920s nostalgia-soaked silent film, The Artist. Although the movie beautifully captures the difficult fall of silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) from Hollywoodland heavyweight to Hollywoodland has-been, the movie’s heart lies with his heroine, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo).

We first meet Peppy as a face in the crowd, scrambling to catch a glimpse of the one, the only George Valentin on the red carpet. Amid the glitz and glamour of the paparazzi swarming Hollywoodland’s biggest star, we see a “regular” girl. In fact, it’s Peppy’s ambiguity that sets her apart from said crowd. While all the other female fans are elbowing each other to get a chance to see their idol strike a pose on the red carpet, Peppy works her way to the front of the pack and just watches George, studying him. It’s like she sees the man behind the star, a man hidden from everyone else. A man she knocks off his feet.

That’s the thing about Peppy—it’s her authenticity that charms audiences. Unlike George’s man-made celebrity, which seduces his loveliest fans, Peppy’s unflinching compassion for those around her downright enchants the audience.

In that way, Peppy becomes George’s guardian angel. When his career begins to slide downhill, and his once marqueed name can’t even fill up a full row of seats at a theater, Peppy is the only one by his side, his number one fan when he has no one left. She picks him up when he hits rock bottom, when his pride stunts his career from forging ahead. As their careers see-saw one another, it is Peppy who remains the emotional compass throughout the entire film, the one who gets what George refuses to get.

This natural clairvoyance propels her own film ambitions. Peppy’s career skyrockets into superstardom, but, with the exception of one significant scene where she tries to play up her career by essentially downplaying those who came before her (like George), she remains unaffected by the Hollywood allure. It’s fascinating to watch a charismatic leading lady remain grounded even after her career takes off.

And it’s even more interesting to see her come to the rescue of her masculine counterpart, even if he did become a washed up star by the time of his rescuing. That’s something that would have never happened during the era the film is set in. In fact, Peppy would have more than likely have been drawn as a mere shallow competitor to George’s steadfast—however delusional—career. Since she was not written that way, it gives this wistful film the modern boost it needs to stand out.

But The Artist doesn’t just paint Peppy as George Valentin’s superhero. Peppy is also a trailblazing woman on her own. Much like many George before her, she knows how to play to a crowd and to the hungry paparazzi. She became such a power player in Hollywood that she was able to negotiate George’s reacceptance into Tinseltown after threatening to drop out of a project herself. That’s major move for a film actress, a bold one her part (that ended up paying off).

Peppy is that person you want in your corner—a bubbly (but not annoyingly so), impossibly adorable, smart, caring person with a good head on her shoulders. She never gets involved in any overblown scandal in order to get her name up in lights. She doesn’t sleep her way to the top of the Hollywood food chain. She never had to. All she was interested in was being a good friend, becoming an actor like her idol George, and spreading happiness to everyone along her path.

This all plays to the deep complexities of her character, which go far beyond uplifting the lead male character. Peppy is a strong character by herself, without even relating to George. They are both equally rounded characters who supply the substance in a movie that’s heightened by their stories and the actors who play them. Their relationship helps stack every layer of this film, therefore elevating it past its seemingly cursory exterior.

While we never really learn much information about Peppy’s background (she remains mostly anonymous on that front throughout the entire film), somehow we still feel as though she gives us a window to her soul. You relate to her, you empathize with her, and you cheer for her each time she steps in front of the camera. In short, Peppy has that likability factor that fans crave. How can they not? She practically waltzes from scene to scene and, before we know it, we’re smitten by her magic.

Although this season’s awards race may have you under the impression that Peppy is indeed a supporting character, Bejo’s performance of her will have you believing differently. Bejo brings out all the key qualities of Peppy in a performance that’s not emotionally powerful, but emotionally resounding nonetheless.

Even in silence, you hear the tapping of her shoes, the pep in her step, and her infectious laugh. How can a film with no words emit such a roaring character? Put Bejo front and center and she becomes one with the music. Every sympathetic look, impossibly happy reaction and playful gesture becomes a full fledged sympathy with Bejo. She doesn’t need any words, because the audience just knows. And, you know what, she and us are right here.

Too often people equate a good performance to one that’s grandiose, a powerhouse portrayal. Though some of those performances are in fact riveting, Bejo’s performance isn’t less so. She sparkles as Peppy, bringing out her magnetism as the gargantuan starlet she becomes, while also humanizing her and keeping her grounded. In other words, you take Peppy out of the City of Angels and she’d still be the same Peppy, girl wonder. Superhero to George Valentin, fallen star.

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Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning print journalist, film critic, and blogger for Reel Talk. She is also the co-host of Blog Talk Radio’s “Cinema in Noir.”

Oscar Best Picture Nominee: The Tree of Life

This is a guest review by Lesley Jenike.

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I saw Terrance Malick’s The Tree of Life in a tiny, packed theatre in my hometown on my birthday last year. Of course I’d read around about the film before going to see it, and I fully anticipated its more “controversial” elements, but I wasn’t really prepared for the experience itself—the frankly theatrical experience of sitting in a dark room with a bunch of strangers who simultaneously felt (I imagine) a strange mixture of joy, embarrassment, frustration, and awe. People walked out. I heard someone whisper to his friend, “Oh my God.” Someone else laughed quietly to herself when the first dinosaur ambled onto the screen. But those of us who stayed left the theatre 139 minutes later dazed and puzzled, but weirdly connected to one another; I don’t doubt we all saw some of ourselves in the film. I even furtively searched faces for any discernable response, as if to ask in a Malick-like subconscious whisper, “What was that?”

