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Attachment Mothering in ‘Room’

While both the novel and the film are sure to point out Ma’s anguish, ‘Room’ can be seen to paint a romanticized, sometimes insensitive and propaganda-esque…fantasy of immersive, attachment motherhood in which nothing else matters but the child.

This guest post is written by Scarlett Harris.

[Trigger Warning: discussion of rape, and sexual assault]

I remember a friend telling me that she fantasized about being in prison for a year as it was the only way she would have time to complete all her projects uninterrupted.

This anecdote immediately came to mind at a panel discussion after a screening of Room. The female audience member who asked the question recalled a book club talking point scribbled in the back of her copy of the 2010 novel by Emma Donoghue wondering if the author (who also adapted her book for the screen, and was nominated for an Oscar) idealizes the solitude of imprisonment. While both the novel and the film are sure to point out Ma’s anguish, Room can be seen to paint a romanticized, sometimes insensitive and propaganda-esque — later parts of the book, particularly Ma’s post-escape prime-time interview, politicize things like breastfeeding, the prison industrial complex and abortion — fantasy of immersive, attachment motherhood in which nothing else matters but the child.

When I reached out to panel member and Melbourne Writers Festival program manager Jo Case to expand further on her thoughts about Room, she said that the story “explores that mythical ideal of motherhood: all-encompassing, fully present, hyper-attentive. Completely child-focused. It’s our culture’s impossible (and usually untenable) ideal.”

Further to this, I found Room to be a pretty obvious metaphor for attachment parenting. Jack is still being breastfed at age five — though with a lax diet born out of captivity, breastfeeding makes sense. Ma is always there with Jack, relentlessly threading eggshells onto Egg Snake, fashioning Labyrinth out of toilet rolls, and encouraging Jack to use his imagination because what else is there to do in a 10 x 10 soundproofed shed. Attachment parenting can induce in parents the loss of their sense of self if and when the child goes off to school — or in Room’s case, Outside — and makes a life for themselves independent of the close knit parent/child union. Despite Ma’s relish at re-entering the world and thus, finding a semblance of her former self separate from Jack, their intense bond noticeably loosens the moment they arrive at the clinic (more so in the book than the film). Jack is then the one to look back at Room through rose-colored glasses and in the way the story is told post-escape, with the added impetus of being from Jack’s perspective, who can blame him: “Ma was always in Room” while he is often left to fend for himself “in the world” while Ma tries to make sense of her resentment (“Do you know what happened [to my high school friends]? Nothing. Nothing happened to them.”), depression and PTSD.

All we have to do is look at Jack’s heightened intelligence and his being placed on a pedestal in “saving” Ma to understand that he could be viewed as the ultimate fantasy for all those parents (all parents?) who claim their child is “special,” “gifted,” and “advanced for their age.” You know the ones.

I certainly do: my day job is at a cultural institution where I often hear from parents who insist that their children experience things aimed at kids twice their age and, in some cases, even at adults. Jack is familiar with stories well above his age level, such as The Count of Monte Cristo, told to him by Ma. His memory is impeccable and his literacy skills are strengthened by rereading the few books permitted in Room by Ma’s tormenter, Old Nick, and playing “Parrot,” a game that consists of repeating what Jack hears on talk shows and soap operas. In a society that often foists iPads and smartphones into its children’s hands, Jack’s upbringing is romanticized, especially in the early stages of the story when he is blissfully unaware that anything exists outside of Room and the make-believe world of TV (though Jack is permitted half an hour or so of screen-time, Ma is reluctant to grant more as “TV turns your brain to mush”) is real.

Donoghue is quick to deny this, though, telling Katherine Wyrick of BookPage:

“Nobody wants to idealize imprisonment, but many of us have such complicated lives, and we try to fit parenting in alongside work and socializing… We try and have so many lives at once, and we run ourselves ragged.

“Today parenting is so self-conscious and worried, so I wanted to ask the question, how minimally could you do it? … [Ma] really civilizes and humanizes Jack. … She passes along her cultural knowledge to him, from religion to tooth-brushing to rules.”

