Brian De Palma – Bitch Flicks

The Sister as Revenant in Brian De Palma’s ‘Sisters’

‘Sisters’ displays an early concern with women’s liberation in mainstream American film (De Palma’s collaborator on the screenplay was Louisa Rose). Many of the film’s social complaints remain liberal talking points today: that police can be motivated by racism, that the legal institution can subject women to excessive scrutiny, and that the medical-psychiatric institution remains patriarchal and sexist in its diagnosing and treatment of women. Yet the film’s intersections with disability are more complicated.

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

Classical Hollywood horror cinema often positioned its monsters as threats to a conservative social order represented on film through family and the home. King Kong snatches Ann Darrow away from Jack Driscoll’s apartment and Dracula lures women from their intended husbands. In Cat People (directed by Jacques Tourner, 1942), a woman fails to consummate her marriage because sexual arousal turns her into a ferocious feline, and an adopted child brings a killer’s instincts to roost in The Bad Seed (directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 1956).

In the 1960s and 1970s, Women’s Liberation and the Sexual Revolution provoked a swell of reactionary horror films that reframe domestication as a potential trap that can destroy women and cause social fragmentation. Nightmarish expressions of Second Wave feminist sentiments abound. In Rosemary’s Baby (directed by Roman Polanski, 1968), a newlywed (Mia Farrow) suffers spousal rape in a plot to breed the Antichrist. The Stepford Wives (directed by Bryan Forbes, 1975) depicts husbands replacing their wives with obedient fembots. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (directed by Tobe Hooper, 1974) locates its horror in a disturbing symbolic inversion of the American family homestead.

Brian De Palma’s 1973 film Sisters is a post-Psycho (directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), pre-Halloween (directed by John Carpenter, 1978) proto-slasher that belongs to this loose cycle of liberationist horror cinema. For an early-1970s film directed and co-written by a man, according to journalist and film critic Julie Salamon some critics deemed a “perverse misogynist,” Sisters displays an early concern with women’s liberation in mainstream American film (De Palma’s collaborator on the screenplay was Louisa Rose). Many of the film’s social complaints remain liberal talking points today: that police can be motivated by racism, that the legal institution can subject women to excessive scrutiny, and that the medical-psychiatric institution remains patriarchal and sexist in its diagnosing and treatment of women. Yet the film’s intersections with disability are more complicated.

De Palma’s films have inspired protests from anti-porn feminists, but critics also champion his depictions of women and illustrate that his films are “about misogyny.” For example, Carrie (1976), a film feminist scholars both attack and defend, is a film about women’s internalized misogyny from its opening scene onward: it nonetheless passes the Bechdel Test, privileges a woman’s perspective in almost every scene, and represents a broad range of women characters, including career women.

A rote observation about De Palma is that he takes up the mantle of Hitchcockian themes and motifs: guilt, suspicion, repression, voyeurism, psychoanalytic critique, and sexualized violence. Sisters maintains this trend in De Palma’s Hitchcockian oeuvre. De Palma hired Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann to compose the nerve-wracking score. Moreover, Sisters rewrites Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and the pseudo-gothic thriller, Psycho, from a post-counterculture historical context.

Sisters grounds its thematic appraisal of domesticity within literal and metaphorical depictions of sisterhood, wherein the sisters are foils for one another. Margot Kidder plays twin Quebecois sisters Danielle and Dominique. As the plot unravels, Danielle and Dominique are conceived as Canada’s first conjoined twins, who are now separated. The film introduces the viewer to Danielle, the seemingly “sweet” sister with whom De Palma aligns our sympathies: Danielle is pleasant, flirtatious, and cast as the survivor of past trauma and an aggressive ex-husband. As an immigrant from French Canada, she is also positioned as an ambiguous “other” in a narrative that film critic and producer Steven Jay Schneider describes in The Horror Film as a “powerful depiction of monstrous female sexuality.” In this respect, the film is a sister-narrative to Psycho. The only way to conduct a proper post-mortem on Sisters — a deliberately nonsensical film — is to spoil its plot twists, so this would be a good time to pause and watch the film online.