Yes, what is The Tree of Life? Well, it’s a movie, a great movie that fully embraces its own nostalgia. It’s a movie that presents its narrative as only movies can: through exquisite mis-én-scene and shrewd editing. You see, the Tree of Life doesn’t try to wow us with jarring, frenzied cuts, nor does it present shocking images meant to scandalize and titillate. On the contrary, many of the images you’ll find in the Tree of Life are so familiar they become new again, thanks to context and Malick’s wholly realized filmic world. The real genius of Tree of Life is its complete and utter mastery over its own medium—and that may very well be the reason for all the hoopla. By cinematically juxtaposing two modes of discourse that rarely meet except in conflict—the scientific and the spiritual—Malick has created for posterity a years-in-the-making meditation on the very nature of existence. Whoa.

We begin with a quote from the Book of Job, a breathy voiceover, and, at the darkened screen’s center, a single sliver of light. And then—oh and then—image after image washes over us, sensual and earthy, specific yet universal, while a female voice—a voice we connect with a redheaded child who soon morphs into a bereaved mother grieving a son lost to the war in Vietnam—talks to us about the difference between “nature” and “grace,” a philosophical dichotomy that operates as the film’s central conflict. Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) seems to represent “nature” in the Darwinian sense. His drive to survive and succeed causes him to behave (often without intention) cruelly toward his family. Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain), on the other hand, represents “grace,” or a sense of humility and kindness derived from a spirituality that, in Malick’s world, seems to operate beyond organized religion.

“Grace” is represented in the film as a sense of interconnectedness and empathy. In other words, Mrs. O’Brien is more of a quality than a character, a sort of angel whose sensitivity as a woman and mother seems almost otherworldly. While I’m perfectly prepared to call out Malick for inventing an unrealistic, two-dimensional, adolescent’s dream of a mother in Mrs. O’Brien, I must stress how specific the film’s point of view is and how completely invested we are as viewers in the oldest son’s (Jack, played as boy by Hunter McCracken and as an adult by Sean Penn) subjective perspective. We can feel the grass on our own hands when he touches it and we get a shiver of pleasure when he’s tucked safely in bed at night and his mother switches off the bedside lamp. If Mrs. O’Brien is a romantic ideal, it’s because Jack sees her that way. She even floats in the air at one point, her skirt billowing in the wind like the ever-present, rustling curtains we see in shot after shot.

Mr. O’Brien, on the other hand, looms as the big Other, creating law and doling out punishment; even his predilection for classical music suggests the very soundtrack of the O’Brien boys’ collective childhood is both beautiful and aggressive, tender and menacing. However, once Jack is aware of his father’s humanity and we begin to see Mr. O’Brien’s suffering through Jack’s eyes, Mr. O’Brien (beautifully played by Pitt) develops as a character despite few conventional, dialogue-heavy scenes. His past actions, like the harsh play-boxing match with his two older sons, is re-contextualized to suggest his cruelty doesn’t come from malice, but rather from his own pain and disappointment.

So what does this mean—a sorrowful, transcendent Madonna for a mother and a real human being for a father? Malick has given us a boy’s life and boys, in Malick’s world, must go the way of “nature.” Their propensity for violence and cruelty is discovered in their play, mirrored by the natural world, and ultimately enacted in war and in the workplace. Once their fall from “grace” is complete, they look back at their innocence with nostalgia, regret, and pain, idealizing their mothers and recognizing in themselves the foibles of their fathers. I saw much of my own childhood in The Tree of Life, but ultimately it’s a boy’s world, and Malick suggests a boy can never fully know the female “other.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. All of the above hinges on the adult Jack O’Brien’s (Sean Penn) portions of the film in which he wanders through some random city’s steel and glass and contemplates his brother’s senseless death, as if trying—even in Earth’s chaotic, violent beginnings–to understand the nature of his own life and the lives of his family members. Where did he go wrong? Can he pinpoint the moment he betrayed his brother’s trust or turned his back on his mother’s “grace?” In Jack’s mental wanderings, we sometimes alight on some semi-relevant information (he’s breaking-up with his significant other; he’s done well for himself career-wise), but mainly we follow him through his own personal symbology (a Gulf Coast beach for a kind of Heaven; an underwater door meaning birth). These sequences are stunningly beautiful and terribly confusing at turns, but the truly ambitious cinematic move on Malick’s part is the lengthy sequence of cosmic configurations, interstellar explosions, and hot lava that finally create life. Life then becomes two dinosaurs in a riverbed that in their Darwinian struggle to survive, later mirror Jack and his younger brother who roughhouse down by what we take to be the very same river. In Malick’s contemporary worldview, a nebulous sense of spirituality rubs elbows with science’s rational explanation for creation, and this convergence is honest, weird, and often hard to reconcile.

I could spend pages on the folly of Malick’s choices here, but he’s embraced the totality of his medium so completely, he reintroduces us to what film is capable of in all its overwhelming, destructive glory.

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Lesley Jenike received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati in 2008. She currently teaches poetry writing, screenwriting, and literature classes at the Columbus College of Art and Design. Her book of poems is Ghost of Fashion (CustomWords, 2009).

‘Drive’ and the Need to Identify the Virgin or Whore in the Passenger Seat

This is a guest review by Leigh Kolb.

The 2011 film Drive opens by plunging the audience into an 80s-insipired neo-noir world, where the beats are hard, the car chases gripping, and the femme fatale seductively leads the real chase. Or at least it seems that simple.

The protagonist, simply named Driver (Ryan Gosling), may not appear to have clear motivations or desires throughout, but he is in control. He’s a stunt driver and auto mechanic by day, and an outlaw getaway driver at night. He seems to be content with this LA life he’s carved for himself.

Until he meets his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan). The name Irene means peace—which could very well describe her disposition, but certainly not her role in Driver’s life. He first spots her carrying a laundry basket, then grocery shopping with her small son, and later helplessly looking under the hood of her stalled vehicle—the archetype of helpless femininity and quiet motherhood. She comes to the garage where he works for a repair and a ride home, and so begins their friendship/romance.