Room may be a very successful literary and filmic thought experiment for Donoghue. But it’s also a fantasy in which one of the biggest luxuries for parents — time — reigns supreme. In a recent parenting column on Jezebel, Kathryn Jezer-Morton writes:

“Time is one of the most valuable commodities in post-industrial capitalism. It’s valuable because it’s scarce; we run around acting so busy all the time, partly because our jobs are squeezing us for it, and partly because there are so many competing entities constantly vying for our time and attention. […]

“Spending the first 10 months at home with each of my kids was enormously empowering. By the time I returned to work, I was ready for the company of adults again; work even seemed easy compared to caring for a nonverbal person all day. The time we’d spent together absolved me of a lot of the guilt that many people feel when they first put their kids in the care of others. It also gave me the privilege of feeling confident — even a little cavalier! — about my parenting choices.”

Donoghue discusses similar ideas in an interview for The Independent upon the release of the book:

“It may sound outrageous, but every parent I know has had moments of feeling as if they’ve been locked in a room with their toddler for years on end. Even 20 minutes of building towers of blocks can feel like a lifetime. I’m not saying that Ma’s experience is every mother’s experience, not at all. … But there’s a psychological core that’s the same: the child needs you so much that you don’t fully own yourself anymore.”

Utilizing time for things other than child-rearing is often deemed the height of selfishness, for parents and the child-free alike. With Ma’s characterization comes a certain selfishness (or self-preservation) voiced by the post-escape prime-time interviewer who asks Ma whether she ever considered relinquishing Jack to Old Nick to drop off at a hospital in the hopes of giving him a better — freer — life. While I can see where the interviewer is coming from — and maybe in a perfect world, sure, Jack would have grown up under different circumstances — but he’s a five-year-old who challenges his mother’s assertion that there are two sides to everything (“Not an octagon. An octagon has eight sides.”) and can spell feces, for crying out loud! How many “gifted” children of a similar age but very different circumstances can we say the same of?

Ma may conceive of the great escape in order to get Jack out of Room but, as the Nova panel discussed, she’s also hoping he’ll be savvy enough to lead his rescuers back to her. Again, putting so much faith in a five-year-old could be considered delusional, but that speaks to the trauma of an abductee who’s been raped almost every day for the past seven years; a trauma that I couldn’t even begin to imagine and is for another article.

Conversely, when I watched Room for the third time with my own mother, she found Ma’s “gone days,” her forcefulness in preparing Jack to escape Room, and her depression and disengagement from her son upon release to “not be how a mother should act.” Brie Larson’s Ma is far more assertive and fleshed out in the film, whereas on the page she’s ineffectual, agreeing with Jack when he calls her “dumbo” when things don’t go to plan. As an intimate partner violence survivor herself, I was expecting from Mum more empathy towards Ma. But that’s the beauty and curse of storytelling, particularly in a narrative as controversial and emotional as Room — everyone responds to it differently.

I think Room can best be summed up by Case’s description:

“It’s a horror story not just because of the awful circumstances of [Ma’s] imprisonment — rape and kidnapping — but because it dramatizes one of the hardest aspects of motherhood: feeling trapped by routine and the demands of everyday parenting [and] feeling separated from the outside world in your own mother-child universe.”

In the case of Room, though, “this kind of motherhood saves the mother from her prison rather than trapping her in a domestic [one].”

Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about femin- and other -isms. You can follow her on Twitter here.

‘Room’ for Being More Than “Ma”

Because the kidnapped-but-survived ending is the happier one, even though a real-life victim has suffered through an ordeal, we want her to answer our questions. How did you survive? Why didn’t you escape before? What are you going to do now? The new film ‘Room’ directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Brie Larson as the abducted woman we know in the first part of the film only as “Ma” attempts to give us some possible answers.

