Drama – Page 9 – Bitch Flicks

No Apologies: The Ambition of Gillian Armstrong and ‘My Brilliant Career’

However, Armstrong also doesn’t mock Sybylla’s ambition or treat it as a joke. In Armstrong’s world, the fact that Sybylla has desires and wants outside of marriage and men is treated seriously because Sybylla takes it seriously. She never needs to prove herself worthy enough for her desires.

This guest post written by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

It’s almost impossible to think of Australian cinema without women directors. In recent years with her debut film The Babadook, Jennifer Kent has been declared a director to watch, but there’s also Julia Leigh, Sue Brooks, Cate Shortland, Shirley Barrett and Jocelyn Moorhouse, all of whom have had films play at Cannes and achieved various degrees of success and critical acclaim both in their home country and abroad. Not to mention Jane Campion who, while officially a Kiwi, went to film school in Australia and made some of her early films there.

Shocking then to realize that this flourishing of Australian women directors came after a near fifty year gap, a gap that began after Paulette McDonagh’s now lost 1933 film Two Minute Silence and finally ended in 1979 with Gillian Armstrong’s debut film My Brilliant Career.

The auspiciously named movie takes its title from the 1901 novel of the same name by Australian author Miles Franklin. Though the novel was popular, it wasn’t till the mid-70s that serious efforts were made for it to be adapted into a film. It was at that time that producer Margaret Fink bought the rights and began to cast about for a director that was right for the material. Fink reportedly considered Roman Polanski before setting her sights on Armstrong, a film-grad with a series of internationally acclaimed shorts under her belt who, at the time she met Fink, was working in the props department on another director’s movie.

There is much that is familiar, and loveable, about Armstrong’s first film. Set just before the turn of the century in 1897, it features a plain-looking and plain-speaking tomboy by the name of Sybylla Melvyn living on a farm in the Australian outback and dreaming of a better, i.e. more glamorous, life. Charmingly played by a young Judy Davis, in what was her first leading role in her second ever movie, Armstrong introduces us to Sybylla as she is sitting at her desk on a dusty farm while the rest of her family toils outside, prematurely beginning her memoirs, reflecting back on the career she has yet to even begin. As she pens her foreword she openly proclaims, “I make no apology for being egotistical, because I am.”

But Sybylla is quickly brought back to reality by her mother who supports her right to work; as a servant. Sybylla, despite being the daughter of a penniless farmer, has loftier ambitions of being a pianist (despite her discordant key bashing and minimal skills) or an opera singer (despite her untrained voice and the fact that she knows only drinking songs gleaned from the hours spent with her alcoholic father) or a writer (despite the fact she knows little of the world and her days are filled with drudgery). Armstrong never shows Sybylla as being particularly prodigious at any of the things she wants to do, in fact many times she shows just the opposite. However, Armstrong also doesn’t mock Sybylla’s ambition or treat it as a joke. In Armstrong’s world, the fact that Sybylla has desires and wants outside of marriage and men is treated seriously because Sybylla takes it seriously. She never needs to prove herself worthy enough for her desires.

Shortly after the dispiriting conversation between mother and daughter, good news arrives. Sybylla is sent to her wealthy maternal grandmother’s home to live a life closer to the luxury she dreamed of. In her grandmother’s house, her grandmother and her aunt Helen attempt to turn Sybylla into a proper young lady; montages involving the brushing of her unruly hair, face masks and various home remedies are applied. Armstrong’s film, and Sybylla herself, aren’t content to simply wallow in luxury however. Filmed standing in a giant bird’s cage or behind a mosquito net, it is clear, even before Sybylla says the words, that she is not exactly happy, still desperate for the chance to prove herself and to develop the career in the arts that she longs for.

Her ambitions are temporarily pushed aside however once her physical transformation is complete. Sybylla is courted by two potential suitors: the first a smarmy trainee of her grandmother’s and the second, and more interesting prospect, Sybylla’s childhood friend, Harry Beecham (Sam Neil). From the start the chemistry between Sybylla and Harry is electric. Sybylla is unwilling to act coy with Harry and he is willing to meet her on her level playing along when she shows her mischievous spirit by capsizing the boat during a romantic river ride. Sybylla declares them “mates” but the term, which Sybylla means in friendship has a double meaning. From almost the first time they meet it is clear that Harry is fascinated with Sybylla and means to marry her. The romance between them falls along conventional beats right up until an exasperate Harry finally proposes, a proposal which Sybylla declines right before whipping Harry in the face with a riding crop when his romantic overtures become too aggressive.

The moment feels as revolutionary to modern audiences as it must have felt when the movie was first screened in 1979. It is one thing for Sybylla to simply say that she doesn’t want to get married or to turn down the advances of a suitor she finds ridiculous. But in Harry, Sybylla finds not only a handsome, rich man but also a peer, someone who is not only at home getting whacked in the face by a pillow but whom she can talk to about the unfairness of the world, someone who easily apologizes for stepping out of line by acting too aggressively, who empathizes with her need to take two years to try to figure out, “What’s wrong with the world, and with me, who I am, everything.” Watching Sybylla say no to what would be considered the height of success in the society in which she lived in order to feed her own ambition is a sight all too rare in cinema. Despite the love Harry feels for her, and the fact that Sybylla feels, or nearly feels, the same way, she becomes through her rejection, a woman who bravely acts according to her own desires, someone willing to risk everything in order to have what she wants and who recognizes that men and romance are not the sum total of her world.

Armstrong never tells us whether or not Sybylla will have the brilliant career she so desperately craves. There are no scenes of an editor appearing to tell her she is a literary genius and no scenes of anyone reading her work and declaring her a prodigy. In the final scene of the film, a calm and confident Sybylla walks to the mailbox of her father’s farm to post the manuscript she has written, its destination a publishing house in Scotland. It might be a masterpiece or it might be junk, but after Sybylla posts her manuscript she turns her attention to the setting sun, her face filled with hope and the confidence that no matter what happens she can take pride in the fact that at least she tried.

It is easy to imagine that Armstrong was filled with a similar feeling as she crafted her debut film. Women filmmakers today still face an uphill battle having their work financed and distributed. At this point in time, gender parity for directors, at least in the U.S., seems like an unrealistic dream. But at the time in which Armstrong was filming, it wasn’t even a matter of a few women directors fighting to get in the room to pitch their ideas to studios or struggling for financing. In Armstrong’s case, there was very little Australian cinema to speak of and a gap of nearly 50 years separating her from the last feature length Australian film directed by a woman. Like her audacious main character, Armstrong carved her work out of pure ambition, uncertain of the future but willing to try.

The movie may leave Sybylla and the audience forever waiting and wondering as to whether she was able to write her way to a better life. But in terms of Armstrong and her career, the answer is much clearer. My Brilliant Career became a seminal part of what was later termed the Australian New Wave (a movement that also included George Miller and his Mad Max series, the first film of which coincidentally was also released in 1979). Armstrong and the film went on to play In Competition at the Cannes film festival, something that to this day is exceedingly rare for women directors. The film would go on to be nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and win several awards at the Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards including Best Director for Armstrong making her the first of many female Best Director AFI winners.

Perhaps best known for her 1994 adaptation of Little Women, Armstrong continues to work in film to this day, and has directed cinematic luminaries like Cate Blanchett, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kirsten Dunst, and Diane Keaton. By anyone’s standards she has had a brilliant career.

Rebecca Hirsch Garcia is a Canadian cinephile. She has previously written for Awards Watch. You can find her on twitter @rhirschgarcia.

OMG a Vagina: The Struggle for Feminine Artistic Integrity in Kimberly Peirce’s ‘Carrie’

Carrie is a terrifying and compelling story, but there is certainly something to be gained and perhaps a certain truth to be found in watching the pain of her journey into womanhood as told by a woman director. … But even in the face of these small victories, we have to wonder how the film would have been different had Peirce been allowed to tell this story without being inhibited by the fear and discomfort of the male voices around her.

This guest post written by Horrorella appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

In his 1981 non-fiction work Danse Macabre, Stephen King noted that, “Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of power, but also what men fear about women and women’s sexuality.” That statement is as true in the 21st century as it was in the 1970s, and was directly illustrated in the production of the 2013 adaptation.

The horror community was very divided when MGM and Screen Gems first announced that they would be producing a remake of Carrie. After all, this would be the third direct adaptation of the material following Brian de Palma’s 1976 film and a made for TV movie from 2002, directed by David Carson. In our current culture of remakes, reboots and sequels, fans are experiencing a bit of fatigue when it comes to repackaging known quantities over developing original ideas. De Palma’s film is still considered a classic and is very well respected within the genre, so naturally people began to question just what would make this version different from the ones we had already seen.

Enter Kimberly Peirce. Working from a script developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the involvement of the director of Boys Don’t Cry instantly made a new adaptation much more appealing. It offered the promise of a new perspective by inviting a woman to helm this story of female adolescence and horror. Carrie is a terrifying and compelling story, but there is certainly something to be gained and perhaps a certain truth to be found in watching the pain of her journey into womanhood as told by a woman director. Particularly, given how underrepresented women are in the industry in general, and specifically in horror.

Despite Carrie‘s promise, we were largely disappointed by the final product. Reviews were mixed, audience reaction was largely negative, and the film garnered a mere 48% on Rotten Tomatoes. Forty minutes were reportedly cut at the request of the studio, and though there were a few changes here and there, the story remained largely the same, following Lawrence D. Cohen’s original script beat for beat. Notable exceptions included the way the film built the relationship between Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz) and her mother, Margaret (Julianne Moore), making their interactions much more tender and driven by love (albeit, a rather abusive and misguided love) than they were in either the book or in previous film adaptations, as well as more thoughtful symbolism in the role that blood played throughout the film.

One of the many disappointments was the ending of the film. Brian de Palma broke new ground with his shocking finale, which featured a remorseful Sue Snell (Amy Irving) visiting the remains of the house where Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) died after the slaughter at the prom. As Sue leans forward to lay flowers at the base of a “For Sale” sign, serving as a makeshift tombstone, a bloody hand shoots up out of the earth and grabs Sue’s arm. Audience members were terrified and that scene continues to replicated to this day, marking its place in the history of horror cinema.

The ending of Peirce’s version, again, at the behest of the studio, features a similar scene, showing Sue (Gabriella Wilde) walking towards Carrie’s grave as a voiceover lays out the final sentences of her testimony of the events of the prom, stating that people can only be pushed so far before they break. As she lays a single rose on the grave and turns to go, the ground begins to shake and the tombstone cracks, illustrating the breaking point that Carrie was pushed to and past at the hands of her classmates and tormentors.

