American Hustle – Bitch Flicks

Seed & Spark: Hollywood’s Leading Ladies: To Be a Mom or Not to Be; What Role Will You Choose?

For a very long time, women who didn’t want to have children were deemed “selfish,” because — well, I’m not quite sure why. Men, however, although maybe a disappointment to their mothers, weren’t really labeled anything. They were bachelors, at worst.

In many movies, the struggle that men have is not a result of a decision involving kids. But in most romcoms and dramas, if there is a female role of a certain age, it centers upon the subject of children.

I wanted to look at three current movies and their depiction of parents, particularly how their children influence their decision making and where the children fit into their lives.

I chose to examine three movies where the lead was nominated for Best Lead Actress in 2014 and in a fertile age range, which led to the movies ‘Blue Jasmine,’ ‘American Hustle’ and ‘Gravity.’

This is a guest post by Kelsey Rauber.

I wanted to look at three current movies and their depiction of parents, particularly how their children influence their decision making and where the children fit into their lives.

I chose to examine three movies where the lead was nominated for Best Lead Actress in 2014 and in a fertile age range, which led to the movies Blue Jasmine, American Hustle, and Gravity.

As I told a friend about the idea of this article, she immediately interjected: “But it’s not just film! It’s across the board!” She proceeded to name at least four of her very good female friends, whose husbands travel a lot, while they hold a full time job as are the primary person responsible for the child’s well-being. Is this still justified in a world where nearly two-thirds of women are the primary breadwinner of the household?

(May contain some spoilers.)

Blue Jasmine by Woody Allen

Jasmine, recently widowed, with no kids of her own but a stepson that no longer speaks to her, makes a good case for child-free living. Her husband cheated on her and embezzled lots of money. To top it all off, her mental health is questionable.

Blue Jasmine, as a movie, feels like a possible realistic take on women–who they can be, how they can fail and the choices that they make. Jasmine, obviously blinded by wealth, doesn’t quite understand what it means to care about other people.

On the other hand, we have Jasmine’s sister, Ginger, who is probably the truest depiction of an underpaid, divorced woman that I have seen in a movie in a long time. The supporting role is her role in life.

She works hard (in a grocery store), doesn’t get out often (hasn’t been to a party in years), and looks for love in all the wrong places because she was never made to believe that she is worthy.

She and her ex-husband share custody of their two boys, but the boys live with their mother. The one thing I find most fascinating about her: She doesn’t complain. She has her life and she lives it. She isn’t unhappy. As far as she’s concerned, she is doing her best and it is good enough.

None of the men that either Jasmine or Ginger date throughout the movie comment on having kids.

American Hustle by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell

Though I wasn’t a huge fan of this movie as a whole, it is interesting in its different take on the paternal role. Here, it is actually the protagonist, Irving Rosenfeld, who makes a sacrifice for his adopted son. When an FBI agent busts Irving and his partner in crime/mistress, Sydney, she proposes they pack and leave the country. Irving isn’t willing to do it, because he feels a strong sense of responsibility toward his son.

Irving’s wife, Rosalyn, is depicted as a pretty terrible mother. She constantly blows things up seemingly out of sheer boredom. She’s also portrayed as an alcoholic, which fuels her inability to take care of her child (which is her full-time job).

What is interesting here is that the viewer walks away with a feeling that Irving is a good dad. I’m not saying he is a bad father, he clearly cares about his son, but the information that we don’t get in the film is how long he disappears for when he is with his mistress— he manages to have a whole other life with Sydney. I can’t help but feel that this movie sets the viewer up to feel a certain way toward the father/son relationship, even though we really only know part of the story.

If they decided to make a sequel to this movie about the boy, I think we’d see that there is no hope for this kid; his male role models are his adoptive father, a crook, and his mom’s new boyfriend, who works for the mafia.

Gravity by Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón

Gravity is easiest to discuss given its confinement to two main characters. The viewer is left alone with two strangers for more than two hours, so inevitably things get personal.

Ryan Stone, a medical engineer, specialized in hospital scanning systems and is on her first mission in space. She gets stranded with Matt Kowalski, who is on his final mission, about to retire.

Very early in the movie, Ryan opens up about her deceased daughter: “She was playing tag—she slipped, hit her head, and that was it.”

This revelation sheds some light on Ryan’s passivity. Any loss of this magnitude would change a person’s perspective on life. The viewer is left to wonder, who was Ryan before the loss of her daughter? Was she fun and optimistic? Was she absent a lot because of her job? Would she be in space right now if her daughter was still alive?