Trigger Warning: Rape, Sexual Assault

The American public’s morbid fascination with women and girls held captive by their rapists, in some cases for years, stems in part from the many missing girls, presumed dead, we’ve all read and heard about. Because the kidnapped-but-survived ending is the happier one, even though a real-life victim has suffered through an ordeal, we want her to answer our questions. How did you survive? Why didn’t you escape before? What are you going to do now? The new film Room directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Brie Larson as the abducted woman we know in the first part of the film only as “Ma” attempts to give us some possible answers.

Ma lives with her five-year-old son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay) in the place they call “room,” a converted garden shed with a bed, table, tub, sink, skylight, kitchenette and heat and electricity. They are kept there by the man who abducted Ma seven years before, when she was 17. We see Jack and Ma’s daily routine, waking up in the same bed, Jack saying, “Good morning,” to the pieces of furniture, doing exercises together, having meals, watching an old TV and splashing each other in the bath at night. Then Ma puts Jack to bed in a closet (called “wardrobe” even though they are presumably in the US: the out author of the original book who also wrote the screenplay, Emma Donoghue, is originally from Ireland and the production is an Irish/Canadian one) so when their captor punches the security code to open the door and rape her in the bed, as he does every night, Jack won’t see.

Ma has tried to make their lives seem almost normal to Jack, with homemade toy boats floating in the top of the toilet tank and bedtime storybooks. But we see signs of how constricted their lives are: the tops of the knives Ma uses to make dinner are blunted and because she can’t see a dentist or doctor she loses a tooth and has an old wrist injury that pains her. Jack’s hair is so long that we at first mistake him for a little girl–apparently their captor will not let Ma keep scissors in the room. At one point the kidnapper, angry at Ma, cuts off the electricity and heat on a frigid day, which they spend in layers and scarves, eating peanut butter sandwiches. Sometimes during a “normal” day they scream at the skylight. After which Ma says, “I guess they still can’t hear us.”

Ma fluctuates between depression, some days not wanting to get out of bed, and desperation, as she brainstorms ways that she and Jack can escape. She is always stretched three ways: trying to keep Jack safe and somewhat sheltered from what she’s going through (which means appeasing her captor but also telling Jack when they’re alone, “He’s not our friend”), trying to be a good parent and thinking about how to get the both of them out of “room.”

First she needs her son to understand why they need to leave. She tells him, “Do you remember how Alice wasn’t always in Wonderland? I wasn’t always in Room. I’m like Alice.” With his reluctant help, she devises one plan that fails then, worried that their now unemployed captor will no longer be able to feed them, she comes up with a much darker–and scarier–scheme in which Jack must pretend to be dead and escape while the captor goes to bury him in a secluded spot. Anyone who watches horror movies (or even the trailers for horror movies) will be filled with dread during the moments when first the kidnapper, then Jack seem to be wavering from Ma’s plan, but in spite of the glitches, both Jack and Ma are eventually freed.

Instead of being locked in room, Ma (we find out her name is Joy) and Jack, have an implausibly brief stay in a hospital room, one high above the ground, in a corner with floor-to-ceiling windows and a panoramic cityscape view (like the rest of the film, beautifully shot by cinematographer Danny Cohen) which makes Jack’s question, “Are we on another planet,” seem perfectly reasonable. But after the scenes in the hospital, part two of the film is a lot less compelling, not just because we no longer have a nemesis for the two main characters, but because the imagination and craft that went into the first part of the film seems to desert the screenwriter. Joy and Ma hole up with her mother (Joan Allen) and Leo (Tom McCamus) the man she lives with after her divorce from Joy’s father, in their suburban house. The media stalking Joy outside the door make leaving impossible.

But Joy seems to have very little life of her own outside of being “Ma”: a deficit that cannot be attributed only to the character’s untreated trauma. While Joy looks at an old yearbook photos of her friends, no one from her old life (besides her parents and Leo, who was a friend of the family before he moved in with her mother) seems to have any contact with her, even as her story is gaining national attention. As Joy sits on the floor of her childhood bedroom we see an electric guitar in the background which could easily be exchanged for a Bible or a buzz saw without changing anything we know about Joy–because, except for a brief outburst at her own mother, we never get to know her beyond her role as Ma. She never seems interested in going back to school or doing anything with her life other than caring for Jack. The movie doesn’t seem to care either.