Carey Mulligan as “damsel in distress” Irene

Driver takes on an immediate fatherly role to Irene’s son, Benicio, and the three have idyllic car rides and moments by a river. They are on a journey, but a journey that doesn’t really go anywhere. Irene, always in the passenger seat, places her hand on Driver’s on the gear shift. We see Driver smile at Irene, and Benecio seems protected and comfortable, especially in the scene that Driver carries a sleeping Benecio home while Irene follows, carrying Driver’s bright white satin jacket emblazoned with a gold scorpion.

Irene makes a passing comment that Benecio’s father is in prison.

She fails to mention he’s her husband. And he’s about to come home.

That white jacket doesn’t stay clean for long.

What comes next is a tour de force of quick, graphic violence. (Or, as the New York Times rating more romantically describes it, “gruesomely violent chivalry”—he’s just valiantly protecting Irene, after all.)

The scorpion dances around its prey and its deadliness is swift and unsuspected. It also is a fiercely protective creature, and mothers keep their young nestled on their backs. Driver reminds a victim-to-be of the fable of the scorpion and the frog, in which the scorpion kills the frog (ultimately killing them both) simply because it’s his “nature.” The scorpion, upon first glance, reminds us of Driver. But who holds the “scorpion’s” fate—figuratively and literally—in her arms? Irene.

Of course, even as Driver is driving off with blood on his hands, no money, and no Irene, he calls her to tell her “Getting to be around you and Benicio was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

He has ensured their safety, while unraveling his own life. Unknowing, she stands silently, fingers to her lips.

A.O. Scott, in his New York Times review, says “Ms. Mulligan’s whispery diction and kewpie-doll features have a similarly disarming effect. Irene seems like much too nice a person to be mixed up in such nasty business. Not that she’s really mixed up in it. Her innocence is axiomatic and part of the reason the driver goes to such messianic lengths to protect her.”

In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers says, “Mulligan is glorious, inhabiting a role that is barely there and making it resonant and whole.”

The audience knows nothing about Irene, except that she met her husband when she was 17, she’s a waitress, and she’s pretty. How are we supposed to assume she’s “too nice to be mixed up in such nasty business”? How are we supposed to cling to her innocence and need for protection? How is a character who serves as a catalyst for almost the entire plot “barely there”?

Instead, the femme fatale role is squarely placed on the shoulders of Blanche. Travers writes, “Violence drives Drive. A heist gone bad involving a femme fatale (an incendiary cameo from Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks) puts blood on the walls.” This isn’t untrue—there is a heist gone wrong and it does get bloody, fast. But Blanche is an accomplice, not a seductive force that lures Driver in.

The classic definition of femme fatale is “an irresistibly attractive woman, especially one who leads men into difficult, dangerous, or disastrous situations…” Scott and Travers would certainly contend that Irene is too pretty and innocent to fit that mold—but someone needed to fit that mold, so Blanche it is.

Instead, Irene’s character is flattened into oblivion, “barely there,” as the reviewer states. Even though we know so little about her and her motivations, we are given clues. While she has an air of subservience (working as a waitress, fetching glasses of water and dinner for her male visitors), she is clearly in control at the beginning of the narrative. She goes to Driver’s work, she touches his hand, she withholds pertinent information about her personal life.

Ryan Gosling as Driver and Mulligan’s Irene–she holds his jacket (a symbol of his character) against the red and blue backdrop

Irene is also presented in a constant mural of red and blue—the bright, dark red of cherries and blood, lust and violence, and the Wedgewood blue of the Virgin Mary’s mantle, innocent and pure. The colors of her apartment and her shirts and dresses mirror this color scheme, challenging us to imagine her as a complex woman, one who could inhabit both worlds of innocence and experience.

In the garage scenes, we’re reminded of the fact that cars get designated feminine pronouns (because they are designed to be owned and shown off), and are tools to attract women. Driver’s car of choice, as Shannon (Bryan Cranston) says, is “plain Jane boring… There she is. Chevy Impala, most popular car in the state of California. No one will be looking at you.”

While Irene isn’t “plain Jane boring”—of course she’s quite beautiful—perhaps her nondescript nature and lack of flash is what kept audiences from noticing her important role.

In the animal kingdom, impalas are largely gender-segregated, except during mating seasons, when males will work so hard at competing for the females that they often get exhausted and will lose their territories; they are showy creatures, leaping and running from prey and for fun. The females isolate themselves with their calves. This speed and agility makes it clear why Chevy would use them as a namesake for a model of car, but we would be remiss at not drawing the similarities between the gender roles in the film.

At the end, no one has gained, only lost. Driver leaves with his bloody, dirt-stained jacket, and Irene silently puts down the phone. They are separate—her with her child and safety, and him with his masculinity and “chivalrous violence” having come out on top, but with no reward but the protection of someone he’d just met. His femme fatale, if we must label.

Christina Hendricks as “femme fatale” Blanche

And in the testosterone-fueled action genre, we must label our women. Even when it’s clear we’re supposed to challenge the virgin/whore dichotomy, even slightly, we cannot be trusted to. Irene and Blanche cannot be full, round characters—they must be caricatures to audiences and reviewers alike.

Much like the color imagery—from the aforementioned blues and reds to the hot pink Mistral font used on posters and in the opening credits—we can listen to the soundtrack to hear women setting the beat for the film, as stereotypically masculine as so many of the themes are. The opening sequence is set to Kavinsky’s “Nightcall,” an intense electro house track, which starts with a gravely male voice and soon switches over to a melodic female singer. The bulk of the singing on the sountrack is by women, and this should remind us that the women are tuning the strings that will make the music of the plot.