Matt, like most Clooney characters, is a recently divorced, childless, charismatic individual. He doesn’t open up about why he doesn’t have kids. The question is never posed.

I can’t help but wonder, if Matt would’ve been replaced by a female character, would the fun, charismatic individual, who knows the ins and outs of space, not fight a bit harder to save both their lives, rather than sacrificing her own life for a woman who doesn’t give anyone the impression there’s much to live for?

I’m usually fan of movies that defy stereotype. (Un)fortunately, it still seems like a niche quality, mostly found in Indie films.

All of these movies were written by men and some depict women better than others. Generally, women are given great jobs, great flaws, and a human touch, which is great since… you know, we are human.

What does it mean to not have children, or not want them as a woman? Where can we get answers to these questions? My first response would be: Not Hollywood.

My interest in this topic erupted from my recent diagnosis with PCOS, which is one of the leading causes of infertility in women. I’m also gay, so the thought of having children had already been slightly complicated.

I don’t know if I want kids. I do know that I’d like the option.

After consulting with family and friends, I took an interest in the portrayal of parenthood, as well as the absence of normalcy surrounding not being a parent for women in Hollywood movies, which led to this article as well as the short we are crowdfunding for, titled We Had Plans.

The production company I work with, CongestedCat Productions, drives content with a less generic, more realistic take on individuals whom are usually forced into a box based on gender, sexuality, race, etc. We portray people as people and expect our audience to look at them that way and relate to them on an emotional level. We don’t do caricatures or stereotypes. If this is something you can get behind, we are making films you’ll want to see.

Kelsey Rauber is a New York City-based screenwriter and an integral member of CongestedCat Productions. She was named Grand Prize Winner in the comedy division for her feature About a Donkey by the 2012 New York Screenplay Contest. That same screenplay was also a semi-finalist in the 2013 LA Comedy Shorts Festival. She is the writer and co-creator of the comedic web series Kelsey, which premiered on blip.tv in September 2013 to rave reviews and consistent press coverage, being named a Critic’s Pick and one of the best comedy web series of 2013 by Indiewire. She is currently crowdfunding on Seed&Spark for her next projects.

Muted Female Power in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘American Hustle’

The men get the most attention for their greed and corruption. However, if we look a bit closer, the films’ women are the ones who can be traced to plant bigger, fatter seeds of avarice. This wouldn’t bother me, as I’m always in favor of more complex female characters (even if they’re unsympathetic), but what strikes me is that we barely notice these scenes. The women become victims and damsels, when oftentimes the ideas were their own.

Is this some kind of 21st century version of the femme fatale? A woman who is coercive–not only sexually, but also financially–but who isn’t taken seriously as a power player? Is it just embedded in us to not notice women’s power or ignore their parts in the narrative?

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Two of this year’s Oscars contenders–The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle–are based on true stories. These stories center around greed and corruption. The characters cheat and lie their way into and out of the American Dream.

The men get the most attention for their greed and corruption. However, if we look a bit closer, the films’ women are the ones who can be traced to plant bigger, fatter seeds of avarice. This wouldn’t bother me, as I’m always in favor of more complex female characters (even if they’re unsympathetic), but what strikes me is that we barely notice these scenes. The women become victims and damsels, when oftentimes the ideas were their own.

In both The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle, women plant the ideas that become the stories themselves. We shouldn’t point at them and scream, “Jezebel!” or blame them entirely for the greed and corruption. Instead, I think it’s important that we recognize them as part of the story, and not as characters who need saving.

The Wolf of Wall Street‘s quiet, victimized femme fatales are harder to identify. In fact, when we watch The Wolf of Wall Street, the power and corruption of bloated, desperate masculinity screams at us from every frame–women are objectified, and men hold the power.

However, some key moments in Jordan’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) professional life are influenced by women. When he loses his first job on Wall Street after Black Monday, his wife Teresa (Cristin Milioti) shows him an ad for a job at the Investors Center, where he goes to sell penny stocks quite successfully. When he starts taking people’s money in earnest, Teresa says, “Wouldn’t you feel better selling to rich people who could afford to lose money?” The rest is history.

Then come the strippers and the marching band, and the scathing “Wolf of Wall Street” article in Forbes. There’s “no such thing as bad publicity,” Teresa says.