I was able to suspend my disbelief, at least momentarily, in the first part of the film. I still wondered, for example, if the kidnapper raped Joy every night and she did not have any type of birth control why she had only one child. But the screenplay neglects most of a kidnapping’s aftermath, so in the second part I questioned most of what was onscreen. We see Joy and Jack watching a TV report on their case, but we don’t see how Joy would have to shield Jack from hearing all the gory details of her imprisonment, over and over, in the media. The script ignores that her face would be one that many people recognized, and with that recognition she would carry a stigma of being best known as a rape survivor, and her son recognized as the product of that rape, a facet explored only in a brief and unsatisfactory scene with Joy’s father (William H. Macy). Worst of all, Joy and her ordeal would become fodder for the internet with everyone commenting and even joking (remember Joan Rivers saying of the women Ariel Castro held captive in his home that they should have been grateful for the free rent?) on the terrible circumstances she had survived. I thought of how Elizabeth Smart, a real-life, long-term abductee, has turned the notoriety foisted on her around, by becoming a spokeperson on the issues her case highlighted. I despaired that her fictional counterpart was a lot less interesting than she turned out to be.

Brie Larson gives a very strong performance as Joy and actually looks like a woman held captive (and later, one still suffering the after-effects) as opposed to the prettied-up version another film would present to us. But I couldn’t help comparing this performance to the one she gave in Short Term 12, another role of an unglamorous trauma survivor, but one in which, in spite of its disappointing baby-makes-everything-okay ending, the audience was allowed to see the character as more than just a sometimes very troubled mother-figure (which she also played in her job as a counselor to at-risk teens). Jacob Tremblay is also very good as her son, though maybe because of An Open Secret or maybe just because so many talented child actors in the past have become adults without many prospects, I worry about what will happen to this excellent, young actor, more than I worried what would become of his character or of his mother’s, a bad sign for any film.

I realize I’m in the minority, that a lot of audience members and critics (especially women) love this film, but sometimes a “strong woman” at the center of a film, even one played by a talented actress, isn’t enough. We need our women protagonists, even the ones written by women, to be more than just “Ma.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C6fZ-fwDws” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

‘Trainwreck’s Unexpected Dose of The Feels

‘Trainwreck’ made me cry. As in weep. I’m not talking about my eyes welling up, or having to furtively swipe a single tear off my cheekbone, but full on is-there-snot-leaking-from-my nose CRYING. I’m sitting there in the theater wondering if there was some alternate trailer for this movie cut to “Everybody Hurts” that I missed. And hoping I’m not ruining my eye makeup. [I did.]

Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in 'Trainwreck' — Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in ‘Trainwreck’

Trainwreck, WE HAD A DEAL. I go see you opening weekend instead of Ant-Man, you provide me with two hours of an effervescent blend of rom-com sweetness and dick jokes. Nowhere in this negotiation was there any discussion of GENUINE EMOTIONS. I didn’t sign up for this.

Trainwreck made me cry. As in weep. I’m not talking about my eyes welling up, or having to furtively swipe a single tear off my cheekbone, but full on is-there-snot-leaking-from-my nose CRYING. I’m sitting there in the theater wondering if there was some alternate trailer for this movie cut to “Everybody Hurts” that I missed. And hoping I’m not ruining my eye makeup. [I did.]

Things start off promising. I laughed out loud when we saw that Amy had a job writing for a magazine. Job in publishing is the free space in Rom-Com Bingo. That Amy writes for a grody men’s magazine called S’Tuffed signaled to me we were gonna get all the rom-com tropes but subverted in the same way our hard-drinking sexually-capricious heroine deviates from your standard female lead. That doesn’t happen. Hardly any other spaces on Rom-Com bingo get filled. There isn’t even a Meet Cute.

Amy doesn't like spooning. — Amy doesn’t like spooning.