The film frames women’s expected domestication, reified through decades of Hollywood cinema, as a concern from the opening sequence onward. Model/actress Danielle meets Phillip (Lisle Wilson), an African-American man, on the set of an exploitative Candid Camera-style television game show, Peeping Toms. The exploitative show’s stereotyping attitudes are cemented when the host gives Danielle a set of cutlery for her participation, and Phillip, dinner for two at New York’s African Room. Phillip grimaces, but agrees to bring Danielle along at her behest.

Over dinner, Danielle insists she is not a Women’s Liberationist. Soon after, her stalker ex-husband, Emil (William Finley), pleads with her to leave with him. Emil is dragged away, and Danielle, now inebriated, convinces Phillip to escort her to her Staten Island apartment, where she seduces him (it is worth noting here that interracial sexual relationships, though becoming more frequent in independent films such as Sisters, were still seldom depicted in Hollywood films in 1973). As Phillip caresses his way up Danielle’s leg, Herrmann’s soundtrack escalates to a grating cacophony and the camera zooms in to reveal a large scar on Danielle’s hip. The soundtrack suggests this scar is a source of anxiety and monstrosity. What follows is a narrative about trauma and ability, or disability, both physical and psychological. At its root is Danielle’s desire for normalcy, which she interprets as heteronormativity and motherhood.

After Danielle and Phillip sleep together, she awakens from a dream that produces moans both tormented and orgasmic. She proceeds to the bathroom, where she grips her womb in pain and places two red tablets on the sink’s basin. The pills provide a stark contrast to the apartment’s virginal, all-white color scheme (Danielle typically wears white, as well). Since these pills keep Danielle functioning and therefore —as it is later revealed — liberated, they are somewhat analogous to the contemporaneous emergence of birth control technology and its role in the Sexual Revolution. Before Danielle can take the pills, she hears a woman’s voice calling her name and enters the corridor, where she argues with her sister, Dominique, off-screen. The argument, wherein Dominique labels Danielle “disgusting” for bringing a man home, wakes up Phillip, who proceeds to the bathroom and inadvertently knocks Danielle’s pills down the sink without realizing this blunder. Danielle assures Phillip her sister only stopped by because it is their birthday, and sends him out to renew her prescription. While Phillip stops to buy Dominique and Danielle a birthday cake, Danielle realizes she is out of medication, and, panicking, calls Emil for help.

When Phillip returns, he grabs a knife from Danielle’s new cutlery set and brings her the cake while she is asleep under some blankets. Phillip’s last words are benevolently patronizing, uttered after Danielle grasps the knife: “Now you know you’re not supposed to cut the cake until you blow out the candles.” Danielle, in a moment of rage, pounces on Phillip and stabs him to death.

In this first split screen sequence, Danielle’s neighbor, Grace (Jennifer Salt), a liberal investigative journalist, witnesses the murder through her window and phones the police. The detectives predictably bungle the investigation, preferring to waste critical time railing against Grace for writing an op-ed where she called police racist “pigs.” The senior detective immediately assumes Grace is imagining things, while his partner reveals his racism when he tells her, “Take it easy, lady, these people are always stabbing each other.” The police are only motivated to investigate because they fear Grace will give them more bad press. Meanwhile, the viewer watches in split screen as Danielle wakes up and Emil arrives. Emil promptly discovers the murder, but Danielle has no memory of the event. Instead, she whispers, “Dominique, what have you done?” Emil appears shocked by Dominique’s presence, but he exerts a patriarchal control over the situation, shaking Danielle out of her catatonia and telling her, significantly, “Put on some makeup. It must look as though nothing has happened.” In a scene reminiscent of Norman cleaning up after “Mother” commits murder in Psycho, Emil helps Danielle clean the apartment and stash the corpse in a fold-out sofa (if that sounds implausible, De Palma films this action in one shot to demonstrate it is possible to hide a body this way). He avoids running into the police with a garbage bag full of blood-soaked rags by seconds.

Casual and institutional sexism repeatedly thwart Grace’s attempts at investigation. When Grace and the detectives confront Danielle, the police sympathize with Danielle, and the viewer can appreciate why they would: Danielle is charming, demure, beautiful but modest — a traditionally feminine woman who represents herself as a victim, the lonely divorcee. Grace, on the other hand, is anything but her namesake: shrill-voiced, abrasive, accusatory, and clumsy enough to drop the cake she discovers, destroying a key piece of evidence. The police threaten to charge Grace unless she drops the matter.