Pretty soon, Jordan is hooked on quaaludes. He points out that the history of quaaludes–how they were first prescribed to housewives, and then became recreational drugs (this Paris Review article notes that they were prescribed to “nervous housewives” and went on to be discovered by “curious teenagers” who raided their mothers’ medicine cabinets). Here we have a shift: all of a sudden, what was once a woman’s game was now co-opted, blown out of proportion, and reckless.

Soon, Jordan is with Naomi (Margot Robbie). He goes into her apartment and is beeped by Teresa (“Go home to your wife,” he says to himself). Naomi steps out naked, and they have sex instead.

She didn’t come, though. It’s pointed out that she doesn’t come, which is important–she’s seductive, but not satisfied. She’s sexy, but not sexual. (Or maybe Scorsese was trying to avoid an NC-17 rating, since doing blow out of a prostitute’s ass crack is R material, but female orgasms are just too scandalous.)

The_Wolf_Of_Wall_Street_review_article_story_main — Naomi’s “power”

Teresa and Naomi both are suddenly victims, discarded and consumed by Jordan’s lifestyle. We feel sorry for them, and they seem to be powerless (except for Naomi’s use of withholding sex). Their motivations and their power are erased by misogyny (figuratively in the story, or literally through violence and rape). I suppose this is actually in keeping with history–a history that favors men, and typically erases women’s involvement.

However, in American Hustle, Sydney (Amy Adams) shares center stage. She is a formidable scammer. She fabricates a persona, adopts an accent, and partners with Irving (Christian Bale) as a scam artist. Her power is fairly clear, and her nomination for the Best Actress Academy Award reflects her spotlighted role.

When Sydney and Irving meet, they are both already con artists in their own right. Sydney points out to Irving “how easy it could be to take money from desperate people.” With her involvement, his business takes off. Irving was a small player before Sydney; she takes their business to the next level.

american-hustle-amy-adams-1 — Sydney has control

Before long, though, Sydney is a damsel in distress–needing to be rescued by either Richie (Bradley Cooper) or Irving, and pitted against Irving’s wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence). Her jealousy and cattiness take over, and she and Rosalyn seem at times to be liabilities because of their unbridled passion. All of a sudden, Sydney’s role as a powerful female force is whittled away. I want to be able to look at a female character and fully realize her power and potential, and recognize her role as an agent of change–even if that change is corrupt. It’s unfortunate to watch her weaken because of romantic relationships, and for her adversary to be the wife who almost tears everything down with her jealousy.

There’s a relatively happy ending for Irving and Sydney–they have legal jobs, and share custody of Irving’s adopted son, while Rosalyn has also found a new partnership. I don’t deny that Sydney is a strong character in her own right; however, a viewer could easily see her role as softened, muted somehow because of her jealousy.

It’s simply too easy for viewers to file women away in the “victim” category, or to not take them seriously as power players. Don’t get me wrong–I don’t think the answer to this problem is to always force female characters into leading roles, especially if the story on screen revolves around a male character. But there must be a way to avoid victimizing women and dismissing their motivations and actions, overshadowing them by female tropes. The male supporting characters are able to be seen as complex–American Hustle‘s Richie, Carmine (Jeremy Renner), and Stoddard (Louis C.K.), and The Wolf of Wall Street‘s Donnie (Jonah Hill), Patrick (Kyle Chandler), and Max (Rob Reiner) are likable and despicable, sympathetic and sinister. It’s possible.

I also wouldn’t want viewers to blame the women fully for the men’s actions, seeing them as simply vamps or temptresses who lead men astray. There’s some kind of middle ground that needs to be explored–and that ground is seeing women as complex human beings.

The women in The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle have power in pivotal moments, but it seems too easy for the audience to disregard due to cultural expectations and ideas about women and story lines that have them fade–just enough–into stereotypes. When women have formidable power behind the scenes, it would be nice to see that fully realized on the screen. We need a culture shift to move away from the dangerous dichotomies that wedge women into Madonna or whore, damsel or temptress. It’s up to writers and audiences to make that a reality.

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

Women’s Bodies in the Oscar-Nominated Films

What is telling is the presence of so many films that either elide or sexualize female bodies in the category that presumably represents the best of the best. The Academy clearly has a critical preference for movies about men, with women present primarily as wives and sex objects.

video-undefined-19A6CE7F00000578-696_636x358 — *The Wolf of Wall Street*

This guest post by Holly Derr previously appeared at Ms. Magazine and is cross-posted with permission.