Over the climactic shooting at the pizza parlor, the haunting voice of Katyna Ranieri sings Riz Ortolani’s “Oh My Love.” Her voice soars, loudly and clearly over the bloody scene: “But this light / Is not for those men / Still lost in / An old black shadow / Won’t you help me to believe / That they will see / A day / A brighter day / When all the shadows / Will fade away.” She pleads for our protagonist, and she pleads for us, to look beyond the flat facades of what we expect, and to instead find the complexity of characters we think we know.

For the “kewpie-doll” can be the femme fatale, and the femme fatale can simply be an accomplice. Or perhaps the shadows of those labels can be lifted entirely, and we can be left with multidimensional female characters who are recognized for who they are.

———-

Leigh Kolb is an English and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri, and has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing. She lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, chickens, and garden, and makes a terrible dinner party guest because all she wants to talk about is feminism and reproductive rights.

Best Actress Oscar Nominees: Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams

Of the Best Actress nominations at the Oscars this year, two stand apart from the rest. Not because of the skill of the actresses, but because they depict real-life figures. Through these portrayals much can be learned about the ways women are represented on screen: The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, and My Week with Marilyn with Michelle Williams playing Marilyn Monroe.

Characterisations in fiction can always be dismissed with a flippant “it’s only a story,” remark. However, both of these depictions come with the burden of hours of footage and innumerable documentary evidence to inform our perception of how “believable” and accurate the portrayals are. We can directly compare scenes from these films with original footage, and clearly see how both actresses must have studied relentlessly for their roles. Nevertheless, while the intention may have been to throw light onto the motivations and private psyches of these icons, the films have in fact revealed how far there is to go before female characters on screen are reflective of what women are really like.

Margaret Thatcher became the first (and so far, only) female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. One of the most controversial politicians of the twentieth century, she was loathed by much of the country when she was eventually ousted from her position by her own party. She is now 86 years old and suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Marilyn Monroe remains the greatest female film icon 50 years since her death at the age of 36. During her career she walked out on her contract with the most powerful studio in Hollywood to form her own production company in a bid to be taken seriously as an actress in an unprecedented move that foreshadowed the downfall of the studio system.

Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher

In The Iron Lady we are introduced to Baroness Thatcher as she is today – frail, widowed and in the grip of dementia. For the first 20 minutes of the film, her vulnerable position is made clear as she holds conversations with her long-deceased husband, and her care-worn daughter attempts to help her with simple daily tasks. The ravages of her devastating illness present a character so feeble and subjugated that it is impossible to feel anything but pity for the predicament she is in. From this starting point of total empathy, we are then invited to look back over her life in a series of flashbacks.

The ferocity of the woman’s ambition is tempered with reminders of her weakened state, as the film intersperses present day scenes of awkward dinner parties and domestic banality, between expositional recreations of famous public moments. Most fascinatingly, once the role of Thatcher has been assumed by Meryl Streep, her husband Denis, played with almost farcical humour by Jim Broadbent, is always shown at the age he was when he died; it is her memory of her dead husband that appears. His presence serves both as a reminder that it is the memories of an infirm woman we are seeing, and to emphasise her dependency on him (symbolically when she is being interviewed outside Downing St after having won the Election, Denis is shown in the background, standing on the doorstep of Number 10).

Most troublingly however, is that so little time is spent showing the woman’s character. The well-known facts are retold economically – grocer’s daughter decides she will enter politics, bucking class and gender stereotypes, etc. Yet even her decision to run for Leader of the Opposition is a decision she is coerced and then fashioned into (by senior male colleagues). The time spent with her in private spaces is entirely set during the present time when she is deeply unwell, and is so heartrendingly sentimental that it lacks any insight into the complex sides of her personality.

At times during her tenure, Margaret Thatcher was despised by many, and revered by others, and it is the reasons for this that hold most interest. Yet even some of the most crucial and controversial points in her career (miners’ strikes, poll tax riots) are glossed over in montage footage. Her regrets and conflicts of conscience are briefly alluded to in confused nightmares during the present day, with no depiction of their effect on her at the time they were occurring. What is truly fascinating about a woman such as Margaret Thatcher, or any controversial political figure, is what the motivations were behind the controversies: how did she handle being so despised; what was her logic behind the audacious policies she initiated; what were those decisions were based on; how did the consequences of her decisions make her feel? The answers to these questions may not endear her to an audience, but they are vital to developing an understanding of her, and to giving a rounded portrait of the woman dubbed “The Iron Lady.” Central characters do not need to be likeable after all, but they should be believable.

Meryl Streep’s astonishing performance recreates with expertise Thatcher’s most famous public moments, her mannerisms, and speech. However, this interpretation does not deepen our understanding of the woman who led the UK into war with the Falklands, and remains the country’s longest serving Prime Minister to date.

By choosing to focus on the elderly Thatcher, The Iron Lady sanitises her by using domesticity. Her strength is simplified into stubbornness and her forthright opinions and brutally impersonal policies are diluted by the bantering affection she shares with her dead husband. The writer Abi Morgan has stated how it is the loss of power that she was most interested to depict, but as a viewer, it seems an opportunity has been missed. Time and again women are depicted in ill health, tackling menial domestic chores, mourning loved ones, and being powerless. Margaret Thatcher was a truly fearless and defiant female character, uncompromisingly ambitious and divisive. It is an insight into the challenging aspects of her personality that this film had the potential to show. However, it seems there is no film language to portray these facets of a female character. Strength, intelligence, charisma are denoted in relation to male counterparts, and it is only through the prism of her relationships with men that Thatcher is depicted – most obviously through her connection to her dead husband.

Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe

My Week with Marilyn, based on the bestselling book of the same name, recounts the experiences of “gofer” Colin Clark (the book’s author) during the filming of The Prince and The Showgirl. There is much to suggest that Colin Clark and Marilyn Monroe never even spoke, let alone ended up sharing a bed, and it is widely believed the book is entirely fictional, written along with many others to cash-in on Monroe’s legacy. However, regardless of the veracity of the book, it is interesting to look at the way the filmmakers have chosen to portray Monroe.

There is much anticipation built up in the opening scenes as excitement increases with the prospect of Marilyn Monroe arriving in England. She was the biggest movie star in the world at this time, and The Prince and The Showgirl was the first film to be made by her production company that she set up in defiance of the type-casting she received in Hollywood. As a naïve and star-struck young man, Colin is desperate to be involved with the production, and manages to secure a junior position as a gofer on the film.

The hoopla surrounding her arrival is depicted with startling accuracy when compared with the original footage, and Michelle Williams delivers a trademark “Monroe-ism” with flirtatious delight when asked if it is true that she sleeps in nothing but Chanel No 5: “As I am in England let’s say that I sleep in nothing but Yardley’s Lavender” she declares. It may be that a casual viewer would not notice that the portrayal of Marilyn Monroe is undermined from this very first sequence: however, the question is posed to her by Toby Jones, playing Arthur Jacobs, Monroe’s publicity man. The implication is that, far from coming up with her witticism spontaneously, she has been fed a line. Throughout her career, many who worked with Monroe remarked on her natural intelligence, comedic timing and incisive wit, and yet this cynical scene immediately suggests that is not the case.

As Colin finds himself indispensable to Marilyn Monroe during the course of the film’s shoot (cue to suspend disbelief) the pair take off around some of the UK’s beautiful countryside and historic sites. In the library of Windsor Castle, a wide-eyed Marilyn gasps, “Gee, I wish I could read this many books!” Such astonishingly naïve a line, it literally draws snorts of amusement at the woman’s ignorance, and is followed by, “Isn’t he the guy who painted the lady with the funny smile?” when presented with a Da Vinci etching. Yet Marilyn Monroe’s study of literature throughout her lifetime – she took up night-school classes at the beginning of her career instead of attending Hollywood parties – as well as her passion for renaissance art, are well documented in biographies. So the decision to disregard these facts, and to choose instead to exaggerate the “dumb blonde” image is no accident. No mention is even made of the fact that on this film she was a Producer, and therefore Laurence Olivier’s boss: this and their conflicting approaches to acting were reasons why their relationship on set was so fractured.

Marilyn Monroe

Although devastatingly insecure about her talent and notoriously late on set Marilyn Monroe was no victim – especially at this point in her career. Known to moments of rage, and fiercely passionate about her craft, the depiction of her as a weeping child-woman too frail to articulate her emotions is to undermine the complexity of an actress who has continued to captivate audiences five decades after her passing. That she would find solace in the arms of any young man that found himself captivated by her, is to assume not only her complete disregard for the new husband for whom she converted to Judaism to wed, but serves to perpetuate myths about her sexual promiscuity.

When looking at the characterisations of Marilyn Monroe and Margaret Thatcher in My Week with Marilyn and The Iron Lady it is crucial to remember that the way they have been portrayed is not by accident. Nor are these the only ways in which they could have been depicted, and neither should they be considered exact or entirely true. These characterisations have been constructed and depict women stripped of their complexity, strength, intelligence, wit, and dynamism: the very things that made them so successful and iconic. This inevitably raises questions about why.

Consistently the call comes for more interesting and diverse female characters in film, yet too often that means showing women who have been victimised and exploited. Even when historic figures have demonstrated extraordinary courage, making remarkable achievements in their lives, they are diminished when characterised on film. It is not because stories of amazing women do not exist, but the perspective their tales are told from. Perceptions of women as reactive and submissive stereotypes will remain in place when even the most extraordinary females are reduced to clichés, and it is up to producers, directors and writers to be fearless enough to show women as active participants in their own lives to ensure this is changed.

Gabriella Apicella is a feminist writer and tutor living in London, England. She has a degree in Film and Media from Birkbeck College, University of London, is on the board of Script Development organisation Euroscript, and in 2010 co-founded the UnderWire Festival that aims to recognise the raw filmmaking talent of women. Her writing features women in the central roles, and she has been commissioned to write short films, experimental theatre and prose for independent directors and artists.

www.gabriellaapicella.com www.underwirefestival.com www.euroscript.co.uk

Indie Spirit John Cassavetes Award Nominee Review: Bellflower

Bellflower (2011)

This is a guest post from Deirdre Crimmins.

On the surface Bellflower seems very much like a film made by men, for men. Staring director Evan Glodell, and shot on homemade cameras, the film begins by following Woodrow (Glodell) and his buddy Aiden as they build flame throwers from scratch to outfit their imaginary post-apocalyptic gang “Mother Medusa.” But while watching the film, the stereotypical “dude” exterior quickly wilts away and you are left watching an original, intimate portrayal of a love gone wrong; a love gone, horrifically, violently, and very engagingly wrong. The film ultimately defies gender constraints by showing complex characters that are developed much more than in a typical Hollywood film.

While the film starts by focusing its attention on Woodrow and Aiden’s weapon building, it is not actually about that. The film is actually about Woodrow and Milly. Woodrow first meets Milly at a local bar, where they are both casually hanging with their friends. When the bar introduces a cricket eating competition, both Woodrow and Milly flirt their way up on stage, chomp on those disgusting bugs, and end up in each other’s hearts. The next night they go on their first official date, which they spontaneously turn into a road trip from southern California to a Texas greasy spoon for barbeque. They seem like the perfect match. Both are young, impulsive, pretty hipsters, who are witty, sarcastic, and they enjoy completely launching themselves into the depths of an instant relationship with no reservations.