Grace stubbornly refuses to abandon the investigation, and viewers can assume this is partly an act of rebellion against her mother, who belittles her journalism career and berates her about finding a husband. Eventually, Grace confirms her suspicion that Danielle had a sister, about whom she is lying. While watching a documentary, Grace hears a psychiatrist in patriarchal clergy robes describe Dominique as “disturbed” and Danielle “sweet” and “so responsive,” but says the latter can only be that way because of her sister. After, Dominique is said to have died during an emergency surgery that separated the conjoined twins.

De Palma once responded to accusations of misogyny with a quip: “I’m always attacked for having an erotic, sexist approach — chopping up women, putting them in peril. I’m making suspense movies! What else is going to happen to them?” (Caputi 92). While this blasé attitude might not have won him more feminist fans, Sisters’ tragic denouement has a Brechtian pedagogy meant to gall and galvanize liberal viewers.

When Grace raids the psychiatric hospital where Emil conceals Danielle, the investigation falls apart. After an encounter with a patient who shrieks because Grace asks to use the telephone (the incident presents another metaphor for women obsessively seeking false security in a domestic space), Emil easily convinces his staff that Grace is another deluded patient who needs sedating. Grace is dosed (as in Rosemary’s Baby, wherein Rosemary is restrained on a bed before being penetrated and drugged with a needle, the incident plays out like rape), and Emil begins to use hypnosis to convince her there was no murder.

The sequence that follows is metacinematic, unreliably narrated, and only logical in a surrealist sense: Grace imagines herself as Dominique, attached to Danielle, in the documentary she had viewed on the sisters. Therein, it is revealed that Danielle was traumatized as a child when others called her “freak.” Later, in the context of an inappropriate relationship with her doctor, Emil, she developed a strong desire to have a baby. Unfortunately, Dominique was always there to observe Danielle’s sexual relationship with Emil. In a surgery scene that plays out like a black mass attended by a host of spectators, Emil separates the sisters using a cleaver from the cutlery set Danielle was given at the beginning of the film. The film’s metaphor imagines Danielle and Grace as sisters, with women’s domestication and innate urges for procreation being to blame for career women’s suffering. For Danielle to have the “normal” life she desires, it is necessary to excise less “feminine” qualities and pursuits, as represented through Grace and Dominique.

After this sequence, Danielle is provoked by traumatic memories. Emil assures her he loves her and kisses her, which of course triggers her to murder him. Since the police now know Danielle is a murderess, they are ready to believe Grace. Unfortunately, Grace has been brainwashed by a patriarchal representative of the psychiatric establishment and she refuses to cooperate. She tells the police “there was no murder” from what looks like a teenager’s bedroom at her mother’s house, having regressed to a childish state where she now depends on domestication.

As with Rosemary’s Baby, Danielle’s desire for motherhood becomes a site of horror. Similar to Irena (Simone Simon) in Cat People and Carol (Catherine Deneuve) in Repulsion (directed by Roman Polanski, 1965), Danielle’s murderous tendencies erupt when she is sexually aroused or confronted. And like Norman Bates, she dissociates herself from the act of murder by adopting the persona of a dead female family member that once kept her bound in place. Sisters is, perhaps, ableist in how it associates congenital disability with horror. Yet Danielle’s monstrosity is located more in the discrepancy between her desire to fulfill a “normal” feminine role by denying her disability and the mental illness this provokes after her sister’s death. In De Palma’s film, the sister is the revenant reminding Danielle of the expense paid for her traditionally feminine identity, her liberated actions, and her domestic desires. Since Danielle’s desire for a child preempts Dominique’s accidental death (or murder), the opening credit sequence is more harrowing in retrospect: twin sisters, developing in utero.

References: Caputi, Jane (June 15, 1987). The Age of Sex Crime. Popular Press. p. 92.

Dr. Stefan Sereda is a writer/researcher with a PhD in English and Film Studies and an MA in Literature with a focus on gender and genre. His publications on American cinema and global media have appeared in A Companion to Martin Scorsese, The Memory Effect, Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century, the Directory of World Cinema: Africa, and ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature.

Sex, Violence, and Girls in Pink Dresses: Thoughts on Prom Horror Flicks

Like most horror films, prom horror is about teenage girls and what they chose to do with their bodies. As a culture, it’s a topic we find truly terrifying.
We’re taught to think of prom night is an important moment, as a signifier for burgeoning, barely contained sexuality and transformation. It’s the night good girls become bad girls, shy girls reveal their hidden confidence, and ugly girls shed their glasses or comb their hair and look almost beautiful, imperceptible from their peers.