Jake Flanagin at Pacific Standard and Victoria Dawson Hoff at Elle recently floated an interesting idea: The Oscars should be entirely segregated by gender. Their proposal would create categories such as Best Female Director and Best Female Writer in addition to the already segregated acting awards.

Though this would lead to recognition of more women working in the field, it wouldn’t solve one of the Oscars’ main gender problems: the Academy Award for Best Picture. Most films are produced by teams of both men and women, making segregation in that category impossible. And yet, the Best Picture category is where we can see the clearest evidence of the Academy’s preference for male-driven films. Only three of the nine films nominated this year even have women in leading roles: American Hustle, Gravity and Philomena.

Perhaps as significant as the lack of women characters is the treatment in these films of women’s bodies. The main female character in Her is not even human, allowing the film and its central relationship to avoid dealing with the messy reality of women with bodies. In Dallas Buyers Club, one of the two female-gender-identified characters is played by a cisgender man, effectively replacing a body that would raise interesting questions about the difference between sex and gender with one that is much easier to understand. One cannot help but wonder, if a trans actor had played the role, in which category would she be eligible for a nomination?

Where women’s bodies are present in these films, they are almost always objectified through an emphasis on their sexuality. In The Wolf of Wall Street, one woman has sex on top of a pile of money (the actor says her back was covered with paper cuts after filming) and another woman literally wears money. One could argue that these moments are designed to reveal the callousness of the male characters, but in imagining and glamorizing a world without any female characters who aren’t objectified, the film ultimately endorses its characters’ worldview. The main female character in 12 Years a Slave is literally a possession, and she is repeatedly raped. Unlike with The Wolf of Wall Street, which encourages the audience to identify with criminals, 12 Years a Slave invites us to sympathize with the victim rather than the perpetrator. In this way, the film does at least provide a critique of turning women into objects, rather than an endorsement.

o-12-YEARS-A-SLAVE-PRESS-IMAGE — *12 Years a Slave*

American Hustle provides the clearest example of Hollywood’s inability to deal with women’s bodies without sexualizing them.Though most of the fashions in which the male characters adorn themselves–from the polyester to the conspicuous chest hair to the hairstyles–are quite unsexy, the women are dressed in ways that reveal their every curve. Though plunging necklines were popular for evening wear in the era portrayed in the movie, women also wore formal dresses that, by today’s standards, look like your grandmother’s nightgowns. During the day, women wore button-up shirts with large collars; the most popular woman’s outfit of the decade was the pantsuit, and hair was more commonly worn natural than elaborately styled.

amy_adams_wardrobe_malfunction_a_p — *American Hustle*

It makes sense for Amy Adams’ character to wear a dress cut down to her belly button, but when her character impersonates a British aristocrat, it would have been more logical to have her button up. She would still have been sexy and her talent would have shone just as brightly without an outfit that invites the viewer to spend most of the scene staring at her boobs. Similarly, the notion that a troubled housewife would wear her hair in an updo all the time is incongruent both with Jennifer Lawrence’s character and with the style of the time.

The contrast between the body of Christian Bale’s character and those of his lovers is especially striking. Whereas Bale’s character has an outside that matches his inside–his corrupt, conniving character is manifest in his weight, physical health and unnatural hairpiece–Adams’ and Lawrence’s characters are gorgeous despite their twisted insides. I would love to see a version of this film in which the women’s bodies, the clothes they wear and the hairstyles they sport are as reflective of their unsavory inner selves as the men’s are.

Only two of the nine films nominated for Best Picture are genuinely about women, and the difference in how women’s bodies are treated in those films versus the other seven is telling. Sandra Bullock spends much of Gravity in shorts and a tank top, yet at no point is she sexualized. One might note that she looks strong and healthy, but one’s eyes are not deliberately focused on her breasts either by her costume or the camera. The unnecessary addition of [SPOILER ALERT!] a lost child to Gravity betrays Hollywood’s inability to portray women without reference to their biology, but even the final shot in which the camera slowly pans from Bullock’s feet to her head is much more about showing her strength than it is about showing her girl parts.