Amy and her romantic interest Aaron (Bill Hader) Meet Normal when she interviews him for a story for the magazine. They interact like normal humans who genuinely get along (well, exceptionally funny normal humans). They start dating, and there are some hiccups because Amy isn’t used to Real Relationships, but those hiccups don’t even result in any wacky misunderstandings. When Amy and Aaron get to their necessary third act near-breakup, it looks like a real relationship struggling because of interpersonal differences. Ugh, real life.

Meanwhile, in Trainwreck‘s most striking departure from the rom-com model, Amy has lots of stuff going on her life aside from dating this dude. Most notably, her complicated relationships with her family. Amy and her younger sister Kim (Brie Larson) get along, but Amy has trouble relating to Kim’s stable family life, with a square husband (Mike Birbiglia) and an oddly well-behaved stepchild. There’s further conflict between Amy and Kim as they deal with moving their father, who has multiple sclerosis, into assisted living. [Perhaps you can guess where the weeping kicks in.] The sister relationship in Trainwreck is as real and recognizable as the romance, if not more so. Schumer and Larson really nail the complicated interplay of jealousy and judgment between Amy and Kim.

There are also dick jokes. Trainwreck is very funny. Amy Schumer brings her magic, and the supporting cast is full of delightful oddball characters. I particularly liked a (TAN!) Tilda Swinton as Amy’s sociopathically brash editor and LeBron James as an extremely sensitive and supportive best friend to sports doctor Aaron. [Bill Hader is quite notably the straight man throughout, but he’s Bill Hader so he still gets in some big laughs.]

LeBron James as LeBron James is one of the comedic highlights of ‘Trainwreck’

Somehow, Trainwreck pulls off segueing between the risque comic bits we all came for and its unexpected side of pathos and heartbreak. While Judd Apatow’s confident direction deserves some of the credit, I think the most important factor here is Schumer’s impressive acting chops. She’s charismatic and funny enough that she should be a movie star even if she can’t really act, but she can. I hope this is the first of many Amy Schumer movies.

But next time I see one, I will adjust my expectations and bring along a pack of tissues.

Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh, where there was a rather chilly reception to the scene where LeBron James talks about how great Cleveland is.

‘Short Term 12,’ ‘In A World,’ and Athena

Local film festivals have proliferated in recent years–every city and town seems to want its own Sundance and my city is no exception: every spring it has a well-respected, week-long independent film festival with celebrity appearances and panels. But well-publicized festivals focusing on women don’t seem to be part of this trend. In the 90s women in the arts, not just film, seemed to finally be given a chance to do their own work and tell their own stories. In the era of ‘Thelma and Louise,’ women taking up a more equitable piece of the pie in filmmaking (as well as in writing books and in the visual arts) seemed inevitable. In the 21st century we seem to be going backward: the percentage of women making films has dropped since 2012 so we’re overdue for a festival like Athena: “a celebration of women and leadership.”

In the 90s and early 00s women’s film festivals were more common than they are now: my local independent art house had one that lasted a week every year, complete with celebrity appearances and panels. Of course, some of the films were crap (or just not my taste) and I remember one panel in which successful women directors made the puzzling argument that so few women were allowed to direct films because movies were “a business.” I’m sure law firms, banks, publishers, and uh, businesses would be glad to know that all they had to do was declare, “Hey, we’re a business” and they magically wouldn’t have to put any more women in leadership positions either.

Local film festivals have proliferated in recent years–every city and town seems to want its own Sundance and my city is no exception: every spring it has a well-respected, week-long independent film festival with celebrity appearances and panels. But well-publicized festivals focusing on women don’t seem to be part of this trend. In the 90s women in the arts, not just film, seemed to finally be given a chance to do their own work and tell their own stories. In the era of Thelma and Louise women taking up a more equitable piece of the pie in filmmaking (as well as in writing books and in the visual arts) seemed inevitable. In the 21st century we seem to be going backward: the percentage of women making films has dropped since 2012 so we’re overdue for a festival like Athena: “a celebration of women and leadership.”