Like most horror films, prom horror is about teenage girls and what they chose to do with their bodies. As a culture, it’s a topic we find truly terrifying.

We’re taught to think of prom night is an important moment, as a signifier for burgeoning, barely contained sexuality and transformation. It’s the night good girls become bad girls, shy girls reveal their hidden confidence and ugly girls shed their glasses or comb their hair and look almost beautiful, imperceptible from their peers. Prom is also held up as a sort of pre-wedding, “the night” where a couple must have special sex in a fancy hotel room with roses on the bed and special lingerie, and the night when “good girls” decide to lose their virginity. It’s as close as we have to a coming of age ceremony, like a young woman’s first menstruation or first sexual encounter, prom night is a milestone where she can be said to change from girl to woman. In the slasher Prom Night, it’s no coincidence that the high-schoolers face the killer’s vengeance on this particular night, when they enter adulthood and are finally old enough to face the consequences of their actions.

Before the pig blood is dropped on her, Carrie feels her dreams have come true.

In the three Carrie films, Carrie White’s first period comes just ahead of her senior prom, and along with it, the full bloom of her telekinetic powers. Her prom also awakens her repressed sexuality, as Carrie admires her body in her prom dress, displaying the tops of her breasts, which her mother has taught her are shameful “dirty pillows” she must always cover, for the first time. In the 2013 remake, Carrie’s delight in her power is also tied to her sexuality as she makes slightly orgasmic facial expressions when using them.

Part of the extreme resentment, Chris, Carrie’s chief tormenter, shows toward her, can be seen as stemming from jealousy of Carrie’s excitement about prom and with it, sex. For Carrie, these things come to mean rebellion and at least initially, in preparing for prom, are empowering for her. Meanwhile, Chris, in the original 1976 film at least, appears to treat sex as a chore. What appears to turn her on, is her hatred of Carrie; she licks her lips before releasing the bucket of blood and talks about Carrie while fooling around with her boyfriend.

Besides the whole telekinetic powers thing, the part of Carrie that has always seemed unrealistic to me is that Carrie, a girl who has been tormented and abused by her classmates her whole life, even goes to prom. It’s always been slightly unbelievable that she would accept Tommy’s invitation without insisting it had to be the set up for a trick. But maybe she believes in what pop culture has always told us about prom night, that it has transformational powers, a strange magic that could make one the most popular boys in school ask out an outcast and end up really liking her upon getting to know her, that all her classmates could see the change in her and honestly vote her prom queen. After all, visually she does transform. She’s beautiful in her new dress, everyone is shown admiring her and as she gains control over her powers, she has become much more confident. With the final show of her telekinetic revenge from the stage, abused Carrie transforms into something monstrous, but understandable. On prom night, she gains her autonomy and reveals and revels in her adulthood.

Lola and Brent pose for twisted prom photos.

Likewise, in The Loved Ones, a 2009 Australian film, a shy, quiet outcast (Robin McLeavy) reveals her true self on prom night. In the beginning of the film, she asks her crush, Brent (Xavier Samuel), to the prom, and is rejected. At school, she appears awkward and weird, and is never really an option for Brent, who has a conventionally attractive, sexually confident girlfriend. Horror arrives when Brent is kidnapped by Lola and her father, and learns that they have been regularly kidnapping teenage boys in search of “the one” for her. Lola’s father has set up a prom night for her in their own house, including a spinning disco ball, showers of glitter, and her favorite song on the stereo, and within it, she is powerful and frightening, a monstrous creature who tortures Brent and believes that on prom night, this may make him love her.

Horror films can also play on our culture’s fear of sex as an act that can change a good girl into a bad girl, by showing a virgin literally turn into a insatiable succubus after her first time. Prom Night 2: Hello Mary Lou follows Vicki (Wendy Lyon), a virginal sweetheart nominated from Prom Queen at her high school, who becomes possessed by the spirit of dead 1957 Prom Queen, Mary Lou (Lisa Schrage). Like Carrie, Vicki’s sexuality is repressed by her religious mother, who refuses to buy her a new dress for prom, as she finds them inappropriately sexual.