It’s not a horrible ending thematically, but it does cause the film to end on a rather uninspired note, especially when compared to its cinematic predecessor. If there is one thing audiences expect from the story of Carrie, it is a strong finish, and this film just fizzled in its final moments. The frustrating thing is, it didn’t have to be this way.

In September, 2014. Peirce gave a talk at AFI Directing Workshop for Women’s 2014 Showcase which was later examined in an article at io9. She discussed the filmmaking process and how her original ending was a bit more intense, and ultimately much more fascinating.

After showing Sue laying a flower on Carrie’s grave, the film jumped forward in time to a delivery room, and a very pregnant Sue laying on the table, about to give birth to the daughter that Carrie had foreseen in her final moments of life. Terrified and panicking, Sue tries to explain to the hospital staff that something is wrong. They try to calm her, telling her to take a deep breath and prepare for one final push. As she focuses her energy, instead of a tiny, screaming infant we see a large, bloody arm, belonging to a fully grown woman (presumably Carrie) making its way out of Sue’s body and back into the world itself. The scene then reveals itself to be a dream as Sue’s mother attempts to wake her from her horrific nightmare, mirroring the final moments of the de Palma ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kGJGQZIduo

This scene is fantastic for a variety of reasons. It is scary, it is certainly unexpected, and within the confines of Peirce’s story, it is elegantly poetic. The film opened with Carrie’s birth, featuring Margaret alone in her home, delivering the infant. Carrie being reborn into the world at the end (even within the confines of a dream sequence), bookends the events of the story nicely. It also casts a dark shadow over the remainder of Sue’s life, indicating that despite any kind actions in an attempt to make amends, Sue will be forever haunted by the role that she played in Carrie’s torment. Additionally, from a more practical standpoint, it gives Carrie’s knowledge of Sue’s pregnancy more of a purpose in the narrative. This would have been a clever and strong ending to a film, helping to set it apart from other adaptations and giving it a certain elegance unto itself.

The problem came when male studio representatives tried to come to terms with exactly what this ending would mean and how they could execute it. Though they agreed that it would be scary and unexpected, they had a terribly hard time articulating just what the scene meant or how it could be achieved. In fact, they had a difficult time discussing the scene at all. Says Peirce:

“When one guy started forming a sentence that should have included the word ‘vagina,’ he would just stop. ‘So when you have to shoot the hand coming out of the, uh, the, uh,…’ and then there was just silence. And giggles. And finally it came out: ‘the Vajayjay.’ (The Vajajay? Really?) ‘The cooter, the hole,’ other euphemisms.”

The voices involved were so terrified of even saying the word “vagina,” it’s no wonder they were feeling trepidation of having one in or even near the final scene of the film. And let’s face it – babies come from vaginas, so there was no way this birthing scene was going to happen properly without at least the implication that one was involved. And really, when you look at the nightmare scenario that is a tormented, angry, telekinetic teenager being reborn, the vagina itself should not be the scary part of that scene.

Despite their fears and stammering, Peirce was given the go-ahead to shoot some test footage of her idea. She storyboarded and filmed a three-quarter body prosthetic from every possible vantage, examining and testing a variety of different ways to execute this shot – from above, from the side, form various angles, and yes – even a straight-on shot aimed directly at the vagina itself.

Peirce continues:

“Finally I was having a production meeting, and the guy who hadn’t been able to say the word ‘vagina’ said it. A few times. Proudly. “So you’ll shoot towards the, uh, vagina? But not at the vagina?” And then, excitedly, ‘Can you believe we’re all at a work meeting, saying the word ‘vagina’?'”

Bravo, buddy.

Ultimately, although her ending tested well, the studio decided that it would just be too polarizing and went with the much more sterilized, uninteresting ending taking place in the graveyard.

As Peirce notes in her speech, women in film are fighting a constant battle to be heard among their male peers, and it is important to recognize and celebrate the small victories. Though she was unable to complete the film the way she wanted to make it, thanks to a perplexing fear of getting too up close and personal with the female anatomy, it is important to note that she was given the resources and the support to make this film at all. And even though the birth ending was ultimately cut, the studio did encourage her to give it a try, and a completed version of the scene is available as an alternate ending on the film’s Blu-Ray release.

But even in the face of these small victories, we have to wonder how the film would have been different had Peirce been allowed to tell this story without being inhibited by the fear and discomfort of the male voices around her. There is a certain amount of give and take to the creative control of any mainstream film production – the studio is interested in making sure the story appeals to the widest audience possible, and it is not uncommon for decisions to be made to serve that interest more than the creative drive of artists behind the picture.

But, as Peirce’s story illustrates, women filmmakers are more likely to be affected by decisions based around gender rather than simply a financial bottom line. Her discussions with various producers and studio execs demonstrate how this incident went beyond simply trying to get a specific rating or go for a certain tone. They were physically uncomfortable even saying the word, let alone entertaining the notion that a vagina could be directly involved in one of the scenes of this movie – even if it was not explicitly shown.

Art and finances quite often go head to head when it comes to decisions that will affect the final cut of a production, but with all of the hurdles that woman face in the film industry, having to make decisions and changes based around feminine content should not ever have to be one of them. I would like to see the executive who was oh so proud of himself for finally making it through the uttering of “vagina” without stammers and giggles to now take the next step of not being afraid to have a film go near one in the first place, and to allow these women to tell their stories onscreen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrQu2TlGYwQ

Horrorella has written about film for Ain’t it Cool News, the Women in Horror Annual and on her blog at horrorella.com. She geeks out incessently over movies, television, comics and kitties. You can gab with her on Twitter @horrorellablog.

‘Wadjda’: Empowering Voices and Challenging Patriarchy

Haifaa al-Mansour casts an eye onto the complexity of navigating an autocratic patriarchal society in ‘Wadjda.’ This bold voice from Saudi Arabia continues to empower voices globally.

This guest post written by Sarah Mason appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

Haifaa al-Mansour casts an eye onto the complexity of navigating an autocratic patriarchal society in Wadjda (2012). This bold voice from Saudi Arabia continues to empower voices globally.

I first watched Wadjda in the United Arab Emirates and revisited the film this year. In 2009, I was working for the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi, the same year the Shasha screenwriting grant was awarded to Haifaa al-Mansour for Wadjda.

At the cusp of adolescence, 10 year old Wadjda (first-time actor Waad Mohammed) enjoys the fleeting freedoms of her youth. She wears the quintessential American Chuck Taylor shoes with bright laces that allow her to run to school alongside a male friend; a small freedom that will be further limited as she grows into her adolescence.

Her colourful hairclips are a small statement of individuality, and her shayla is causally placed over her hair, often falling down, blowing in the wind, sometimes lost on the way to school, snatched teasingly by her young friend Abdullah. The frivolity with which Wadjda interacts with the shayla is one of nonchalance; a relationship not yet fully formed by the imposition of its more stringent usage and variations. Soon, she will have to fully conceal her hairline with a tightly pinned al-amira or khimar, and later, societal ‘norms’ will expect her face to be fully covered with the niqab.

At school, the head teacher harshly reprimands Wadjda’s elder peers for speaking too loudly. Other students, with their faces covered to avoid confrontation, scuttle past anonymously. The head teacher, Hessa, commands that it is time for Wadjda to wear full abaya for school and to replace her shoes. It is important to mention that such repression of female voices is not only within the borders of Saudi Arabia. In Turkey, the Deputy Prime Minister announced during Eid al-Fitr in 2014 that women “laughing in public” equated to “moral regression.”

At home, Wadjda compliments her mother’s singing, asking her, “Don’t you wish you were a singer?” Her mother’s sharp intake of breath reflects the audacity of the question. There is no official law banning Saudi women from singing, but it is chastised. Much like the musical bard movement that grew out of censorship in the Soviet bloc, magnitizdat, a similar movement is alive in Saudi Arabia. When the Head Teacher empties out Wadjda’s schoolbag, she finds illegal items: tapes of forbidden songs and bracelets of forbidden colours.

In the movie, Wadjda’s mother straightens her hair and applies make-up, yet as a married mother, she wears full niqab when she exits the home. She climbs into a vehicle packed with other women who need transportation to work. Her commute, her strained relationship with the impatient driver Iqbal and the perils faced by other female commuters in this forced environment, is central to her world and her phone conversations. Their fate is in his hands. Every day.

In the only country in the world that bans women from driving motorized vehicles, as decreed by hard-line clerics, this ‘ban’ does not feature in the Qur’an itself and is not written into law. If it were, why does Saudi Arabia stand alone in this inexplicable interpretation of an ancient scripture? Rotana Tarabzouni, a Los Angeles based Saudi singer, refuses to be silenced. She has already voiced her support of the Saudi Women to Drive movement and continues to garner recognition for her singing career. Activist Loujain al Hathloul defied the ban in late 2014 and drove over the border with a valid driving license, from neighboring United Arab Emirates to her home country. She was detained along with Maysaa al Hamoudi who drove from the UAE to the border to offer support. They were both arrested and held for 70 days without any charge, referred to a specialist court on charges of ‘terror’, and have since been released.

Vocal and mobile women are ‘terror’ for the patriarchs of Saudi Arabia, however, for women in Saudi Arabia, the imposition of a male driver on treacherous roads remains their ‘terror’. In 2014, Saudi artist Manal Al-Dowayan exhibited “Crash” to highlight one of the consequences of the driving ban for women. Commuting female teachers are 50% more likely to be killed in a car accident than the average Saudi. Even in notification of death, journalists kowtow to the conservative trend that avoids mentioning a women’s name in public. Tragically, these women often die faceless and nameless. Alternatively, in 2014, licensed pilots Hanadi al Hindi and Yasmeen Muhammed al Maimani became the first Saudi women awarded commercial pilot licenses and they are allowed to fly within their own country’s airspace.

Equally fixated on mobility, Wadjda has her sets her sights on purchasing a bicycle — without training wheels. She listens to rock music and braids friendship bracelets in the colours of the local soccer teams. She takes full advantage of her pre-adolescent youth, delivering hand-written notes to an older boy; where older girls cannot.

In Wadjda, inter-female relationships are strained. Wadjda and her mother argue about the bike. Her mother implores it is “haram” — not permitted. She implies that it may negatively affect her daughter’s marriage and childbearing prospects. Yet it is clear that her mother’s marriage is under siege in a state that encourages polygamy. Even Wadjda’s own grandmother threatens to be the architect of the family’s demise, by selecting other prospective partners for her son to marry. The first line of matchmaking is always a son’s mother and only men feature on the family tree.