Athena afforded me the chance to see, among other films, two features I had missed when they had regular runs in theaters: Short Term 12 (written and directed by Destin Cretton, nominated for several Independent Spirit Awards and included on several best of 2013 lists) and In A World, written and directed by as well as starring Lake Bell.

Short_Term_12_GraceJayden — Grace and Jayden

Short Term 12 received excellent reviews when it opened this past fall, as it did during its premiere during last year’s SXSW, but suffered from a lackluster performance at the box office, perhaps in part because of the trailer, which makes the film seem like another rebel-goes-against-the system movie, an oversimplification of the many currents running through the film.

Grace (Brie Larson), the main character, works at a group home for kids who seem to range from middle-school-age to 18. Cretton himself worked at a similar facility and more than one scene has the counselors: Grace, Grace’s live-in boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), newcomer Nate (Rami Malek) and Jessica ( Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz who gets hardly any lines) first shooting the shit and joking with each other as coworkers in an office might and then having to leap into action in the face of a crisis: a sudden shift familiar to anyone who has worked in direct care.

Short Term 12 gets right for much of the film, what so many other films about human services get wrong. Larson’s Grace seems to be wearing hardly any, if any, makeup and what she wears to work consists of high top sneakers, skinny jeans and a loose shirt–clothes that can be thrown away if they get ripped or stained. When we see her dressed up later in the film, she doesn’t suddenly seem to have acquired a stylist (the one other “ordinary” women characters in mainstream movies have): she wears ankle boots that don’t really match her not-very-flattering dress and still eschews makeup. She rides a bike to the facility: most of these “counseling” jobs pay very little, so the character couldn’t afford the new car a more mainstream film would give her. She’s also the boss on the floor, the manager, and she’s not portrayed as manipulative or mean, as so many other women bosses are in films, just alternately (and appropriately) authoritative, playful and tender with the kids.

short-term-12GraceMason — Grace and Mason

Short Term 12 is based on a short film of the same name made by the writer-director in 2008, in which the protagonist was a man. Some aspects of the gender change go smoothly. We find out Grace has a history of her own much like the troubled kids she looks after, and the film contains the first instance I’ve seen where a woman commits (mild) self-injury in response to some very stressful news but avoids treating her like a headcase. Saintly Mason (impossibly patient and understanding with Grace; he even does all the cooking) also comes from an unstable background (though eventually he landed with a large, very close, Latino-headed, multiracial foster family). The film starts to strain credulity here: although some people working in human services are trying to give back to a system that helped them, those people are often not the most effective at their jobs (or if they are, stay for a limited time and then go on to other careers). Many of the people who end up doing the best work for the longest time in direct care are, like Nate, from relatively stable backgrounds that enable them to deal with the stress of the job without reliving their own trauma (they are also able to occasionally rely on their middle-class or wealthy families for rental deposits on apartments or used cars to make up for their very low salaries). In real life, the “Graces” of the world, no matter how kindly, or what inside knowledge they would bring to a care facility, would get a job in an office, retail, a restaurant, anywhere that wouldn’t dredge up the ghosts of the past (which Grace has avoided talking to even Mason about).

Grace also has an unplanned pregnancy and here the film really veers off into Fantasyland. What Cretton never seems to consider is: the job we’ve seen that Grace loves and is so good at is one she could never keep if she has the baby. The work is physically rough (adolescents kick at and strike out at counselors, certainly not ideal for a woman in the latter stages of pregnancy) and human services direct care jobs don’t typically offer paid maternity leave or childcare. Even if she were able to return to the care facility, her salary is probably barely enough to support one person, let alone two: Mason’s wages kicked in would barely make a difference.

Troubling too is the latter part of the film when Grace identifies deeply with Jayden, (Kaitlyn Dever) a sharply dressed, artistic, new girl in the facility who, we find out, shares not only Grace’s flair for pencil sketching, but also seems to give signs that she has been abused. Grace’s ensuing actions made me think Cretton has seen too many Bruce Willis and Jack Nicholson films. Her overinvolvement in Jayden’s home life includes breaking and entering and vandalism–and nearly involves assault and battery with a deadly weapon. All the while, Cretton seems not to realize that Grace’s behavior is endangering Jayden more than anyone else.