‘Bad girl’ Mary Lou was killed after being named prom queen in 1957 — “Bad girl” Mary Lou was killed after being named prom queen in 1957

Though it’s a horror film and she goes on a murderous rampage, we are meant to understand Mary Lou is a “bad girl” when she is shown confessing her sexual exploits to a priest and refusing to repent for them. Instead, she leaves her phone number in the confessional, and writes, “For a good time, call Mary Lou.”

Using Vicki’s body, she lures students to her death by promising sex and in gratuitous one scene, chases a rival through the locker room, completely nude and attempts to seduce her. All of Mary Lou’s villainy is tinged by her equally villainous sexuality, including one scene where she, within Vicki’s body, gives Vicki’s father a passionate kiss.

Vicki is an innocent young girl who Mary Lou uses to reap her revenge

The rituals of prom night–getting dressing and applying makeup in front of the mirror, posing for pictures, crowning of the prom queen, and the first slow dance–are familiar enough as cultural markers that horror movies can illicit a strong response by perverting them. Prom horror typically lulls viewers into complacency before everything turns dark, by playing some of these traditional markers straight and suggesting the film is merely a happy story of prom night as wish fulfillment. Lola and Brent’s story is intercut with scenes of the more realistic, wish-fulfillment prom night experienced by his best friend. Similarly, the 2008 remake of Prom Night led up to the big night with scenes of the young characters excitedly getting their hair done, trying on their dresses and sticking their heads out of the limo’s sunroof, all set to bright poppy music. In The Loved Ones, Lola and her father force their captives though a series of twisted prom night rituals, where they eat dinner together, dance under the disco ball, pose from pictures, and are crowned prom king and queen, only through all this, Brent’s feet are nailed to the floor and the prom photos display him more like a trophy than a date, with Lola’s initials carved across his chest. Early on, Lola’s moment of transformation is perverted, as while she changes into her perfect prom dress, she tells her father to stay and he watches, lustful from the door.

2008’s Otis is a similar type of captive prom date film. In it, a pedophilic serial killer (Bostin Christopher) kidnaps a teenage girl, Riley (Ashley Johnson) and forces her to play the role of the girl who rejected him in high school and help him reenact the prom he dreamed of. Through the film, he drags her though a prom tableau set up in his basement: a girly bedroom where he calls to ask her out, a car where he forces her to pleasure him and finally a dance floor where he holds the actual prom. Otis is influenced by an idea of what a classic, even cookie cutter prom should be. In his prom-fantasy, he dates a blonde cheerleader, drives a classic car and is even named prom king.

It’s interesting that pink dresses are so common in these films. Carrie’s homemade prom dress is pale pink, all the better to show off the pig blood stains. Mary Lou’s dress in the 50s is pink, as is the cookie cutter dress Otis buys for Riley. In The Loved Ones, pink is Lola’s power color and her room is full of it. Both the paper crown and the prom dress her father buys her are bright, stinging pink, that nearly glows. Pink is a traditionally girly color, one that signifies childhood and innocence, and it’s no coincidence that the chief wish fulfillment prom film is called Pretty in Pink.

Lola’s prom dress allows her to transform

As a signifier of adulthood, prom night also suggests a dismissal of childish things, shortly after, there will be graduation, maybe college, and the graduating class will move out of their childhood rooms. In a disturbing scene in Hello Mary Lou, a possessed Vicki, all dolled up for prom, sits atop the pastel colored rocking horse in her bedroom, as it comes alive, with a twisted, demonic face, red eyes and an outstretched tongue. Likewise, Lola perverts her dolls and stuffed animals by setting them in sexual positions, showing the uncomfortable melding of childhood and adulthood in her mind.

On prom night, a possessed Vicki plays with her childhood rocking horse

That these girls chose pink dress also suggests their purity is slightly tarnished or that their dresses are white that has been diluted by blood. Moreover, it suggests a junior or training wedding.

Like a wedding, prom night is characterized by patriarchal rituals that make a father responsible for his daughter’s sexuality. In pop culture, fathers joke about having to lock up their daughter on prom night and worry about them getting pregnant or secretly giving birth in the bathroom. It’s the first time they are asked to see their daughters as sexual beings and trust them to be grown-ups going out into the world.