Philomena is a film centered around a woman’s reproductive past, yet it trounces the competition in its fully human representation of a woman character. Unlike Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle, Judi Dench is old enough to conceivably be the woman she portrays. Close-ups of her face make no attempt to hide signs of age, revealing a beautiful woman whose wrinkles only make her intense emotional experience all the more gripping. Though the film is about the woman’s search for her lost child, the woman herself is far more than a mother on a mission. She loves her children, but she also loves sex. She’s a woman of faith, she’s openly accepting of gay people, she loves to read and she makes friends everywhere she goes. This is not to say that every female lead in every movie needs to be a saint; most real women are not. But is there any other female character in this year’s nominees for Best Picture about whom the audience learns so much and in whom they become so deeply invested because of whom she is instead of what?

You might question whether the absence/objectification of women’s bodies in this year’s Best Picture nominees reflects on Hollywood or the culture as a whole. None of these films would necessarily be problematic on its own—12 Years a Slave in particular performs the important function of detailing the violence under which female slaves really lived and showing slave owners to be as oppressive as they really were. What is telling is the presence of so many films that either elide or sexualize female bodies in the category that presumably represents the best of the best. The Academy clearly has a critical preference for movies about men, with women present primarily as wives and sex objects.

Though segregating awards by gender would up the profile of women working in Hollywood, it would also perpetuate the notion that there is something fundamentally different about work created by women and work created by men. And it would not solve the fundamental problem at the heart of Hollywood: Movies about men are more highly valued than those about women.

For more Bitch Flicks commentary on the 2014 Academy Award nominees: 2014 Academy Award Nominations; The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

________________________

Holly L. Derr is a feminist media critic who writes about theater, film, television, video games and comics. Follow her @hld6oddblend and on her tumblr, Feminist Fandom.

The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Last year, after Django Unchained was largely snubbed at the Oscars (compared to the Golden Globes), I looked at the history of the Black actors/characters who were awarded by the Academy over the years. The results were troubling, but not surprising–much like the infographic The Huffington Post posted today about what roles that women won for over the years (here is Feministing‘s take on the findings).

It’s fairly clear what roles Hollywood is most comfortable with: for Black characters, passivity, tired stereotypes, and villainy get the highest awards. For women, wives/daughters/mothers/sisters/girlfriends–all roles in relationship to men–are rewarded.

Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards--Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o--play a kidnapped freed man/slave and slave.) — Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards–Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and Barkhad Abdi–play a kidnapped freed man/slave, slave, and Somali pirate, respectively.) *Click to enlarge.*

For men (who are almost all white), the category with the most winners is “Historical.” For men, there are countless historical roles to fill, so filmmakers can tell the stories of those who have shaped our history and culture–or at least, those whom we see and are told about. And this has been a history that has been largely unkind to Black people and women.

In an interview, late author Chinua Achebe quoted the following proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

This is a history that the lions have had to fight and claw their way out of, yet we don’t see them in Hollywood. The lions write, the lions pitch, but the hunters are not interested. (And the hunters have the money, from generations of oppressing the lions.)

I’d be happy to see the hunters start telling the lions’ history, even just a little bit (I salivate at the thought of Quentin Tarantino taking on suffragettes).

Three of this year’s Best Picture nominations (12 Years a Slave, Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle) are films that are based on real stories–and each of these stories, on some level, is about white men fucking people over so they can get rich. And at the end of these stories, the white men don’t really get punished. This is our history.

This is our history.

So how can we blame the Academy for reflecting this history back at us? Art is imitating life, and life keeps imitating art. If the two are so inextricably related (which they are), where do we go from here?

I’m not one who argues that it’s all about the Bechdel Test, or that we need to demand the Perfect Feminist Film. Some of the most potentially empowering films that I’ve seen (that feature female and Black protagonists) would be solidly placed in the “exploitation” category (Blaxploitation especially). We need to demand female and Black anti-heroes if we want true, complex characters and stories.

See this, this, and this. (Who gave the lions a dictation machine, anyway?!)

As I argued in regard to 12 Years a Slave, we have barely started to deal with our country’s history, and we need to, desperately. But still–the only white American actor who is prominently featured in the film was Brad Pitt, who plays a heroic Canadian. It’s hard to face.

In American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street, the white male protagonists are complex–they aren’t good, but they are whole. They are criminals. They are cheaters. But audiences kind of like them–or at the very least, accept them.

Our goal as lions, then, may not be to just tell our stories. We need to become hunters, and find those stories and demand that they be told. We need to face a history in which Black hunters and female hunters have been punished, and white male hunters have prevailed. We may not be able to rewrite that history, but we can live within it, and force it into our cultural narrative. (Or, as my husband said after we sat through previews last weekend, “They could just quit telling World War II stories for a while.”)