Of course it all works out in the end. Jayden tells authorities about her father’s abuse; Grace decides to go through with the pregnancy; even the kid turning 18 and aging out of the facility, the one who attempted suicide, gets a foxy, new girlfriend and a job afterward. Hollywood endings can’t help polluting even “realistic” independent films.

In a World is a much lighter film than Short Term 12 and a lot sloppier: many of the contrivances seem like placeholders in the script, meant to be replaced with better-thought out action later on, but the movie still contains some truths that don’t make their way into films directed and written by men. Bell plays Carol who is struggling to make a living as a vocal coach and a voice over artist. We see her midway in the film in a circumstance that male directors and writers rarely present, where a man who we’ve seen is somewhat repellent and seems to be feeding her a line to have sex with her succeeds, not because the Carol doesn’t realize he’s feeding her a line (and is perhaps not who he seems) but because he’s reasonably attractive and it’s only for one night. Bell presents the Irish guy (Jason O’Mara) who tempts Carol’s sister (Michaela Watkins) into cheating on her good-guy husband (Rob Corddry) as genuinely handsome and charming: too many straight male directors seem to not notice that the men who get all the ladies in their films would leave most women cold.

Bell isn’t above using men’s bodies as a kind of punch line either, the way women’s bodies (especially old or fat ones) are used in other films. When Carol’s Dad (Fred Melamed) is shirtless, as he is for more than one scene, we see him in all his hairy-backed, saggy-pecced glory.

When Carol and her real love interest (Demetri Martin) in the film first kiss, she’s the one who makes the first move. When they kiss a second time she first feeds him a line of her own (though unlike that of her one-night stand her line isn’t insincere). All these moments might seem like tiny victories in a film, but other women seem to want to support Bell’s vision: cameos in the film include Eva Longoria (trying to approximate cockney vowels with a cork in her mouth), Cameron Diaz and Geena Davis. Maybe they noticed, as many of the rest of us have, that the trajectory from performer to director that seems so easy and natural for men (both Jon Hamm and John Slattery from Mad Men have also directed more than one episode of the series) is not one that women can readily follow (neither Christina Hendricks nor Elisabeth Moss, nor any other actress on the series has directed a single episode of Mad Men–yet).

That reason is the crux at my argument that as good a film as Short Term 12 is (and as “strong” as its female protagonist may be) because it’s directed by a man, it doesn’t belong in Athena or any other women’s film festival. The producer of 12 told the audience in the Q & A after the film that the writer-director, as a result of this modestly budgeted, not very financially successful film (which won some minor awards) was now writing something for Jennifer Lawrence. In an earlier “master class” (really a Q & A) with Callie Khouri, the writer of the big-budget, huge hit Thelma and Louise (for which she won an Academy Award) informed us that she didn’t get to direct a feature film for ten years after Thelma came out–and hasn’t gotten to direct one since. Khouri isn’t the only one who is facing resistance: it’s a story other women who have made well-reviewed, theater-released films are still telling today–and won’t stop telling until they get the showcases they deserve.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuxApRnekWc”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

Max Goes to the Athena Film Festival

Last weekend, several ‘Bitch Flicks’ writers were lucky enough to attend the Athena Film Festival (AFF) at Barnard College in New York. The festival bills itself as “a celebration of women and leadership,” and it’s a four-day extravaganza of women-centered and women-helmed films. I already wrote about ‘Radical Grace,’ the terrific documentary about nuns fighting for social justice, and here is a whirlwind tour of some of the other highlights of my AFF weekend.

Last weekend, several Bitch Flicks writers were lucky enough to attend the Athena Film Festival (AFF) at Barnard College in New York. The festival bills itself as “a celebration of women and leadership,” and it’s a four-day extravaganza of women-centered and women-helmed films. I already wrote about Radical Grace, the terrific documentary about nuns fighting for social justice, and here is a whirlwind tour of some of the other highlights of my AFF weekend.