In a bid to impress her husband, Wadjda’s mother goes shopping for a bright red dress. The two enter the toilets to try on the garment. The notion of an unclothed women in a dressing room within a mixed-gender store is not permissible in Saudi Arabia. Wadjda’s mother, in the bright red dress is harshly juxtaposed in the decaying bathroom and next to the advertisement for deodorant, where the smiling model has had an abaya block-drawn over her exposed skin. In a world where women are only and always framed within the context of men, Wadjda’s mother doesn’t ask if she looks good in the red dress. Rather, Wadjda’s mother asks, “Will my husband like it?”

With the prevailing existence of Saudi Arabian austerity, ‘rules’ and not laws of the state, undermine gender parity. Many of these ‘rules’ are excused as ‘cultural’ or ‘traditional.’ However, this ‘culture’ is espoused by hardline, wahhabist conservative male religious figures, which mute any discussion or dissent.

We, professional women the world over, do not accept culture or tradition as a rational justification for discrimination against a racial or ethnic group – rather, we would look for opportunities to challenge such prejudices. So why do we continue to accept gender-based inequality and its consequences? We do not. Citing ‘culture’ as corroboration to argument only serves to preserve aspects of a culture that maintains the proponent’s present privileged position.

The internet and increased global travel challenge the old order. Restricting what can be seen, viewed, read and dissipated is much, much harder to control in the new media age. Saudi Arabia is cautiously embracing positive international recognition in new mediums, while dancing precariously with the messaging it conveys. In 2012, the same year Wadjda was released, athletes Wojdan Shaherkani and Sarah Attar made history competing at the London Olympics as the first Saudi female Olympians. A budding art scene, a burgeoning comedy scene, and a feature film directed by a woman — and with women central to its storyline — are all exhibiting new, bold statements.

Since Wadjda’s release, Arab films have garnered more attention in the global market. Barakah Meets Barakah gently navigates young love in Saudi Arabia. The comedic short captured the imagination of Berlin Film Festival audiences who awarded several prizes to Arab films, filmmakers and actors. I write with confidence that each of the Arab filmmakers recognised at Berlinale in 2016 have seen Haifaa al-Mansour’s Wadjda.

It’s a courageous battle to challenge the norm. In a state that imposes rules based on laws unwritten, perhaps it is time to write our own rules. In Wadjda, Head Teacher Hessa proclaims to Wadjda, “Believe it or not, you remind me of myself at your age.” With the wind in her hair, a young girl dreams of the freedom that riding a bike offers so that she may take control of her direction and destination.

Four years after the release of Wadjda in 2012, there are now many more Wadjdas. They are the Haifaas, the Manals, the Rotanas, the Loujains, the Maysaas, the Hanadis, the Yasmeens, the Wojdans, and the Sarahs. They are you and they are me.

They are enrolled in higher education, writing novels and screenplays, vlogging, blogging, creating art, voicing opinions, singing songs, travelling internationally, competing in sporting events, riding bicycles and flying airplanes. They are also doing it all under existing written law, even in Saudi Arabia, and they don’t seek your approval.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Wadjda’: Can a Girl and a Bicycle Change a Culture?

Sarah Mason is an international producer based in Los Angeles. A graduate of Bristol University, UK. She consults on Middle Eastern cultural representation in film and art.

The Anti-Celebrity Cinema of Mary Harron: ‘I Shot Andy Warhol,’ ‘The Notorious Bettie Page,’ and ‘The Anna Nicole Story’

I’ve always thought Mary Harron’s work was the perfect example of why we need female directors. I think the films she produces provide a perspective we would never see in a world unilaterally controlled by male filmmakers. Harron appears to specialize in off-beat character studies of the types of people a male director may not gravitate towards, nor treat with appropriate gravitas. She treats us to humanizing takes on sex workers and sex symbols, angry lesbians and radical feminism and makes them hard to turn away from.

This post by staff writer Elizabeth Kiy appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

I’ve always thought Mary Harron’s work was the perfect example of why we need female directors.

I think the films she produces provide a perspective we would never see in a world unilaterally controlled by male filmmakers. Harron appears to specialize in off-beat character studies of the types of people a male director may not gravitate towards, nor treat with appropriate gravitas. She treats us to humanizing takes on sex workers and sex symbols, angry lesbians and radical feminism and makes them hard to turn away from.

Her work is so different from what we are used to that, it’s usually depressing to read anything about the making of her films, which always seem to struggle for financing and spend years in development hell.

Harron’s film are like long monologues, focusing on the experiences of a single, larger than life character. In my head, I’ve compared them to less glossy magazine profiles.

Though she is best know for her controversial take on American Psycho (which starred Gloria Steinem’s stepson, Christian Bale), I find her biopics, a triptych focusing on Bettie Page, Valerie Solanas, Anna Nicole Smith, her most interesting works.

These are difficult women to portray in an even handed fashion. Their personas and actions have transcended the truth of who they are and in the cases of Bettie and Anna Nicole, tend to be seen rather than heard. They are also women who have appeared difficult to defend and explain from within a feminist framework.

Harron, who wrote for Punk Magazine in 1970s New York, mixes feminine aesthetics and masculine grit to find beauty in the often ugly experiences of her subjects. She takes daring subjects and portrays them in a formalistically unique style, using different film stocks, gorgeous cinematography and fast kinetic edits to portray different time periods. The Notorious Bettie Page, uses a Wizard of Oz style switch from black and white to lush colour, to portray the character’s feelings of freedom. She lets her actors breathe and inhabit the characters and when her films succeed, they do on the lead character’s stand out performances.

Though it is often unclear what she is trying to say with them. As a whole, her oeuvre does not present a cohesive sense of auterusim or even stick to a specific genre, medium or perspective. Harron’s main interest appear to be intriguing stories.

If her films do have one message, it’s that people are more complicated than we assume. They don’t make a snap judgement about the characters. Mary Harron doesn’t tell us Valerie Solanas was “crazy” or Bettie Page was exploited or Anna Nicole Smith was a gold digger. She says, there are good and bad parts of everyone. What seems to matter is being interesting.

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)

I Shot Andy Warhol is a little art scene movie about Valerie Solanas (Lili Taylor), a lesbian writer famous more for the delusions that lead her to (non-fatally) shoot Andy Warhol in 1968 than for her feminist treatise, the S.C.U.M. manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men).

The film is Valerie’s show, portraying her as a desperate person living on the fringes of society and struggling to make a living, who comes face to face with Warhol’s beautiful world and its superstars and hopes to be invited in. She comes to believe Warhol is trying to control and exploit her when she cannot get him to produce a play of hers.

The film doesn’t seem to take a stance on Solanas, but allows the audience to try to understand her based on what they have been shown. We are helped along by Taylor’s performance, intense to the point of being frightening, which makes her character come alive.

The Notorious Bettie Page (2005)

In Harron’s portrayal of the life of 50s pin-up Queen, Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol), we meet a woman who is a living contradiction. She is portrayed as an innocent who doesn’t understand the idea of pornography yet enjoys posing naked. Even the most aggressive bondage scenes where she is tied up and gagged seem to be a great game for her.

Though the film is about pornography, Harron skillfully avoids giving us overtly sexualized or salivating gazes of her star. The nude scenes are either awkward as Bettie fumbles unsure in the beginning or triumphant in portraying Bettie’s proud nudism and her sun-kissed body, glowing. I think Gretchen Mol’s portrayal of Bettie really helps here; she is wide-eyed and perpetually stunned. The way she inhabits the character makes her sexuality seem natural. She enjoys her body and the film’s switch to technicolor emphasizes that happiness.

However, it’s a film with a lot to unpack. Because Harron opens it with scenes of Bettie’s rape and abuse, it’s easy to believe she’s suggesting Bettie’s sexual openness is because of her rape. It’s gets slightly heavy-handed in one point where she is invited to show a private moment in her acting class and she begins to take off her clothes.

The relatively short span of Bettie’s life Harron focuses on cuts out her later mental illness and the extent of her evangelicalism. It’s discomforting to see younger Bettie enjoy her work when contrasted to older Bettie whose conversion suggests she begins to view what she participated in as exploitative.

The Anna Nicole Story (2013)

The Anna Nicole Story is a Lifetime movie, it’s campy and trashy, but it has aspirations. Harron gives Anna Nicole the Marilyn Monroe treatment, telling us that she is a misunderstood bombshell hiding a deep sadness. Though, the device of the ghostly figure of an older glamorous Anna Nicole guiding her through her life is a bit much.

There’s a fine line between campy trashy and exploitation trashy and Harron is fairly successful here. For the last years of her life, evidence that Anna Nicole Smith was mentally unwell and struggling with drugs was turned into a joke and her weight gain was excoriated by men who just wanted her to get hot again. While Anna Nicole was various exploited and exploitative herself, the film tries to rein in her image to something palatable to the viewers at home. Agnes Bruckner tries to make her seem human, but though we are left unsure of the motivations behind many of her stranger actions.

It seemed like every interview Bruckner did for the film was about the enlarged breasts she sported as Anna Nicole. She was asked “How were they made? or “How did they feel?” over and over.

In the finished picture, too much fun is had with Anna Nicole’s breasts, whose size the film enjoys exaggerating and displaying, though this may come with the territory. The scene where she bring cantaloupes to display the size of implants she want is played for laughs, as is the revel of her new large breasts getting her attention at the strip club.

As it’s a Lifetime movie, Harron is hampered by a PG rating, a low budget and shot production schedule, but she still gives us something interesting to explore.

She always has.

Elizabeth Kiy. is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. Someday she will take over the world.

Sofia Coppola and The Silent Woman

Many films touch upon the theme of female isolation, but I remain fascinated with Sofia Coppola’s three major cinematic creations that explore the world of The Silent Woman: ‘The Virgin Suicides,’ ‘Lost in Translation,’ and ‘Marie Antoinette (2006).’ Each film delves into this enigma, forming a multifaceted frame of reference for a shared understanding.

This guest post written by Paulette Reynolds appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

The Silent Woman. You see her everywhere and yet she’s not noticed at all. She exists between the spaces of Everything’s Fine and I’m Okay. She’s your mother, sister, that next door neighbor and your best friend. Most of the time she’s you, too. She often speaks in monosyllables and can also be quite the chatterbox…

When I first heard the phrase, The Silent Majority, I thought it referred to women. After all, the men I saw exercised power: In the boardrooms, between the sheets and at the dinner table — men spoke firmly, authoritatively and with absolute conviction that what they said carried all the weight of a solid gold bar at Fort Knox.