Milly and Woodrow

The problem comes when these two love birds attempt to settle down and turn their whirlwind romance into a stable, domestic relationship. Milly prophetically warns Woodrow that she is often the one who hurts the other person when in a relationship, but through his rose-colored glasses Woodrow doesn’t believe her. Woodrow becomes smothering, and Milly’s knee jerk reaction is cheating on him, and, ultimately choosing her previous free-spirited lifestyle over Woodrow’s stifling affection. After their heated break-up, an accident leaves Woodrow in the hospital with plenty of time to recover and wallow in his self-pity.

Here is where the ingenuity of Bellflower really begins to take shape. While a different film might follow Woodrow’s plotting to get back at Milly or, more optimistically, try to win her back, these scenarios do not happen here. Woodrow tries to pour himself back in to his work (after all, that car with built-in flamethrowers isn’t going to assemble itself), and even tries to date a friend, Courtney, who has been throwing herself at him. But none of it works, and he cannot get over Milly. He seems to snap suddenly, and wants revenge. Milly is ready for him, and after his attack, she engages with him in an ever-escalating sequence of vengeance. Both Milly and Woodward become monsters: they are unpredictable, and are hell-bent on permanently damaging each other. The film takes a decided turn from romance, to horror, along with buckets of blood, and bodies piling up.

A turn from romance to horror.

This sharp turn in tone is what makes Bellflower memorable. It is impulsive, and does not follow the typical conventions of narrative cinema. However, what makes the film successful in this execution is the extensive character development.

All of the characters in the film are complete, flawed, and at times vulnerable. We get a rare insight into the heart-to-hearts between Aiden and Woodrow. We also can see the internal conflict in Milly as she is torn between being tied down to a man she clearly loves, and the love of her independent life. Both the women and the men are portrayed as actual people, and not single-dimensional caricatures.

Additionally, the treatment of both women and men in respect to their gender portrayals is like a breath of fresh air. Though Aiden and Woodrow spend their time doing typically masculine activities in their workshop, they are doing it because they are unnaturally obsessed with Mad Max, and not because they are acting the part of manly men. And while in their shop, they are usually talking about the machines themselves, and occasionally Milly. As a woman in the audience who thinks flamethrowers are pretty bad-ass too, I am not alienated, or made to feel voyeuristic for peering into their world, because Glodell is not creating any reason for me to think that women would be unwelcome here. If you share their love for post-apocalyptic armament, then you are at home here too.

Milly herself is most decidedly a feminine woman, but the flaws in her character are just single elements that make up the larger web of her personality. When you know very little about a character aside from their flaws (think an evil Disney queen), it is easy for the audience to boil their negative aspects down to their demographics, rather than them as individuals. (For example, the evil queen in Snow White essentially communicates that all older women are evil and will punish people for being younger and more feminine than they are. That read of the queen’s character seems one dimensional, because the character of the queen is in fact one dimensional.) But when the audience is presented with multifaceted character, as Milly is presented, it is impossible to boil her down to an archetype. Milly is a woman scorned, but she is so much more than that. She is a fun loving free spirit, and a cricket eater, and a road trip enthusiast, too. If Hollywood made more of an effort to make these complex characters available for actresses, we would all benefit.

The one caveat to the glowing review of Bellflower’s equitable gender representation is the character of Courtney. She clings to Woodrow, is obviously jealous of Milly, and it is ultimately this obsession that leads to her demise. Courtney is one of the minor characters in the film, and I can only hope that were she given more screen time, she would have been additionally fleshed out and her character would have been more nuanced. Glodell has shown how well he can construct a character, but he needs to work on making even his minor characters avoid stereotypical gender pitfalls.

By showing the complexity of emotions, and human interaction, Glodell takes what could have been a simple revenge flick and makes it a film that sticks with you for some time.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and works too much.

Best Documentary Oscar Nominee: Pina

Pina: Feminism in Motion

This is a guest post from Ren Jender.

When I’m at the movies all the usual filters come down: I cry in response to the most manipulative scenes—and even more embarrassingly at coming attractions for films I would never dream of seeing. Fellow moviegoers hear my loud laugh even when the filmmaker doesn’t seem to be in on the joke. I rarely talk back to films (except to the really terrible ones), but near the beginning of Pina, Wim Wenders’ great, 3-D exploration of the late choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch’s work, a long line of dancers trudged toward the camera enacting in unison a series of gestures a woman had explained were a tribute to the changing of the seasons. The dancers slowly made their way along a sheer curtain that bisected the screen and ended somewhere in the audience’s lap. As the dancers stepped forward, trance-like, they seemed to enter the room: the empty seats in front of the stage in the film blended into the empty seats in the first few rows of the movie theater. I couldn’t help myself: I said to the screen, “Cool!”

The rest of Pina never quite equals the wonder of that moment, but it does capture, in original and striking ways, the beauty and mystery of Bausch’s work by bringing us right inside of it. Fred Astaire probably wouldn’t have approved but watching this company of dancers captured separately and up close, with their arms held out to us beseechingly, is nearly as different from watching dance onstage—or dancers filmed as it they were onstage, from a respectful distance, as trying to ice-skate is different from watching figure skaters on TV.

In “The Rite of Spring,” traces of the fresh dirt we see raked onto the stage before the piece begins become visible on the women’s thin, light-colored slip dresses and anguished faces as they offer themselves one-by-one to the group of shirtless male dancers—before running away at the last minute. The last woman dancer to offer herself doesn’t run, but the terror in her eyes and her quaking body—that seems to anticipate the male dancer will soon literally drag her through the dirt—reminded me of the unabashed purity of emotion found in silent films.