In typical prom rituals, a father meets his daughter’s date when he comes to pick her up and in shaking his hand, symbolically hands her over to him. Otis goes as far as to call Riley’s father, once he already has her held hostage, to ask for his permission to take her out. In The Loved Ones, Lola’s incestuous desire for her father helps paint her as monstrous. As they dance together, she tells him she can’t be satisfied with any of the teenage boys they have kidnapped because he is the only one for her.

Moreover, though the characters in these prom horror stories arrive with a date, they tend to leave alone, as if abandoned after sex, for a “walk of shame” the morning after. In Otis, Riley escapes, still in her prom dress, while The Loved Ones ends with a morning after chase sequence through the outback between Lola and Brent and his girlfriend. In this last fight, Lola appears to lose both her strength and confidence, as if depleted by her prom night. Likewise, after leaving the school gym, Carrie enacts more brutal wrath on her long walk home. In all versions, she walks alone through the town, as if possessed, until she arrives home for her final confrontation with her mother, her final symbolic shift into adulthood.

Carrie transforms a walk of shame into something triumphant — *Carrie* transforms a walk of shame into something triumphant

A culture’s horror stories have always reflected what they finds terrifying, by exaggerating it and moving it into allegorical contexts. To some extent, this has always included female sexuality, from the fear of liberated women in Dracula to the virgin/whore dichotomy of the slasher film, and probably always will. Prom continues to resonate as, displayed by last year’s Carrie remake. Although the film has its problems, the basic storyline continues to be as relevant today as it was in the 70s. Prom Horror will likely continue to crop up every few years, shaded by whatever trend in their teenagers’ lives are frightening adults at the time, like the use of cyber bullying in Carrie.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Prom and Female Sexual Desire in Pretty in Pink and The Loved Ones

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘Passion’ and ‘Crime d’amour’: Women and Corporate Power Plays

Brian de Palma’s Passion

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

Brian De Palma’s film Passion is a sleek, sexy, beautifully shot neo-noir thriller remade from Alain Corneau’s 2010 French film Crime d’amour (or Love Crime in English).

Crime d’amour

I always think it’s valuable to examine how films deviate from their source material because those are indications of deliberate choices that can say a lot (whether accidentally or intentionally). Honestly, the films aren’t tremendously different in an overt way, as most scenes are shot-for-shot, line-for-line identical, the basic differences being the languages of each and the uniquely lush, decadent darkness De Palma brings to his works. However, there are a few intriguing, telling differences that bear noting, and therein lies the meat of my analysis.

In Crime d’amour, the manipulative, power-wielding character Christine is played by the acclaimed Kristin Scott Thomas, who is considerably older than her protege, Rachel (pictured above). This creates a more maternal relationship between them, giving Christine the additional power advantage of age. The sexual energy between the two is therefore more illicit and is unreciprocated by the younger Rachel. However, in Passion, the actresses Rachel McAdams as Christine and Noomi Rapace (whom I always love, love, love) as Rachel are much closer in age, so the power dynamic between them rests purely on the weight of Christine’s corporate power and her ability to manipulate people however she sees fit. The sexual energy between the two is complicated, but palpable with love, hatred, desire, and emulation thrown in the mix. This dynamic ensures that the entire film, including the “love crime” that occurs, is about the relationship between these two women and not the man between them (with whom they’re both having sex). He remains ever a pawn they both use against each other.

Christine and Rachel kiss and later, at Christine’s insistence, profess love for each other.

I won’t go into too great detail about the next difference between the two films because it’s spoiler-ridden, but they both approach the story’s murder in opposite manners. In Crime d’amour, we watch the plotting of the crime, unsure as to the perpetrating character’s sanity, motivation, and the final outcome of conviction versus acquittal. De Palma’s Passion, however, is more of a classic noir whodunit, where we’re constantly questioning guilt versus innocence, genuine emotion versus manipulation, and reality versus insanity/fantasy. Both approaches are engaging and enjoyable to watch, so I’ve got no complaints for either interpretation.

The murderer wears a mask that’s a mold of the victim’s face to chilling effect in Passion.

The last most significant change between the original film and its remake is the gender shift for Rachel’s assistant. In Crime d’amour, her assistant is Daniel, a man, and in Passion, her assistant is Dani (played by Karoline Herfurth), a woman. This shift makes only women the major players in Passion. We are left with a power struggle among three femme fatales, all smart, driven women who know what they want and use whatever means necessary to achieve their desires. This triumvirate of femme fatales, full of intelligence, secrets, and cunning, all battling for supremacy, is something I’ve never seen before on the silver screen. Their deep-laid game is impressive in its scope, and it is so exciting to watch three strong female characters unleashing their power.