Of course my first frame of reference was visual and women in the real world matched what I saw in the movies. They had no real power and never spoke with any assertiveness, and when they did, they were quickly silenced with an exasperated look, a dismissive declaration, a well-placed joke or a baby. Many films touch upon the theme of female isolation, but I remain fascinated with Sofia Coppola’s three major cinematic creations that explore the world of The Silent Woman: The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), and Marie Antoinette (2006). Each film delves into this enigma, forming a multifaceted frame of reference for a shared understanding.

Sofia Coppola’s directorial career began with The Virgin Suicides. The family surname belongs to her father, film giant Francis Ford Coppola, known for his male-centric masterpieces The Godfather epic and Apocalypse Now. But a popular Coppola project — Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) – would later serve to inspire her own seven-year creative streak.

Peggy Sue Got Married sticks out like an odd sock in Mr. Coppola’s resume, a film about faded prom queen Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner), who travels back in time to solve an identity crisis. Sofia played her younger sister and goes unnoticed, but the theme of isolation reverberates throughout, as Peggy Sue marvels at how things have changed, but still remain the same — for her, anyway. Ms. Coppola’s film trio borrows a few familiar chords from Peggy Sue for us to recognize: All three occur in different times (The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette) or cultural places (Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette), featuring naive young blond women (the five sisters, Charlotte and Marie Antoinette), who communicate poorly with their inept male counterparts: a nerdy group of boys in The Virgin Suicides, Charlotte’s workaholic husband, and Marie Antoinette’s clueless Boy King.

Yet The Silent Women, with their inability — or refusal, in the case of the virgins — to connect, diverges from Peggy Sue, whose adult life experiences enrich her inner voice, allowing her a measure of power. Their Nordic blondness also makes them more alluring than Peggy Sue, which is the gold standard of beauty that women are taught to admire from afar. The ironic connector allows them to drift through life, seemingly unaffected, when their fate demands that they adapt to society’s demands or perish.

The Virgin Suicides, is the first in Sofia Coppola’s trilogy about the strangled voice of Woman, narrated from the perspective of one admirer, whose subjectivity and biological entitlement flaws our gaze. The five Lisbon sisters, including Lux (played by Kirsten Dunst), form the mysterious inner circle of bored suburban girls, where their exotic surname separates them even more from their 1970s humdrum surroundings. And from the diseased tree looming ominously on their property, to their father’s chats with plants and Mother Lisbon’s terse commands at the dinner table, we suspect there will be no fairy tale ending.

The youngest daughter, Cecilia, succeeds in killing herself, and our collective dread for the remaining sisters is subdued as the parents try to relax their hold over the restless teenagers. This allows them some temporary freedom, but when Lux violates the curfew after a sexual tryst with Trip (Josh Harnett), everything goes into lockdown. Yet it hardly seems to matter to the girls, who lounge around their rooms as though they’re enjoying an extended sleepover. Lux begins to act out, having random sex on the roof, her behavior mirroring the experience with Trip on the night of the Homecoming Dance. As she stubbornly relives it for everyone to see, we become part of her guilt and sorrow, and like the boys watching, we can only make guesses in the dark. Lux’s name, meaning ‘light’, hints that she is merely illuminating the scene for us, and whatever answer we arrive at will have to suffice.

The narrator, now a disillusioned adult, and his old neighborhood buddies continue trying to unravel the mystery that was the Lisbon girls, “We knew the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love, and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.” Triggered by hormones and too much free time, they spin endless fantasies about them, gleaned from personal belongings and the pop psychology of the times. Their perspective lulls them — and us — into a false arrogance that they’ve plumbed the depths to reveal their secrets. This deepens as we think they’re communicating with them through shared music over the telephone. But the common link of music and feelings becomes something different for each group, as the girls are just marking time and the boys think they’re actually connecting on a meaningful level.

A small pivotal scene occurs between Lux and her mother — whose first name we never know, played to perfection by Kathleen Turner. Lux complains, “I can’t breath in here.” Mrs. Lisbon’s automatic response, “Lu, you are safe, in here,” neatly shuts down any further attempts at communication. Her mother’s desire to keep them safe only intensifies their estrangement from a society that they never wanted to inhabit anyway.

Eventually the girls follow their pioneering sister to a collective death. The men — including a remorseful Trip — are left behind, bewildered by too many questions and no real understanding of these sublime young women.

Ms. Coppola’s second film about female detachment is the commercially successful Lost in Translation. It marked her first scripted venture, where she won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and a Golden Globe for her efforts. Lost in Translation follows the interweaving threads of a brief encounter set against the high-rise hustle and bustle of Tokyo, Japan. The male gaze is again emphasized: Bob (Bill Murray) is a famous actor and John (Giovanni Ribisi) is a celebrity photographer, signaling the dual nature in the preoccupation of looking. But Bob has reached the stage where he is tired of being looked at and John is too self-absorbed to really see. Inserted into this dynamic is Charlotte (Scarlett Johannson), John’s neglected wife.

The beginning sees Bob and Charlotte attempting to relate to their surroundings, each other and their spouses. He sticks close to the hotel culture, surviving with a sour face and brittle humor, deflecting his wife’s long-distant communications by sticking to a well-worn script of automatic replies and bland compliments. Charlotte is acutely aware that she is a stranger in a strange land, where her travels only reinforce the solitary nature of her existence. Coppola employs large landscapes – both cultural and historical — to emphasize how lost Woman is without a voice of her own, disconnected from the very society that layers her life with expectations and carefully placed parameters of behavior. This refrain is repeated in The Virgin Suicides, where most of the action is confined to the Lisbon home. Here, her travels leave her sad, as she and John dissolve into petty disagreements and estranged silences.

John goes on a photo shoot, leaving Charlotte and Bob to explore Toyko together. Bob, older and wiser, shares his knowledge about marriage with Charlotte. She complains about being ‘stuck’ in her life, reeling off her short list of failed careers. He encourages her to keep writing and here a seismic shift transforms Lost in Translation into an autobiographical post-it note for us: Sofia Coppola’s earlier career choices and recent divorce are echoed in this scene, and the connection to her mentor-father now changes Bob into a paternal figure, who acts as an emotional buffer for Charlotte against the harsh realities buried within her life decisions.

As they say their goodbyes Bob whispers something into Charlotte’s ear, which becomes the shared moment of intimacy that they’ve been avoiding. As Bob and Charlotte disengage and he disappears, she slowly walks towards us, and we’re reminded of the film’s beginning, where she came into view with her back facing us. Now, contentedly smiling to herself as the crowd swirls busily around her, we sense that she will survive and grow stronger.

Lost in Translation acts as the fulcrum in Sofia Coppola’s trio, giving way to her third film, Marie Antoinette. Visually stunning, with opulent costumes and breath-taking views of the elegant 700-room Versailles Palace, Marie Antoinette reunites us with Kirsten Dunst as the 14-year-old Austrian princess who would become Queen of France.

Marie Antoinette, wrapped in a cocoon of wealth and privilege, begins a journey supremely ignorant of the world events that will affect her life, as she is handed off to the French government. At the Austrian-French border, she’s forced to surrender all of her belongings for traditional French accessories, introducing Marie to the lengths she’ll be expected to go for King and Country. Princess Marie arrives to a hostile court, where the courtiers refer to her as an ‘apple strudel.’ King Louis XV quickly marries off Marie to Prince Louis Auguste, since their sole function is to produce an heir for France. But Louis’s disinterest, their sexual naiveté and Marie’s inability to communicate produces nothing but gossip and blame, which gets directed at her, of course.

The princess will turn into an extravagant queen whose continuous spending left France stone broke — or so the story goes. Her husband, Louis XVI, (Jason Schwartzman) — just as clueless as Marie — contented himself with hunting and studying locks, while the government made political decisions that hastened the country’s eventual downfall. But Sofia Coppola’s film reveals a young girl who was never allowed to use her voice, sacrificed as a pawn by both Austria and France.

“Letting everyone down would be my greatest unhappiness,” she confides to her Ambassador, but that seems to be Marie Antoinette’s secondary function. She spends her formative years at Versailles bewildered and overwhelmed, often tearfully breaking down behind closed doors. Her mother writes ultimatums, her brother counsels about sex, and her Ambassador wails about her refusal to engage in political intrigue. Her emotional isolation is further heightened by every personal activity, which serves as ritualized theatre for the court’s entertainment.

Marie’s spending sprees, gambling and hard partying become more extreme in her desperation to feel something more than boredom and inadequacy. Coppola’s attention to Marie Antoinette’s clothing points at the language of fashion as a forceful communicator of power. Power statements for the monarchy were tucked into every inch of wig height, where prestige was judged by the width of a skirt and the suffocating amount of embellishment. Yet hidden within the satin and lace was a woman who was screaming to get out.

Marie Antoinette’s sad end marks our final film of Sofia Coppola’s Silent Woman saga, and their collective search for an empowered voice. The Academy nominated Sofia Coppola as Best Director for Lost in Translation — only one of three women to be nominated by the Academy until 2009. Kathryn Bigelow then became the first woman director to win an Oscar, and sadly, no other woman has been nominated for directing since. While most of Hollywood’s directors are still men, The Silent Majority is steadily raising her voice — on film projects, in the boardrooms, and globally — firmly, authoritatively and with absolute conviction.

Paulette Reynolds is the Editor and Publisher of Cine Mata’s Movie Madness film appreciation blog. Film viewing and theory are her passion, but film noir remains her first love. Paulette breathes the rarified Austin, Texas air and can be seen on Twitter: @CinesMovieBlog.

Kelly Reichardt’s ‘Wendy and Lucy’: Heartbreak in a Panning Shot

Through the course of the film, Kelly Reichardt’s pacing is so deliberate that even the most ordinary moments seem intensely significant. Reichardt’s framing traps Wendy in shots as much as her broken-down car and lack of money trap her in the town.

This guest post written by ThoughtPusher appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors. Spoilers ahead.

A version of this post previously appeared at Bright Lights Film Journal. It now celebrates the recent release of Certain Women, a series of vignettes set in small-town Montana directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, and Laura Dern.