Pina isn’t silent, but long stretches pass without words. Intermittent scenes feature members of the company sharing a few memories of Pina herself. Wenders has captured each dancer alone in close-up silently looking at the camera while he or she, in voice over, talks in his or her native language—Korean, Portuguese, Croatian, Russian, Spanish and French as well as German. “You’re just going to have to get crazier,” one woman recalls Pina counseling her, but the film offers no more deep, detailed explanation and analysis of the work, no behind-the-scenes peek or even dances presented in their entirety. Pina is less like a traditional, chatty, dance documentary (of which Frederick Wiseman’s 2010 La Danse is one example) than it is like Koyaanisqatsi, which, with its time-lapsed segments set to a score by Philip Glass, also set a mood where words were superfluous.

Bausch started her company in the early 70s and the sexual politics in her work is unmistakable, not just in “The Rite of Spring,” but in most of the dances shown in the film. A group of younger men put their hands on a withdrawn middle-aged woman. They grab not just at her breasts but also at her hand—to kiss it—and take turns stroking her nose and chin as if she were a very young child. In “Dance Hall” the men in the company reach to grope the women while the women cringe, try to escape and bat errant hands away, a familiar scenario, even though the men are seated and the women stand against the opposite wall.

A man in “Café Müller” tries to force a couple into a Hollywood-style, romantic embrace, repositioning their bodies each time the woman falls to the floor from her partner’s hands, even though their pose has a progressively shorter duration each time the man tries to re-orchestrate it.

But the dances have their light moments as well: a woman in a short, red dress runs across a row of chairs, giving a sweet cry of relief, “Oooooh” as she knocks each one down. She brings to life the idea an older dancer expresses: that being in Bausch’s company is a chance to play as children play—for the rest of one’s life.

In another sequence, slender Azusa Seyama (“extremely thin” like “young” is not, we see, the given for dancers in Bausch’s company as it would be in most of the rest of the dance world) poses and grimaces alongside an impressive set of muscular arms only to pull away and reveal the male dancer flexing behind her. He then puts her arm over his shoulder and launches her into the air, whirling her around and around, an amusement park ride most of us will never get the chance to board.

We see women dancers repeatedly climb seated, male dancers as if lightly dancing up steps. The women end by poking the men’s chests with their toes—and the men smile at them throughout. In this era when so many people make grim trips to the gym part of their weekly routine, seeing beautiful bodies that are toned and sculpted to perform feats of wonder instead of just to look good is a revelation.

Although Bausch’s life’s work and her company of dancers are the focus of the film, Wim Wenders’ inventive yet unobtrusive direction and the work of his team of cinematographers, Alain Derobe, Helene Louvart and Jorg Widmer, provides the gilt frame around the portrait: sweeping crane shots, gorgeous colors and lighting effects that I hadn’t thought possible in 3-D. Color is particularly important in Bausch’s work: the bright pink of the dress first worn by an adolescent girl, then a grown woman then an elderly woman (each standing still in the middle of a line of her peers) in “Dance Hall” stuck with me long after I had left the theater, like seeing the shadow of the sun when one closes one’s eyes to a clear sky. Much of Pina has stayed with me in the same way. In a year when the Oscars have shown so little respect for women, barely nominating them outside of gender-specific categories, Pina—which is nominated for “Best Documentary Feature”—is a film well worth rooting for.

Trailer:

Ren Jender is a writer/performer/producer based in Boston who occasionally projects “radical” phrases on the sides of buildings.

Indie Spirit Best Female Lead Nominee: Adepero Oduye in ‘Pariah’

In addition to Oduye’s Best Female Lead nomination, Pariah is also nominated for the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award. The film has received numerous other nominations and awards.

This piece, by Carrie Nelson, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on January 25, 2012.

Alike (Adepero Oduye) in Pariah

I enjoyed many films in 2011. All of my favorite films of the year, however, were the ones that unnerved me with their honesty, sticking in my thoughts long after the end credits rolled. One of those films was Martha Marcy May Marlene, which I’ve already written about, and another was Pariah.

Pariah, in its simplest terms, is a lesbian coming-of-age story. Yet it is unlike any other lesbian coming-of-age story I have ever seen, largely because the film is not about a young woman’s initial discovery or self-acceptance of sexual identity. When we meet Alike (played masterfully by Adepero Oduye), she already is well aware of and comfortable with her sexual orientation. The film does not start from a place of Gay 101; there are no scenes where Alike expresses sexual confusion or the desire to be straight. It operates under the assumption that our heroine is out (at least to her friends and high school English teacher) and proud.

Instead of a traditional coming out story, Alike’s journey is about finding her place within her community. At home, her mother (Kim Wayans) encourages her to dress femininely and act ladylike. (One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the film involves Alike’s discomfort wearing a pink blouse that her mother was so excited for her to try on.) Outside of home, her friend Laura (Pernell Walker) teaches her how to convincingly present as butch and suavely seduce femmes. Alike is able to navigate both worlds, but she does not feel fully comfortable in either of them. The film follows her as she shatters the assumptions others make about her and determines what she needs to do to be truly happy.

Click here to read the full piece.

Indie Spirit Best Supporting Female Nominee: Shailene Woodley in ‘The Descendants’

Shailene Woodley as Alexandra King in The Descendants

This is a guest post from Martyna Przybysz.

WARNING: SPOILERS!

It’s almost disappointing to hear people discuss Payne’s new film The Descendants and not have them mention the absolute raw talent that Shailene Woodley is until much later in the conversation, almost in an ‘Oh yeah, she was great too!’ kind of manner. Because to me, she pretty much steals the show.

When we first meet her character, Alexandra King, the daughter of Matt (Clooney) and Elizabeth King (recently injured in a tragic boating accident), it ain’t a pretty picture. Shipped away to a boarding school for her misbehavior, Alex seems to be enjoying herself a bit too much. “Dad? My fucking dad is here!” she shouts drunkenly to a friend, and then turns to Matt with an almost condescending “What’s up dad? What’s happening?” However intrigued we may be, we get off on the wrong foot with her, and – to the horror of her father who’s now convinced that “all women in his life want to destroy themselves” – she initially falls into a cliché of a rebellious teenage girl.