The power dynamic shifts as assistant, Dani, reveals her knowledge to Rachel, mirroring the power play between Rachel and Christine.

My major critique of both films, in particular Passion, is the very stereotypical female-ness of the power plays the films explore. Love, sex, desire, humiliation, as well as the manipulation of people and emotions for revenge or personal gain are all tactics traditionally coded as female. Though this tale takes place in the male-dominated corporate world, many (if not all) of the female characters’ actions are dictated by emotion. We are given to see the cycle of mentor and protege being corrupted, ending with the protege on top, first with the relationship between Christine and Rachel and then with Rachel and Dani. It is brutal, cutting deeper than the loss or gain of a promotion due to a superior’s greed, insisting that a hierarchy must exist between women; equality is not an option. Christine says to Rachel, “There’s no back-stabbing here. It’s just business”, and Rachel later repeats it back to her. Both times, the statement is a lie. Both times it shows the opposite to be true. The implication, of course, being that women aren’t capable of divorcing their feelings from business, that the manner in which they gain and keep success, even in a corporate setting, is through ruthless manipulation and, its darkest permutation: out-and-out emotional blackmail.

Rachel devolves after Christine emotionally violates and humiliates her.

Both Crime d’amour and Passion pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors. Unfortunately, these women are slaves to emotion, which is their ultimate weakness, their fatal flaw. I don’t think the films go so far as to suggest that women don’t belong in a highly competitive corporate work place and aren’t capable of being powerful, high-level executives, but I also think the films stop just short of insinuating that. However, Passion, in particular, really showcases strong female characters who are smart, successful, and ambitious without masculinizing them as is common in film portrayals of powerful women, especially in a corporate setting. These women are complicated and morally ambiguous people replete with compelling layers, leaving viewers wondering whether we hate or love them for their brash disregard for the rules and their deeply ingrained self-preservation instincts. Despite the films’ weaknesses (and our heroines’), it’s always refreshing to see powerful, multifaceted women taking charge of the big screen because it happens not nearly often enough.

‘Passion’ and ‘Crime d’amour’: Women and Corporate Power Plays

Brian de Palma’s Passion

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

Brian De Palma’s film Passion is a sleek, sexy, beautifully shot neo-noir thriller remade from Alain Corneau’s 2010 French film Crime d’amour (or Love Crime in English).

Crime d’amour

Christine and Rachel kiss and later, at Christine’s insistence, profess love for each other.

The murderer wears a mask that’s a mold of the victim’s face to chilling effect in Passion.

The power dynamic shifts as assistant, Dani, reveals her knowledge to Rachel, mirroring the power play between Rachel and Christine.

Rachel devolves after Christine emotionally violates and humiliates her.

Motherhood in Film & Television: The Evolution of Margaret White

Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek (1976 film)

This piece is from Monthly Contributor Carrie Nelson.

(Warning: Contains spoilers about Stephen King’s Carrie and its film and stage adaptations.)

I love Stephen King’s Carrie, and not just because we share the same name. More than anything, I love the way that Carrie honestly explores the tensions and horrors of being a teenage girl. The details of the story aren’t terribly realistic – not many teenage outcasts have telekinetic powers, and few high school send-offs involve murdering everyone at the prom. But the anxiety around getting your first period, the fear that the boy asking you on a date is only doing it as a prank, the compulsion to make fun of others even though you know it’s wrong – these are normal parts of being a teenager. King’s book taps into those experiences incredibly well, which is why the story has resulted in numerous artistic adaptations.

Carrie was first made into a film in 1976. Since then, it has become a stage musical, a made-for-TV movie, and it will soon be made into a new film, directed by Kimberly Peirce and starring Chloë Moretz in the title role. Every adaptation of Carrie contains similar elements (notably the torturous shower scene in the beginning and the fatal prom toward the end), but other aspects of the story change slightly in each incarnation. What I want to talk about today are the ways in which the character of Margaret White, Carrie’s religious fundamentalist mother, has evolved over the years. Margaret is arguably the most frightening character in Carrie, and I believe that she has only become more disturbing in each new incarnation, but for a different reason than one might suspect.