The lateral pan 50 minutes into Wendy and Lucy kills me. The 2008 movie follows a simple enough story: girl and dog travel through a train-yard town, girl’s car breaks down, girl loses dog, girl finds dog in a better situation, girl leaves alone on a freight train. It is one in a series of stories from the writer/director about someone “passing through.” Through the course of the film, Kelly Reichardt’s pacing is so deliberate that even the most ordinary moments seem intensely significant. Reichardt’s framing traps Wendy in shots as much as her broken-down car and lack of money trap her in the town. But I cannot escape the lingering grasp of that pan. It just breaks my heart every time I see it.

Having lost her dog during a day-long stint in the local police precinct for shoplifting food, Wendy begins a search for Lucy who was left tied to the bike rack outside of the grocery store. Wendy tapes an “I’m lost” flyer with Lucy’s picture and description to a storefront window and walks away, but her movement doesn’t draw the camera’s gaze. All I see is the scene Wendy leaves behind: a soda machine and passing cars reflected in the glass that now holds the symbol of a tragic loss, simultaneously the symbol of a hopeful return. Then the camera starts to shift. Slowly. Too slowly. Is Lucy in the alley? Is there something written on that wall which seems to take minutes to glide over? What draws the camera’s gaze since it didn’t swish to keep up with Wendy when she walked away? Where is the camera taking me and where is this story going?

The distance traveled in that pan seems infinite: from the window, then along the building’s wall, and finally around the corner to see Wendy walking toward a fenced-off field (at which point she beckons to Lucy in a voice much smaller than Michelle Williams’ presence). In order to cover the apparently infinite space, that pan seems to last an eternity. Actually, it takes only a few seconds to cover a short distance, and the pan is only one among many employed in the film; but damn if it doesn’t crush me in a way no mere pan should.

A conventional pan should be a horizontal pivot of the camera which reveals a lateral view of scenery or action, particularly by following a moving subject. But Reichardt’s pan breaks the mold and imposes narrative significance to a cursory moment in Wendy’s story. The solitary pivot point of the pan doesn’t give me a stationary place of reference to make sense of the movement, and what is revealed in the course of the pan is not an environmental relationship between the storefront and Wendy. Rather, the pan shows me that I am limited in who I can see, what I can know, and where I can go. I’m just as bound to the isolation and desperation of a search without a foreseeable end as Wendy is as she calls out yet again and wonders about Lucy’s fate. (And I begin to wonder if Reichardt is telling a story about a drifter or documenting the reality of moving from film to film without a view as to her own professional future. As sad as that prospect seems, I reenter the film and think about the impact of that pan.)

The connection between Wendy and Lucy is severed, so even the story’s focal point seems lost. Wendy worries about Lucy and puts every effort into finding her, only to leave her once she is found. Wendy’s impoverished situation makes each of the choices she faces seem binary. Either she loses some of the limited money she has or she tries to steal food. Either she reclaims Lucy or she leaves her in a stable home. Either she moves forward or backward. Unlike so many other road movies, Wendy never feels the freedom of open possibilities. She is moving on a track from point A to point B, and she does not diverge from a determined path. Her journey is like that pan, slowly moving from one place to another, and whatever she experiences is just another point on a line that must be traveled in order to reach the destination.

I think the pan itself actually makes me feel the grief that follows the loss of a friend. On the surface, it is devoid of meaningful content; but maybe the effect is supposed to underscore the contextual space that opens for Wendy in a life without Lucy and foreshadow Wendy’s solitary departure from the town. The steady movement of that pan etches a line across the horizon of possibilities within the film: there is no freedom experienced in this traveler’s tale since Wendy is shackled by financial and social limitations as she journeys across the country. The function of that pan in some way binds me to Wendy as I eventually catch up to her, but the camera lacks any purpose that extends beyond finding a familiar character to latch onto. It is as if the camera’s gaze merely seeks a place to rest from this unending unknown, and that might be Wendy’s true quest in the film.

Thus attached to that pan, my motivation for attentive analysis is lost, as absent as Lucy from Wendy’s field of view. I don’t know where to find meaning and instead I find myself on shaky ground, if any at all, as if no tripod could support the weight of interpretation. The delay leading up to that pan makes the camera seem lethargic, imposing its own sigh in the midst of a sad situation. During that pan, the camera doesn’t just pivot: it floats from the flyer’s symbol of a search to the distraught searcher, both of which are disconnected from the object of the search; and I am left hanging like the flyer, one copy from a stack just like it, posted alongside other flyers for other lost dogs. Stripped of conventional purposes such as establishing a relationship to other characters or demonstrating the vastness of the environment, that pan makes me hover and drift. I am a ghost doomed to haunt the Oregon landscape, trapped alongside Wendy in this lost world.

Wendy’s ordeal in the film is comprised of just a few days in a longer journey; but that short time slowly develops into systemic uncertainty with increasingly intense vulnerability to invasions by unknown others and explores the bitter circumstances involved in negotiating the mundane details of a marginalized life. In the middle of the film, that pan evokes a sense of alienation and suggests Wendy’s lonely departure alongside an empty space. By the end of the film, Wendy has no safety net, no social network, no clarity of purpose… just like me with that pan. A life without significant attachments, an inability to escape the trappings of necessity, the meandering that accompanies an indefinite future: all conveyed painstakingly in a simple pan, an occasion fit for heartbreak.

ThoughtPusher might live somewhere near you (especially if you have a neighbor who blasts New Order or Tears for Fears most nights), but certainly is a cinephile who has no interest in being followed or asking to be liked.

Why ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ Is One of My Favorite Films

The character was created to be an icon, a model for Roberta and other women like her, an image to hold in our heads of what life could be like if we just unleashed our inner pop star. But she’s also real enough that it feels like you might spot her in a hip nightclub, dancing uninhibited and having more fun than anyone else there just because she’s being herself.

This guest post written by Alex Kittle appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

It isn’t referenced much in any well-informed, critical film discussions. It isn’t typically put forth as a shining example of 80s cinema, or women-directed cinema, or Madonna-starring cinema. It probably isn’t used in many film classes. It isn’t especially well-remembered today, except as a kind of style footnote within the singer’s long and storied career. And yet, I would easily count Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan among my favorite films.

I remember the very first time I ever saw this movie. I was about 16, and I was home sick with a bad cold. I was in a fog all day but couldn’t sleep, so I hazily watched movies on cable TV all afternoon. Desperately Seeking Susan came on one of our movie channels and I immediately fell for its hip 80s New York world. I grew up in a boring suburb across the river from New York City, and easily imagined myself crossing the tunnel and joining a rock band and living a super-cool city life and having wild but sexy fashion sense when I got older. I especially romanticized the punk/new wave scene of the 70s and 80s, when there was graffiti everywhere and cool musicians hanging out on every corner, and young people could live in crumbling bohemian apartments and no one ever seemed to need a day job. I wanted to be an independent young woman who exuded confidence and had street smarts and wore red lipstick and could somehow eat a puffy cheeto without getting cheese dust all over her body. Instead, I was stuck in my small town with my awkward teen body and a personal style that took many more years to cultivate into anything I could be comfortable with.

Basically, I was a Roberta. And I wanted to be a Susan.

Combining wacky caper with romantic comedy and class satire, Desperately Seeking Susan is about a bored, lonely housewife named Roberta living in Fort Lee, NJ, who longs for something to spice up her cookie-cutter existence. She knows she’s desperate, but she’s not sure for what, she just has a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, of disconnection from her bland husband and yuppie friends. It takes a total movie-comedy moment (in the form of an amnesia-inducing bump on the head) to free her from the lifestyle she had fallen into; a large portion of the film is dedicated to her coming into herself and finding her personality. Being mistaken for Susan means she can model herself after Susan, or at least everyone’s image of Susan. Without her memories and without any connection to her real life, Roberta is suddenly able to do anything, and to be anybody, a thought which obviously excites her. She starts (and immediately quits) smoking, makes out with a near-stranger, learns to perform magic, dresses to kill, and foils a murderous criminal plot.

Madonna’s character Susan, on the other hand, is introduced as a sexy new wave nomad, breezing her way through relationships and hotel rooms across the country, presumably charming everyone she meets and never having to pay for anything herself. She wears mesh tops and chunky jewelry, her bold lipstick is never smudged, and she dates a cute boy in a rock band. She is effortlessly cool and fully self-assured, full of ideas and never ever boring. She struts around New York City without a care in the world, believing that everyone can come to her, and everything will work out the way she wants it to. She embodies the New York downtown scene of the early 80s, a movement Madonna herself was involved in before she catapulted to fame around the time of the film’s release, which gives her an authenticity that couldn’t be captured with an outsider actress. The character was created to be an icon, a model for Roberta and other women like her, an image to hold in our heads of what life could be like if we just unleashed our inner pop star. But she’s also real enough that it feels like you might spot her in a hip nightclub, dancing uninhibited and having more fun than anyone else there just because she’s being herself.

While not all of Roberta’s exploratory adventures actually suit her, she seems able to find a happy medium between her former good-natured housewife self and the wild-girl persona that was thrust upon her. And yes, part of that happens through finding love, real love that isn’t the watered-down marriage she’d been stuck in for four years. But the story isn’t about finding yourself through a man, or any relationship, it’s about finding yourself outside of those things. One of my favorite exchanges of the movie is towards the end when Roberta confronts her dopey (and hilariously terrible) husband, Gary, after he finally tracks her down to the club where she’s working as a magician’s assistant. “Look at me,” she says. His response is, “I looked at you, you look ridiculous.” “I mean, look at ME, Gary!” she implores. Her face and her inflection speak volumes, and it’s clear this is the most weight she has ever given to the word “me,” that this is the first time she really understands what the word means. And finally she asserts, “I’m not coming home with you.” It’s a really good moment.

I’m not saying Desperately Seeking Susan should be held up as some great, under-appreciated feminist text. I’m not saying Susan should be considered a role model, or that she served as mine specifically (for one thing, she smokes, so that’s a dealbreaker). What I am hoping for is a little respect. This film is primarily remembered for Madonna’s fashion and a string of musical cameos (John Lurie, Annie Golden, Richard Edson, Anne Magnuson, etc.), but it would be great if it was more often cited as what it is to me: A significant entry into the never-big-enough genre of empowering women’s stories. Because, as a former sick teen sitting at home on the couch, forever uncool and unsure, it was nice to watch Roberta becoming her own person for the first time, and to witness Susan just being Susan. It still is.

Alex Kittle is an artist, writer, retail buyer, and curator who lives and works in the Boston area. She is passionate about many things, including horror movies, 80s new wave, feminist art history, crossword puzzles, and science-fiction. You can find her at almost any given time of day hanging out on Twitter at @alexxkittle.