Maidentrip

You may recall reading a few years ago about Laura Dekker, the then 14-year-old Dutch girl who had to battle the authorities to be permitted to sail solo around the world. Dekker won, and Jillian Schlesinger’s film Maidentrip tells the story of her journey.

Laura Dekker is, as you might expect from someone who sails solo around the world at an age when most of us are primarily concerned with acne and algebra, a fascinating figure. According to Schlesinger, in the course of her two years at sea, Dekker only shot ten hours’ worth of video diary footage, and so much of the film is reconstructed around ex post facto interviews. Dekker is an extraordinarily self-possessed and contemplative young woman. If she were twenty years older and male, somebody would write a film based on her life and it would be hailed as a remarkable character study of an enigmatic figure and win all the Academy Awards. We so rarely see people like Laura Dekker in our popular culture, where teenage girls are portrayed as insecure, frivolous, or catty, that this film is a much-needed counterweight to the bulk of film and TV. Rachel and Megan wrote a detailed review recently, which you should read if you haven’t already.

(Be aware, though, that this film might make you feel terrible about yourself. At 16, Laura Dekker had circumnavigated all 24,000-some miles of this planet. I just turned 25 and I still consider it an accomplishment if I can get out of bed in the morning.)

Short Term 12

As a teenager in the UK, I watched embarrassing amounts of Tracy Beaker, so I have a soft spot for stories about kids in care. For a children’s show, I think Beaker set the bar quite high for realism and heartbreak without dissolving into schmaltz, and Short Term 12 definitely delivered on that front.

The center of the film is Brie Larson’s Grace, a young woman who works at a foster home, but the ensemble is crucial too, from starry-eyed naif Nate to sassy Luis. When difficult 15-year-old Jayden arrives at the home, Grace begins to suspect that the girl’s problems mirror her own painful past, and becomes determined to help her. Is that a cliché? Undeniably, but it’s pulled off with such deftness and sensitivity that I couldn’t help loving the film. Both the humor and the awfulness of daily life in a residential home really shine through, but it’s the crackling chemistry between Grace and Jayden that makes the film for me. Not quite sisters, not quite teacher/student, not quite friends, theirs is a mentor/mentee relationship that showcases female guidance at its best.

One interesting factoid about the film is that it began life as a short in which the Grace character was a man. Not having seen the short, I can’t directly compare the two versions, but there are some aspects that are clearly changes made for a female character. However, they seem reasonably organic, and Grace is such a developed character (and Brie Larson such a wonderful actor) that I mostly set aside my reservations about certain over-employed plot points.

Regina

It’s no secret that awesome religious women are an especial enthusiasm of mine. Since the exclusion of women from the hierarchies of the Abrahamic faiths has been so thorough for so many centuries, the women who have left their mark on the traditions have tended to be particularly strong, determined, and fierce. Kind of like Beyonce, but with God instead of pop music.

Regina Jonas was the first fully ordained female rabbi, and she was certainly a very strong Jewish woman. Regina focuses on her life, from her childhood ambition toward the rabbinate to her untimely death in Auschwitz. Diana Groó’s film is poetic to a fault, offering frustratingly little context or explanation for its monochrome images, but it’s a fascinating story of an intriguing figure. To be honest, the film is more of a starting point for learning about the rabbi than a comprehensive source of information, but luckily there is more information about Regina Jonas on the web, and I am grateful to this film for bringing her to my attention.

Rabbi Regina Jonas is taking precisely none of your shit.

As well as these films, the Athena Film Festival gave me the opportunity to see some rather more film-festival-specific events, including a wonderful program of short films and a panel discussion in which some wonderful women film writers talked about the role of the Bechdel Test today (look out for a detailed write-up from one of my Bitch Flicks colleagues soon). My Athena weekend was terrific, and I can’t wait for AFF 2015.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He got to meet NPR’s Linda Holmes at AFF, which was very exciting for him.