In the 1976 Brian De Palma adaptation, Piper Laurie plays Margaret. Laurie’s interpretation of the role is iconic, but something about the performance has always rung false to me. Laurie’s Margaret is loud and bombastic and evil, to a degree that’s almost campy. In particular, the scene in which Margaret dies is significantly different from King’s novel. In the book, Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to stop Margaret’s heart, but in the De Palma film, Carrie uses her powers to send knives flying at Margaret, crucifying her and mimicking the imagery of Saint Sebastian that torments Carrie throughout the film. It’s an unforgettable image, and given the visual nature of cinema, it makes sense that this particular detail would be modified from the book. (It’s important to note, however, that the De Palma adaptation is the only version with this ending – all others I’ve seen remain true to King’s original ending.) However, the excessive spectacle of the scene (and the film as a whole) lessens the emotional impact. Laurie’s Margaret is shocking and disturbing, but there’s an emotional element missing from the performance, which has always bothered me.

Marin Mazzie and Molly Ranson (2012 musical revival)

I saw the 1976 version of Carrie for the first time nearly five years ago, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized what doesn’t work for me about Laurie’s performance – it’s entirely one-dimensional. It’s cartoonish, even. It’s hard to be frightened by Laurie’s Margaret when she seems so unlike any mother who could realistically exist. But that isn’t how the character has to be. I thought about this in March, when I saw the MCC Theater’s Off-Broadway revival of the Carrie musical. Now, I did not see the original version of the musical, which opened on Broadway in 1988 and closed after only five performances, making it one of the biggest Broadway flops of all time. I cannot speak to that version, but I can speak to the heavily revised revival, in which Marin Mazzie played an unnervingly sympathetic version of Margaret. Though the story is the same, and Margaret is still deeply disturbed and abusive, there is a greater emphasis on Margaret’s inner struggle and the reality that she truly wants to help her daughter. In the second act, Margaret sings, “When There’s No One,” a moving ballad that reveals her intention to murder her daughter and the despair she feels about that decision. Rather than solely seeing Margaret’s evil and rage, in this version we see her rationalization. We see a fully developed character, a person who truly believes she is making the right decision, which makes the decision even more horrifying. There is nothing cartoonish about Mazzie’s Margaret, which made her far more terrifying than Laurie’s Margaret ever could be.

Patricia Clarkson (2002 made-for-TV movie)

I feel similarly about Patricia Clarkson’s interpretation of Margaret in the 2002 made-for-TV movie version. In a dramatic shift from Laurie’s excitable reading, Clarkson nearly whispers all of her dialogue. Clarkson’s Margaret is completely understated, so much so that you almost believe she might come around and change her mind about her daughter. Of course, she doesn’t, and the scene in which Margaret tries to kill Carrie is shocking not because of the spectacle but because it catches you off-guard. This isn’t to say that the 2002 Carrie isn’t filled with spectacle – it is, sometimes to a distracting degree. But Clarkson’s performance as Margaret remains the calm, quiet element of the film, making her ultimate act of violence against her daughter all the more frightening.

Kimberly Peirce’s highly anticipated remake of Carrie will be released in 2013. Little has been revealed about Peirce’s plans and vision, but Chloë Moretz promises the film “really looks into the relationship of Margaret and Carrie.” Julianne Moore recently signed on to play Margaret, a decision that makes me incredibly excited and anxious to see the film. I believe Moore will be able to add subtlety and nuance to the role, adding layers to Margaret’s character that have never been present before. I look forward to reading more about the film and Moore’s work on it as it enters production.

I recently spoke with a friend who said that she didn’t think Carrie should be remade. She said the original is good enough as it is, so why change it? While I agree that the 1976 version is a classic, and nothing will ever replace it in cinematic history, I do think that much more can be done with the story. Particularly, I believe Margaret has much more room to grow as a character, and if the 2002 television film and the 2012 stage adaptation tell us anything, it’s that Margaret’s horror doesn’t come from her anger and violence – it comes from the completely calm way in which she rationalizes her beliefs and her actions. I hope to see Peirce’s version take Margaret even further as a character. I don’t know what that will look like, but I am anxious to find out.

Fan-designed poster for upcoming remake

Carrie Nelson is a Bitch Flicks monthly contributor. She was a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.