Movie You Need to Be Talking About: ‘Advantageous’

Directed and co-written by Jennifer Phang, ‘Advantageous’ is a surprisingly touching and purposeful film that revitalizes certain elements of the sci-fi genre while presenting two powerful voices in women filmmakers: Jennifer Phang and Jacqueline Kim.

This guest post by Candice Frederick originally appeared at Reel Talk Online and appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors. It is cross-posted with permission.

You may remember when I first mentioned Advantageous among several other Sundance films I was anticipating this year. Well, full disclosure, I kinda forgot about it until it popped up in my “recommended” Netflix queue last weekend. Why didn’t anyone tell me it was out this weekend?! Anyway, I caught up with it and I have to tell you, it exceeded my expectations. It’s a small film that tackles a massive issue in a very vulnerable way, yielding a story about a mother’s love, self-worth, and youth obsession.

Advantageous is set in a not-so-distant future (actually, if not for the flying cars, it would be identical to modern times), and follows Gwen (Jacqueline Kim, who also co-wrote the screenplay), a woman working for a technically advanced wellness company that equates beauty with youth and helps women sustain their value by offering a unique procedure that preserves their age. Ironically, as the spokesperson for the company, Gwen finds herself in the position where she has to consider this procedure for herself once she is let go from her job due to her “advanced age.”(By the way, she’s probably, like, 40 — if that — but still bad for business). As I said, not very far off from today’s times.

Though the basis of this film is familiar, what makes the film so special are the relationships between the characters and Kim’s compelling performance of a woman drawn to desperate measures. As the mother of a young daughter in a society quick to invalidate women, Gwen sees a hopelessness in Jules’s (her daughter) future and wants to be able to at least be a role model for her, someone she can be proud of. Through Kim’s visceral performance, you feel the agony of each passing day which is only making Gwen older. Another day without work, without promise, and without a real life for herself. You feel that in every scene Kim is in (which is most of them, if not all), the utter claustrophobia of Gwen’s life.

There’s a heart-crushing moment in the film in which Gwen admits that Jules is the only thing that makes her happy. You feel this most in the quiet, bittersweet scenes the mother and daughter share, which ultimately serve to hasten her life-altering decision. But it is only toward the end of film that we realize the cost.

Directed and co-written by Jennifer Phang, Advantageous is a surprisingly touching and purposeful film that revitalizes certain elements of the sci-fi genre while presenting two powerful voices in women filmmakers: Phang and Kim. I look forward to seeing what they have in store next.

https://youtu.be/hgTgRBxY0nw

Creator/blogger of Reel Talk Online, Candice Frederick is a writer for hire, lover of snark, former magazine journalist, and co-host of the podcast, “Cinema in Noir.” She is also a Personal Lifestyle Contributor for Black Girl Nerds, and member of the Online Film Critics Society, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and LAMB (Large Association of Movie Bloggers).

Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Near Dark’: Busting Stereotypes and Drawing Blood

Both brutally violent and shockingly sexy, ‘Near Dark’s influence can be felt nearly thirty years later on a new crop of unusual vampire dramas that simultaneously embrace and reject the conventions of the genre. … Yet among all these films about outsiders, ‘Near Dark’ will always have a special place in my heart for being the one to show me that as a filmmaker, I was not alone in the world after all.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

There were many reasons why I felt like an outsider while studying film and television production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Some were related to class; I felt as though everyone around me had more money (and fewer student loans). Some were related to my lack of practical production experience; prior to film school, I had never operated a camera apart from a few silly movies starring action figures. Some reasons, I am willing to admit, were inside my own introverted, antisocial head. However, it was my taste in film that really made me feel as though I did not belong at a school with “arts” in its name. I like action movies packed with stylish fight sequences, zombie movies so gory that every frame is splattered with brains, and science-fiction movies crammed with special effects. As a writer and director, I aspired to be Peter Jackson, Edgar Wright, Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie and Robert Rodriguez all rolled into one frenetic package, which makes you feel a bit awkward when everyone around you worships at the art-house altars of David Lynch and Terrence Malick. It’s also a bit awkward when you realize that all of the directors you look up to are men.

When I was in my final year at NYU, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director. This was already a big deal, but it was all the more important to me because she had won it for directing The Hurt Locker, a tense, literally explosive drama about a troubled bomb diffuser in Iraq. Here was a woman making films that were dark, disturbing, visually compelling and packed with action — all things I aspired to include in my own work — and getting recognized for it by the Hollywood establishment. Delving deep into Bigelow’s wide-ranging oeuvre, which includes Soviet submarine thriller K-19: The Widowmaker and Keanu classic Point Break, inspired and reassured me while I was struggling to pinpoint my own identity, both as a filmmaker and a woman.

My favorite Kathryn Bigelow film, and the one I feel the most kinship with as a filmmaker, is her second feature, Near Dark. Released in 1987 at the height of a bloodsucker boom led by The Lost Boys, it manages to stand out from the pack thanks to its improbable but incredible combination of the vampire genre with that of the Western to create one weird, pulpy masterpiece. Before watching Near Dark, I primarily expected to encounter vampires in eerie, overcast Eastern European locales filled with fog and ancient history; to encounter them smashing across the broad, sunburnt plains of Texas in a battered motorhome was shocking and refreshing. Near Dark’s vampires are never referred to as such, nor do they have the chivalrous manners and old-fashioned elegance of many of their forefathers. Rather, they’re a marauding band of leather-coated drifters who wouldn’t be out of place in the world of Mad Max, coated liberally with blood, sweat and dirt. Both brutally violent and shockingly sexy, Near Dark’s influence can be felt nearly thirty years later on a new crop of unusual vampire dramas that simultaneously embrace and reject the conventions of the genre.

Near Dark opens with a close-up of a bloodsucking creature, but not the one that you expect — it’s a mosquito, hovering on the arm of farm boy Caleb Colton (an achingly young Adrian Pasdar) until he smacks it away. Driving into town to meet some friends, he spies an innocent-looking blonde pixie of a girl emerging from a shop while licking a vanilla ice cream cone. What follows is an all-American meet-cute laden with vampire innuendo that poor Caleb just cannot comprehend.

“Can I have a bite?” Caleb drawls, oozing earnest Southern charm.
“A bite?”
“Yeah. I’m just dying for a cone.”
“Dying?”

The girl, Mae (Jenny Wright), is not just any pretty girl. She’s a honey trap, luring unsuspecting victims into the clutches of her nomadic vampire family. Caleb behaves as though Mae is the prey, the object to be pursued and hopefully won; little does he know, it is entirely the other way around. When he tries to impress her with a lasso, she grabs hold of the rope herself and reels him in, shocking him with her strength. “I haven’t met any girls like you,” Caleb says, attempting to flatter her. “No,” Mae replies in a tense voice, “You sure haven’t.”

The instant, almost animal attraction between Caleb and Mae is obvious, and they share a long, romantic night driving around the Texas plains before Mae begins to panic that she won’t be home before sunrise. Caleb assumes she’s only afraid her daddy will punish her for being out all night, and coyly asks for a kiss before she goes. What he gets is far more than he bargained for — a passionate, hungry kiss, sure, but one that culminates in a nasty bite on the neck and the sight of his bright red blood dripping down Mae’s white chin as she hops down from his truck.

Soon it is morning, and Caleb finds himself staggering across the fields towards his father’s farm, weakened by the harsh rays of the rising sun, with telltale smoke sizzling up from his slowly roasting skin. Before he can make it to safety, he is scooped up by Mae and her gang in their motorhome. They’re ready to suck him dry — that is, until Mae mentions to the others that she did a bit more than just reveal her true nature to him. By biting him, he has become her responsibility –and potentially, her mate. Furious, the rest of the vampires reluctantly agree that Caleb can stay alive a little bit longer and be given the chance to learn to live like one of them. In other words, to live by the cover of darkness, luring (usually via hitchhiking) and killing innocent people without hesitation in order to survive.

“What do we do now?” Caleb, dumbfounded by his new immortal status, asks Mae.
“Anything we want, until the end of time,” she replies.

During Caleb and Mae’s first meeting, Caleb oozes confidence and plays at dominance, the way most boys do when trying to win over a girl. However, once he becomes a vampire, the reversal of stereotypical gender roles is striking. Caleb becomes entirely dependent on Mae. It is only her attraction to him that keeps the rest of her family from killing him on the spot, and it is only her willingness to kill for him and allow him to drink her own blood that keeps him alive in the days that follow. Caleb needs Mae, and because of this, their intimacy grows in new and bizarre ways. In one particularly passionate scene, Mae bites open her own wrist and clutches Caleb’s desperate, hungry head to her while he feeds, until he almost kills her in his fervor.

Despite his obvious need to consume blood, Caleb cannot bring himself to take a life, whereas the other vampires seem not only to kill to live, but also to live to kill. They’ve survived so long by any means necessary that they don’t hesitate to wipe out the entire clientele of a rundown roadside bar for both food and fun (a scene of creative carnage that rivals the equally deadly tavern scene in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds). The gang includes Jesse (Lance Henriksen), the charismatic leader who fought for the south in the Civil War; Jesse’s mate, Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein), whose big blonde hair and skintight ensembles can’t help but remind you of another iconic Eighties femme fatale, the android Pris in Blade Runner; Homer (Joshua Miller), who was turned as a boy and perpetually struggles with having an ancient brain trapped inside a child’s body; and the particularly vicious Severen (a delightfully unhinged Bill Paxton), who introduces himself to Caleb by informing him, “I’m gonna separate your head from your shoulders. Hope you don’t mind none.” They all speak in a bizarre, stylized version of Southern dialect that drips in menace and the occasional old-fashioned turn of phrase that comes from having lived long enough to take credit for starting the Great Chicago Fire. But Mae, the youngest of the vampires, is different. She kills to keep herself alive, but she seems to take a lot less sick joy in it than the others, and the more time she spends with Caleb, the more their heartless behavior seems to turn her off. By being with Caleb, she is reminded of what it was to be human — after all, she was one herself not so long ago.

Near Dark doesn’t have much in the way of plot; Caleb is dragged around Texas by the vampires, the timer on his existence counting down faster and faster, while his father and little sister search for him. The pulsating beat of the awesomely Eighties electronic score by Tangerine Dream adds to the urgency. It all culminates in an explosive finale with numerous characters meeting horrific ends via spontaneous combustion under the cloudless blue Texas sky — beautiful, and without mercy. There’s a happy ending that some might think a cop-out, as it goes against traditional vampire lore. Yet, rejecting traditional and expected vampire tropes is one of the things that makes Near Dark such a memorable film. Nothing about it is expected. It breaks all of the rules and makes up its own along the way. This Southern-fried story of young love, lust and lost innocence has as much in common with Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show than any Dracula movie.