But one would think that after three seasons of being Amy on The Secret Life of The American Teenager, playing a troubled adolescent was not a new territory for Shailene. And this is where one couldn’t be more wrong. I caught a few snippets of the show on YouTube, and despite wooden ensemble acting, and the whole thing being rather cringe-worthy, Shailene definitely demonstrates some charisma and talent already.

The comparison between Amy and Alex, however, doesn’t extend beyond both characters being teenagers. Alexandra King is nothing like a silly teenage girl – she’s feisty, uncompromising, and wise beyond her years, a young woman. As the film progresses she slowly but surely transforms into her dad’s biggest ally.

Alexandra (Woodley) with her father, Matt (Clooney)

The father-daughter relationship in The Descendants is far from simple. When setting off to get Alex home, Matt compares a family to an archipelago – “all part of the same whole, but still separate, and alone, and always drifting slowly apart.” This couldn’t be more accurate. The morning after the alcohol incident at the boarding school, resentment and disregard towards Matt emanate through Alex’s body language. She blames him for always being busy with work, and not paying enough attention to her. Later in the day, that accusation begins to have different connotations. It is Alex who breaks the news about her mother’s affair to her dad. She’s angry and upset with both of her parents. But the fact that she sides with Matt in her uncompromising approach to her mum’s betrayal is the first sign of her becoming a moral compass for the entire situation.

In the film’s opening monologue Clooney’s character claims that “he’s ready to be a real father now.” Shortly after Alex’s return it becomes apparent that he’s not only in need of her help with his younger tomboyish daughter Scottie, but he could also use some moral support himself. After a rocky start, Matt, Alex, Scottie, and Alex’s friend Sid set off on a journey, both literally and metaphorically. They go to Kaua’i in search of Elizabeth’s lover.

In one of my favorite scenes, before their trip, Alex, Sid and Matt are in the car, just having looked for Brian Speer’s house. Sid – however his presence is meant to be keeping Alex ‘in check’ – is being goofy and annoying, and Matt cannot take it anymore, but is too resigned to do anything about it. This is when Alex leans towards the front seat, and says “Don’t forget that I know where he lives” – that moment very subtly starts a new dynamic in their father-daughter relationship.

From the beginning Alex is supportive of Matt wanting to find the guy, and not suggestive of what he should do, but she jumps at the opportunity of going to another island, “getting out of town,” to look for him. It is during that trip that Alex’s role in the family begins to shape. Walking beside Clooney’s character, Woodley is his feisty and mouthy voice of reason – she voices all that Matt cannot or is afraid to say. And she does that effortlessly, in an ‘I don’t give a fuck’ manner.

And then, the peak moment of the film – the encounter with her mother’s lover – puts Alex in the spotlight. It is now clear how much of a strong, independent woman she’s become. She is the one who has the last word on whether they will confront the guy, and orders Matt to “not be a pussy.” He welcomes that advice, as well as he does the other times when she comes to his rescue, with a quiet relief. It isn’t until the last moment before the confrontation when Matt feels guilty about involving his underage daughter in the whole situation. But Alex is already two steps ahead of him. After all, she is the one “who sucked him in, the one who knew.”

Apart from trying to patch up a relationship with her dad, Alex has to look out for her younger sister, Scottie. It initially appears that she might not be setting the best example for her by teaching her swear words. But with her advice – however inappropriate it may be – Alex gets it right the first time. Like when she “advises” Scottie to keep away from a particular friend by saying that (the friend) “is a fucked-up hoe bag, and you need to stay away from her!” Vulgar? Maybe. But in Alex’s eyes it sends the message across, and puts Scottie in her place. And isn’t that what Matt needed when he sought Alex’s help with his younger daughter?

“Don’t spoil it for her” says Matt to Alex, when she’s pouring all of her accusations and blame out on Elizabeth. They now both need to protect Scottie, and Alex in an instant understands that she has to become more of a motherly figure. The only time that she allows herself to be really vulnerable is under the water, in the pool – releasing a silent cry at the news of her mother’s condition.

The final shape that Matt’s and Alex’s slowly maturing and re-developing bond takes is mostly visible towards the end of the film. During the goodbyes with Elizabeth, and then spreading her ashes in the Hawaiian waters, they come to a new level of understanding. They have now become equals, fully accepting of each other.

What intrigues me about Woodley’s character is her friendship with Sid. At the beginning of the film, Matt makes us aware of the fact that in her quest to self-destruction, Alex has a tendency to date older guys. And there comes Sid – a friend from school, slightly goofy, initially involved in the situation in order to ensure Alex stays “more civil.” He’s a nice addition to the ensemble, and brings much needed goofy-humor, but still, Alex whizzes through the entire situation solely on her two feet.

Apart from being a good looking long-legged siren, Alexandra King is a complex and multilayered character. She’s a feisty but intelligent and opinionated teenager, a self-assured and independent young woman, and last but not least – a compassionate and devoted adolescent daughter.

I have no clue how Shailene Woodley managed to stay in the shadows until now (because let’s face it, The Secret Life can hardly be counted), but it’s been said that she’d given “one of the toughest, smartest, most credible adolescent performances in recent memory” as Alexandra. Rawness and realness of her talent are visible throughout the film, and she definitely sets the bar high, both for herself, and other young actresses. If Alex King could say something to this, it would probably be ‘Fuck, yeah!’.

Martyna Przybysz is a Pole who resides in London, UK. She works in film production. This is her blog: http://martynaprzybysz.tumblr.com.