But here we are, in 2014, facing how the Academy’s choices clearly reflect our history. What do we do with this? We should get angry at history, and attempt to rewrite our future. We should be angry at an American history that has oppressed women and Blacks since its inception.

If Wolf of Wall Street reflects modern history, which it does, we see that white men are still winning (case in point: I can’t use the term “winning” without thinking about a white male actor who “allegedly assaulted, threatened, harassed, abused, and—in one incident—shot women” and yet still was the highest-paid actor on television in 2010).

If we want to tell revolutionary women’s and Black people’s stories, we’ll have to settle for a lot of tragedies. There aren’t slaps on the wrists or a few months in a cushy white-collar prison for these historical figures. There’s torture, lynching, and shame. And the villains are almost always white men.

So we’re back to the hunter. And what we know about hunters is they don’t come back bragging about their losses; they brag about their wins. It’s time for them to stop winning, and for the lions to be heard. Then, and only then, can we expect the Academy to reflect a new reality.

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

America: The Great Hustle (and Jennifer Lawrence)

Added on is the fact that American Hustle is less about the hustle and more about the American dream; each character portrays ambition and insecurities in the quest for more: a better community, more money, security, power, fame, recognition, leading to that great American end, excess.

The Fabulous Five: Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner

Written by Rachel Redfern

Go and see American Hustle, the latest from director David O. Russell. Go and see it not just for the fantastically eclectic seventies soundtrack, but for the amazing acting by Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, and for surprise roles from Louis C.K. and Robert De Niro. Go especially for Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams in brilliantly funny and evocative character studies.

I didn’t grow up in the 70s, but perhaps that’s why Russell’s larger than life film about the FBI ABSCAM sting is infinitely more interesting and more colorful than your average con film. Added on is the fact that American Hustle is less about the hustle and more about the American dream; each character portrays ambition and insecurities in the quest for more: a better community, more money, security, power, fame, recognition, leading to that great American end, excess.

In a film where everyone is ridiculous and almost a caricature, there is no true hero or protagonist, and the women of American Hustle are no exception; their big hair and red nails reveal a character just as selfish and flawed as any male counterpart. And the fact that the film exposes the deep insecurities and physical vanities of its male cast is an amazing reversal; in fact, they hold perhaps a larger role than female vanities–the opening sequence of the film featured three minutes of Bale’s morning hair routine, with his combover as the star, ending in one of the most amazing introductions to a character I’ve ever seen.

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams gave brilliant performances; while the film doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, within the context of the plot, the female interactions cover material relevant to the characters, so it makes sense. And in their few interactions, the two women were volatile and terse, and captivatingly emotional.

Jennifer Lawrence was especially fantastic, at turns both hilarious and sad, a vain, silly woman on the surface, depressed and angry and confused at the core. It’s especially impressive since Lawrence just emerged from a very different role for The Hunger Games, and here showcases her skills as the best kind of actress and comedienne: sad hiding behind funny. Some are calling Adams and Lawrence’s performances Oscar-winning, and I’m inclined to agree; in fact, the entire cast was fantastic. While I find Christian Bale in some serious need of anger management, the man is a chameleon, becoming startlingly physically different for each role. And I’ve been a fan of Bradley Cooper since his Alias days, but this is his first film role that I found especially powerful, even more so than Silver Linings Playbook. Obviously Lawrence and Bradley have found a fantastic director in David O. Russell, and hopefully this collaborative pairing will continue.

In American Hustle, Cooper, more than anyone, embodies the prime theme of the film, the need for more, and in that endeavor, becomes erratic, sexy, lustful, arrogant, angry.

Adams and Cooper’s interactions are built on a sickening chemistry that becomes more and more messed up as the film progresses; in the spirit of not spoiling the film, I’ll stop there,; but in one scene, Cooper loses control in front of Adams, and becomes terrifying and dangerous in just a few moments, with Adams attempting to calm him and keep herself safe.

While the film is a little heavy handed in its use of the “something rotten is necessary to make something even more beautiful” metaphor, the focus on re-invention, survival, power, ambition, vanity and mostly, wanting a better life, are what take this con movie to the next level: an expose of the black comedy that is the American life.

Go see the film, and listen for the amazing soundtrack and its fabulous augmentation of the characters and watch for all that was bad and good of 70s fashion.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqP09uPR8c”]