Today, Near Dark’s legacy lives on in films like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, from another promising woman director, Ana Lily Amirpour. In a film described as “the first Iranian vampire Western,” Amirpour brings vampires to another unfamiliar locale — this time, a dead-end Iranian town called Bad City. Here, a nameless bloodsucking girl (Sheila Vand) prowls the dark, empty streets in a chador, using her deceptively delicate and feminine appearance to lure and attack men who abuse women. Like Mae, she is much stronger than she initially appears. Independent film icon Jim Jarmusch also recently experimented in the vampire genre with Only Lovers Left Alive, which stars Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as an ancient, moody, bohemian couple holed up in rundown Detroit. While less of a direct descendant of Near Dark than A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, ones feels that this sexy, slow-moving story could not have been told without its more frantically passionate predecessor. Here, the horror aspects of the traditional vampire story take a backseat as the film explores how love can be powerful enough to survive enough dark moments to fill multiple lifetimes. The loneliness inherent in being immortal seems to be the one constant among all vampire films, even the most untraditional ones — and yes, even Twilight. Yet among all these films about outsiders, Near Dark will always have a special place in my heart for being the one to show me that as a filmmaker, I was not alone in the world after all.

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

‘Concussion’: When Queer Marriage in the Suburbs Isn’t Enough

The queer women we see in sexual situations in ‘Concussion’ are not cut from the same Playboy-ready cloth as the two women in ‘Blue’: one client is fat, another is an obvious real-life survivor of breast cancer and some of her clients, like Eleanor herself, are nowhere near their 20s anymore.

This repost by staff writer Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

How many distinctive, acclaimed films about queer women can be released in American theaters at the same time? If we extrapolate from the actions of film distributors in 2013, the answer is apparently: only one. Concussion was named one of the top 20 films of that year by Slate’s Dana Stevens and was also named one of the top films of 2013 in Salon. Shortly after its premiere, at Sundance, The Weinstein Company acquired it for distribution. For most films that acquisition (and the later support from reviews in traditional media) would mean a national release, but the film had a very limited run in theaters that fall and never played a theater in my art-house-friendly city. The film was on Video On Demand, iTunes, and Google Play, but deserves much more attention than most films that never have a national theatrical run.

This film about a queer woman is, unlike the same year’s Blue Is The Warmest Color, directed and written by a queer woman (Stacie Passon who was nominated for “Best First Feature” in the Independent Spirit Awards and directed an episode of this past season of Transparent) and in many aspects is the answer to those who dismissed Blue as a product of the male gaze. Instead of a teenage protagonist, the main character in Concussion, Abby (played by Robin Weigert: Andrew O’Hehir in Salon summed up her performance as “OMFG”), is a 40-something, stay-at-home Mom, married to another woman and living in the suburbs.

When her son accidentally hits her in the face with a baseball, we see the confusion and blood in the family car ride to the hospital, as she moans to no one in particular, “I don’t want this. I don’t want this. I don’t want this.”

In the ER Abby says she is going back to work in the city (and that she really means it this time). Abby doesn’t need to work for money: her spouse, Kate, is a divorce attorney, kept busy by the dissatisfied wives in their social circle. We see the wives’ well-maintained bodies in slow motion, at the beginning of the film, in spin and yoga classes as David Bowie sings on the soundtrack, “Oh you pretty things…”

Passon knows this world well She lives in the town (Montclair) Abby does. She is married to a woman and has children, one of whom accidentally hit her in the face with a baseball. The parallels between her life and Abby’s may be why the character and setting seem so fully realized.

Abby for the most part blends in with her straight women friends but we see she’s different from them–and not just in her orientation. She reads books while she vacuums. When a friend is circulating a “new motherhood” survey for an article in a parenting magazine, Abby writes of dreams in which she sticks her then newborn son in the microwave–and other dreams in which she and her son are married. She writes, “My poor baby, I didn’t know whether to kill him, fuck him, or eat him.”

At times Abby’s queerness does separate her from the other women. When Abby mentions to her friend that one of the group of women they work out with is “cute,” the friend (played by Janel Maloney) reproaches Abby, “She’s not a lesbian!”

Abby starts work with a contractor to refurbish a city loft. As they transform the apartment, she transforms too, first hiring women to have sex with her and then working out of the loft as a high-priced escort, “Eleanor,” whose clients are all women.

A woman character turning to sex work for reasons other than money is usually a male artist’s conceit, as in Luis Buñuel’s great Belle de Jour, which features stunning, beautifully dressed, doctor’s wife, Catherine Deneuve, working in a brothel while her handsome, attentive (but clueless) husband sees his patients. In women’s memoirs of sex work (like Michelle Tea’s Rent Girl) the money is the point of the work (as it is with most work).

A sex worker character whose clients are all women (when the vast majority of sex work clients are men) is also usually the creation of a straight male artist–and is usually a male character so the work avoids any explicit same-sex scenes.

Perhaps because Concussion turns that last trope on its head (or perhaps because New York is a big city that can cater to many kinds of tastes) we accept the conceit of a woman over 40 seeing women clients (for $800 a session) every day. The queer women we see in sexual situations in Concussion are not cut from the same Playboy-ready cloth as the two women in Blue: one client is fat, another is an obvious real-life survivor of breast cancer and some of her clients, like Eleanor herself, are nowhere near their 20s anymore.

Robin Weigert doesn’t have a Barbie Doll face or a porn model’s body, but does have a passing resemblance to the young Ellen Barkin. Weigert exudes the same confidence and sexiness–reminding us those two qualities are often one and the same.

Concussion has a scene similar to one in Blue in which a straight man interrogates a queer woman about her sexuality. But because Abby is in her 40s, the mocking tone she takes with him is completely different from what we hear from the 20-something main character in Blue, Adele.

In Concussion are we seeing the female gaze? Well, we’re definitely seeing one woman’s gaze, that of Passon. The sex scenes in Concussion, unlike Blue, don’t seem like outtakes from an amateur porn video, but flow from the other nonsexual encounters in the film. (Concussion’s expert cinematographer is David Kruta.) We also don’t see full frontal nudity from any of the actresses, and although we see the bare breasts of some of Eleanor’s clients, we never see hers. Eleanor/ Abby is both a psychological and corporeal enigma to us.

Some clues for her motives are in the scenes between Abby and her spouse. They are affectionate and loving with each other, even when they’re alone, but the sex has gone out of their marriage. After a disastrous first encounter with an escort, we feel Abby’s ache of longing when a second “better” escort begins to touch her. Later we see Eleanor’s first client, a 23-year-old virgin, react to Eleanor’s touch in much the same way.

In the city we see Abby in punk rock t-shirts (vintage Blondie and the now-defunct C.B.G.B) and boyshort underwear and in the suburbs we see her fitting in with her friends in yoga pants and an expensive down-filled jacket. At a suburban dinner party the guests talk about their days hanging out in pre-gentrified downtown New York clubs, Squeezebox and The Limelight, and we realize yes, many of the club kids of the ’90s have become comfortable, suburban Moms and Dads.

The loft is decorated with posters for Louise Bourgeois and The Guerrilla Girls and has Diet For a New America on the bookshelf, distinct touches some of us in the audience recognize from our own living spaces. In the dialogue we hear echoes of conversations we too have had (or overheard) at parties: “I finally took the Myers-Briggs.” Writers of satire often seem to want their audience to hate the people, especially the women, they create (the Annette Bening character in American Beauty is just one example). Passon’s satire is much trickier–and kinder. She wants us to recognize these people. She wants us to recognize ourselves in them.

The film Passon says inspired Concussion is from the 1970s: Jeanne Dielman.., (and was also written and directed by a queer woman, the late Chantal Akerman). In Concussion, as in Dielman, we see the first signs of the housewife/sex-worker protagonist starting to unravel when she fails to stick to her usual daily routine: Abby misses picking up the kids after school for the first time in six years. Unlike Dielman, Passon’s film captures the monotony of domestic tasks, but doesn’t ask the audience to endure that boredom themselves.

Although Concussion was made before queer marriage became legal in New Jersey, the film brings up some interesting questions about the queer community’s quest for “equality.” What if we become just as disenchanted with being soccer Moms as straight women sometimes do? What then? At the end Abby throws herself into a home renovation project, the way so many of our married friends, straight and queer do, and we marvel at the mystery of other people’s marriages, not just in the film, but all around us.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Wg–Mh8YY” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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

Why ‘Eve’s Bayou’ Is a Great American Art Film

The story of a family burdened by salacious and supernatural secrets in 1962 Louisiana, the movie has become one of the finer American films in the Southern gothic tradition; but with a Black director and an all-Black cast, ‘Eve’s Bayou’ has been unceremoniously booted from its deserving recognition as the fantastic, moody art film it is.

This guest post written by Amirah Mercer appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

When Eve’s Bayou, the writing and directorial debut of filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, opened in 1997, Roger Ebert named it the best film of 1997 and it was the top-grossing independent film that year, but that didn’t stop it from being canonized, years later, as just “one of the finest works by a black filmmaker” (Time) and a “contemporary classic in black cinema” only. The story of a family burdened by salacious and supernatural secrets in 1962 Louisiana, the movie has become one of the finer American films in the Southern gothic tradition; but with a Black director and an all-Black cast, Eve’s Bayou has been unceremoniously booted from its deserving recognition as the fantastic, moody art film it is.

Lemmons’s family drama is told from the perspective of Eve Batiste — played with gut-wrenching sophistication by a then 10-year-old Jurnee Smollett-Bell — who is the descendant of a woman, a slave, also named Eve, and her master. Though not all Southern gothic stories, which typically explore dark and grotesque themes set in the South, delve into the supernatural, this one does. Eve’s well-to-do family is steeped in the sixth sense, most visibly via Debbie Morgan’s Aunt Mozelle, a woman who can foretell the future yet, tragically, cannot see her own fate, as well as with the title character, Eve, whose budding clairvoyance takes a dark and consequential turn. Samuel L. Jackson plays the patriarch, a successful yet philandering doctor whose indiscretions and, specifically, a “did he, didn’t he” moment with his eldest daughter (Meagan Good) disrupt the Batiste family forever.

As a director, Lemmons’s wide, sweeping shots of the hazy Louisiana bayou enhance the spirituality of the place; at the same time, she does not get lost in the expansive Batiste estate. Her critical director’s eye focuses in on three, four, five members of the family at a time, creating such an intimate environment that, as a viewer, you feel uncomfortably crowded in with the Batistes — their dread is your dread.

Still, it’s Lemmons’s mixing of time, of past and present in a single shot, that is her most haunting storytelling technique. When Aunt Mozelle, who is cursed to life live as a perpetual widow, recounts the murder of one of her husbands to niece Eve, the involved players appear in a mirror behind Eve and Mozelle, in which Mozelle jumps from past to present in her narrative, moving in and out of the mirror in time. It’s a chilling scene — made even more otherworldly by Smollet-Bell’s wide-eyed wonderment — and it underscores the psychological scarring the film’s future events will have on its characters.

When I googled the best Southern gothic American films, a list that Eve’s Bayou certainly belongs on, the most frequently recognized works were A Streetcar Named Desire, 1991’s Cape Fear, The Beguiled (a little-known Clint Eastwood film), and Robert Mulligan’s 1962 film version of To Kill a Mockingbird. The poetic southern charm of Elia Kazan’s Streetcar; the guilt-ridden anguish of Cape Fear; the deadly temptation in The Beguiled; these themes echo in Lemmons’s debut work. Still, Eve’s Bayou’s defining strength as a Southern gothic work is in the way Lemmons chooses to share the Batistes’ misfortunes with us, through little Eve’s eyes. As with To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s literary classic, the loss of childhood innocence is the disturbing truth that we’re forced to reckon with here.

That Eve’s Bayou is now recalled by critics only within a “Black cinema” narrative discredits Lemmons’s beautiful and haunting art film. There’s more to this film than the color of the stars and the woman who made it; though their blackness is certainly important. “I’m an artist. I know my history, I know my roots,” Lemmons has said. “Of course I’m a minority, but that makes it interesting.” One does not need an inherent understanding of Black life in order to empathize with the characters involved in Eve’s Bayou. In making the film, Lemmons shot with an eye towards universality. “When I was making Eve’s Bayou, I thought that everyone should be able to understand it and relate to the story,” she told the A.V. Club in 2001. “They’re people that you’re looking at.”

If Eve’s Bayou has not been recognized alongside the aforementioned films as one of the best in Southern gothic cinema it is because of the way that films created by Black directors are perceived, as being created within a vacuum, intelligible only within a Black-experience context. When The Best Man Holiday beat analysts’ opening-weekend box-office estimates three years ago, the critics were left scratching their heads as to how a Black-led film could have crossover appeal. As I wrote in 2014, the myth around “Black movies” needs to be dispelled. That a film made by a Black woman director is only expected to appeal to a limited number of people, yet equally (if not sometimes more) niche works created by, say, white men are celebrated as universal truths has a dehumanizing effect on Black directors’ works.

But Lemmons’s studied focus on complex and interesting Black characters (she’s also directed Samuel L. Jackson as a detective-esque homeless man in The Caveman’s Valentine and 2007’s Talk to Me stars Don Cheadle as real-life 1960s shock jock Ralph “Petey” Greene) is anything but apologetic: “[These stories] are what I really want to say in a life-mission way. . . . You can’t hold me to one subject or one culture in terms of my art.” In the last few years, Lemmons has been attached to direct an adaptation of the New York Times’ best-selling biography The Other Wes Moore for HBO and to adapt Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, two works of literature that, if Eve’s Bayou is any indication, will be beautiful, black-led artistry on-screen.

Also at Bitch Flicks: Eve and the Second Sight, ‘Eve’s Bayou’ Belongs in the Canon

Amirah Mercer is a writer and editor who focuses on storytelling in fashion and pop culture, with a sharp lens on race and gender. She is currently a copy editor for VanityFair.com, where she also writes for the site’s Style and Culture section. Her recent stories for VF.com have explored black single womanhood on the show Being Mary Jane, in discussion with show creator Mara Brock Akil, and how Instagram “It girl” Violet Benson staked a claim in a male-dominated online-comedy field. Her work has also been featured on Salon, HelloGiggles, and Mic.

When Love Looks Like Me: How Gina Prince-Bythewood Brought Real Love to the Big Screen

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s choice to center these themes around a young Black couple shouldn’t feel as revolutionary as it does. But when you consider that “universal” is too often conflated with “white,” Love & Basketball feels like such a turning point in the romance genre. It was certainly a turning point for me because, for a moment, Black love and romance, as told by Hollywood, weren’t mutually exclusive.

This guest post written by Shannon Miller appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

Growing up, I used to stare at my mother’s seemingly impressive VHS collection, which she maintains to this day. What fascinated me most was its eclectic range. Friday, for instance, was often nestled between Steel Magnolias and Selena. What’s Love Got to Do with It sat to the right of our small Disney collection and just before Speed. Sister Act, if not still warm in the VCR, had its place next the original Parent Trap. Scattered throughout the assortment was a weirdly appropriate representation of the romantic film landscape at the time: Pretty Woman, While You Were Sleeping, She’s the One, Hope Floats, Ghost, One Fine Day, My Best Friend’s Wedding. These are stories of women exploring their version of love in ways ranging from entirely relatable to, quite literally, paranormal.

I recognized my mother’s attempt to support films that featured actors and actresses that looked like us, even going as far as to purchase movies that she hadn’t seen yet, which now seems like a major (and costly) leap of faith. I also knew, and eventually mirrored, her genuine love of romance and beautiful endings, happy or not. Looking at our collection, I came away with a deep seated understanding that, as Black people, we could be funny, dramatic, troubled, and many versions of “strong.” Romance, however, was a white woman’s game. There was a noticeable shift in Black cinematic storytelling in the late 1990’s, but it wasn’t until 2000’s Love & Basketball that I began to find an honest connection with something that felt familiar. The story of Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me in romantic storytelling. I was too young to know that I had writer and director Gina Prince-Bythewood to thank for that.

Love & Basketball tells a number of tales. It tells the story of a young woman asserting her identity against narrow definitions of femininity. At times it follows a young man having to learn the hard way that sometimes your heroes can stumble to the point to failing you. You can even come away from the film with a hearty discussion about the long, winding trajectory of success for women in sports versus the plentiful, immediate options available for men. The beauty of this particular film, however, is how each of these stories are bound together by the singular, accessible idea of two best friends falling in love and trying to simultaneously navigate their friendship as well as their individual destinies. Like many solid coming-of-age stories, we get to witness the complexities of aging out of adolescent friendship.

Once they enter college, Monica and Quincy begin to learn what genuine support entails and what it means to require something more from each other than a shared loved and mutual kindness. That’s what the evolution of relationships is all about: adjusting to the changing parameters of certain bonds as you grow and learn. For many, the pang of disappointment that Quincy feels as he chastises Monica for not being available to him at his lowest moment feels familiar. In contrast, it’s easy to connect with Monica’s need for Quincy to celebrate her long-fought, hard-earned victories. This leads to a disconnect that so many young couples have experienced at one point or another.

These experiences aren’t exclusive ones; they exist as the universal marks of youth for so many. Prince-Bythewood’s choice to center these themes around a young Black couple shouldn’t feel as revolutionary as it does. But when you consider that “universal” is too often conflated with “white,” Love & Basketball feels like such a turning point in the romance genre. It was certainly a turning point for me because, for a moment, Black love and romance, as told by Hollywood, weren’t mutually exclusive. Not long after that, however, there seemed to be another dearth in quality romance narratives featuring Black people as the Nicholas Sparks aesthetic – blonde-haired, fair-skinned women paired with young, Zac Efron-esque hunks — reigned. Once again, mainstream romance was excluding people of color.

Then 2014 and Gina Prince-Bythewood brought us Beyond the Lights. With that, I felt like I once again had a place in the genre that I cared about so deeply.

On the surface, Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Kaz’s (Nate Parker) story – a tortured pop starlet falling for her tender, down-to-earth guard – may not appear as relatable as that of Monica and Quincy. There is, however, a common struggle that bonds these two: the torment of not having the freedom to live as our most authentic selves. As a highly publicized pop star Noni’s every move, word, and look is manufactured by her mother/manager Macy Jean (Minnie Driver) and management team. As an aspiring local politician, Kaz’s relationship with Noni is scrutinized heavily by his father (Danny Glover). As they grow closer, they’re both given an opportunity to relax their personas and escape the criticisms that make their lives uniquely difficult. Their story, above all else, is about their desire to be truly seen as fully realized beings and not just the Troubled Pop Star and the Heroic Guard Turned Politician.

While l praise Love & Basketball for depicting Black love in a way that was relevant to all audiences, what I happened to love most about the romance between Noni and Kaz were the aspects that were specifically poignant to me as a Black woman. On an impromptu trip to Mexico, Noni finds herself standing in front of the mirror in their shared bungalow, contemplating her distinctive purple extensions. In a moment of genuine vulnerability, she decides to shed her famous tresses and reveal her natural hair to her partner. Standing before him in her gorgeous curls, I recognized the glint of apprehension in her eyes as she awaits his reaction to seeing her truly authentic self for the first time.

The significance of Noni showing Kaz her natural hair – hair that is so often scrutinized by the public from youth to adulthood – and him responding with a kiss and reverently running his fingers through her curls is something so simple, yet so extraordinary and rare in romantic cinema. Just like crossover relatability is important, so are the moments that are specifically experienced by marginalized audiences. We need the assurance that our stories are worth telling.

During a Twitter chat that included Gina Prince-Bythewood last May, seven months after the release of Beyond the Lights, I took the opportunity to ask her what she wished to see more of in terms of on-screen romance. “More real love,” she replied. “Not surface, cliché, joke, but the kind that really wrecks you.” Here’s hoping that this phenomenal woman is allowed more opportunities to not only wreck us emotionally, but to obliterate the notion that different shades of romance don’t exist.

Also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Love & Basketball’: Girls Can Do Anything Boys Can Do, The Female Gaze: Dido and Noni, Two of a Kind, ‘Beyond the Lights’ Premiere: Interviews with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Gina Prince-Bythewood, Gugu Mbatha-Raw Is a Superstar in ‘Beyond the Lights

Image of Gina Prince-Bythewood via Wikipedia and the Creative Commons License.

Shannon Miller’s passions include bossy women, social justice and her three-year-old daughter’s version of “Let It Go”. She co-hosts the Nerds of Prey Podcast, a nerd culture show hosted by four passionate Black women. You can read her thoughts regarding representation in media on her blog Televised Lady Bits or follow her on Twitter @Phunky_Brewster.