Travel Films Week: The Leading Women of Travel Films

This is a guest post by Marcela De Vivo. 

Movies that speak to the action hero or war veteran in us are not hard to come by. More often than not, those movies present a distinctly masculine vision of what adventure and life’s dilemmas look like.

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, finding movies that present travel and adventure from a woman’s point of view, while addressing the inward issues that a woman might typically face, is far more difficult to come by.

The following films do quite an admirable job of capturing the inner workings of a woman’s heart by providing stories and situations that most can identify and relate to.

More than just romantic comedies or “chick flicks,” these movies are all excellent windows into the soul and thought of the modern heroine.

Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love
Eat, Pray, LoveEat, Pray, Love is the story of Elizabeth Gilbert who, after going through a difficult and long divorce process, spends all of the money she receives from a book deal to travel through Italy, India, and Indonesia, concluding with the eventual pursuit of a relationship with a Brazilian businessman.

Her journey is marked by a pursuit of good food, spiritual fulfillment, and relational fulfillment, embodying three of the most relatable aspects of life.

Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation — Scarlett Johansson plays the role of a young woman in a struggling marriage with a celebrity photographer, who she believes is more interested in other women.

Upon meeting Bob Harris (played by Bill Murray), she forms a friendship with him (who is also depicted as having a loveless and tumultuous marriage) and the two share a series of adventures together in Tokyo before tearfully departing at the end of the movie. The film depicts the value of friendship and companionship between two people who at first were complete strangers and then bonded simply by exploring a city together.

Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday
Roman Holiday — Audrey Hepburn plays Ann, a disgruntled princess who is becoming increasingly jaded with her life in the public and political eye. The film follows Ann’s stop in Rome during her tour of several major European cities. She meets and eventually falls in love with Joe (played by Gregory Peck), an American reporter working in Rome. Joe represents to her a simpler, more private life that’s free of her currently restrictive responsibilities.

The two eventually determine that a relationship is impossible and end up parting ways.

This movie focuses heavily on a woman’s desire for simple freedom and how social restrictions and responsibilities can challenge those desires and make them difficult to realize.

Diane Lane in Under the Tuscan Sun
Under the Tuscan Sun — Diane Lane plays the role of Frances Mayes, who leaves her home in the United States to go on a vacation in Tuscany after a difficult relationship. Mayes eventually falls in love with her life in Tuscany and buys a home to start fresh in a place where she planned to spend only a short amount of time.

The film connects with the need to go outside one’s comfort zone and how sometimes we need a restart in life. Mayes just happened to find that restart button in Tuscany.

What all these movies have in common is that they take women who are having personal, relatable conflicts and show that a good adventure and a strange city can revive one’s outlook on life.

While it might not be difficult to find a good female action movie, or even a solidly entertaining “girl time flick,” these movies are unique in their pensive and thoughtful approach to the difficulties women face in life. They show that a little adventure and new surroundings can create a whole new perspective.

They’re certainly worth the watch.


Marcela De Vivo is a writer from Southern California that specializes in tech, travel, health and fitness, and skin care. In her spare time, she enjoys watching films about travel that inspire her own adventures and works with GuestDoor.com to find the best vacation rentals.

Travel Films Week: In Defense of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’

Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love
Written by Megan Kearns. A version of this article was originally published at The Opinioness of the World. Cross-posted with permission.

I had been looking forward to watching Eat, Pray, Love ever since I saw the trailer. I read the book a few ago, its popularity piqued my curiosity. The prospect of leaving life behind to travel for a year intrigued the armchair traveler in me. I picked the book up…and couldn’t put it down. I loved it. Author Elizabeth Gilbert drew me in with her honesty, humor and raw vulnerability. So I was eager to see the film adaptation.

The film follows Elizabeth “Liz” Gilbert, a successful writer with a seemingly perfect husband and home. Yet as she attains more and more of what she thinks she wants, Liz’s unhappiness grows and her world begins to crumble. Liz endures a devastating divorce followed by a fling with an actor. When that relationship falls apart, her pain consumes her and she’s unsure where to turn. Yearning to reignite her passion for life, Liz decides to travel, living abroad for one year. She chooses to live for four months in Italy to focus on pleasure (“eat”), then India to connect with her spirituality (“pray”) and finally Bali to learn how to balance the two and ultimately lead a life in harmony (“love”).

Julia Roberts eating pizza in Eat, Pray, Love

Lush and gorgeous, the film exhibits breathtaking vistas. It spurs you to want to pick up, leave everything behind and move to Italy, India or Bali. And megastar Julia Roberts is likable, capturing Gilbert’s curiosity about the unfolding world around her. My inner foodie enjoyed the decadent food scenes, which are a big part of the book, reminiscent of those in Julie and Julia. The film boasts a stellar supporting cast, particularly Viola Davis (love her), Mike O’Malley and Richard Jenkins. However, Javier Bardem’s talents are wasted here.

In the book, we have the pleasure of Gilbert’s humorous and vulnerable voice to guide us. While it’s sort of present in the film, it’s somehow diluted. One of the most heartbreaking yet touching moments for me in the book is when Gilbert sobs on her bathroom floor, begging god for help, as she doesn’t know what else to do. She prays that she’s not pregnant, even though she thinks a baby is what she’s supposed to want. Although the film sadly erases her pregnancy scare. I never felt, as much as she tried, that Roberts captures Gilbert’s depression and how she hit rock bottom.

I’m glad the movie retains the female friendship between Liz and Wayan as well as Wayan’s struggle to buy a house in Bali after she leaves her abusive marriage. But in the book, Gilbert spends far more time with Wayan and her daughter Tutti than the movie would lead you to believe, preferring to focus instead on the romance between Liz and Felipe, a Brazilian businessman in Bali.

Gilbert, with the help of friends and teachers along the way, finds the answers she seeks. Yet she also finds them within herself. But the film ignores this important distinction. Especially at the end, it’s as if Liz needs others to tell her what to do, rather than coming to decisions on her own accord. The book, while ending on a fairy-tale ending, focuses on Gilbert’s self-transformation, shifting from always revolving around a man to finding herself and what she wants. She realizes that you have to truly love yourself before you can love another. Gilbert learns to forgive herself, lets go of her unhappiness and embraces life.

Eat, Pray, Love
The movie makes interesting commentaries on gender. When Liz eats dinner with Felipe, he tells her how he stayed at home with his kids while his wife worked. Liz calls him “a good feminist husband.” In Italy, there’s a great scene where Liz and her friends celebrate an American Thanksgiving dinner to say goodbye. Her Italian tutor’s mother asks if she’s married. When she replies no, the mother declares that she doesn’t understand why a woman would go off and travel by herself. Her friend Sophie comes to her defense saying that no one would say that to her if she were a man and calls her brave for traveling alone. Another woman at the dinner comments on the difficulty of women’s choices.

There’s a pervasive notion that women will go see movies in the theatre about men as well as films about women, while men will only go see films starring men. Women and Hollywood’s Melissa Silverstein writes about Eat Pray Love and how “if women like it, it must be stupid” all about how women’s stories and interests are devalued and treated as less important than men’s interests. Silverstein writes:

“Why is it that things that appeal to women are made to seem trivial, stupid and less than? Is it about the fact that large groups of women are embracing something? Is it a fear that if enough women like something we’ll figure out how screwed we’ve been on so many issues that we will all just come together and revolt? Pleeze. Newflash — we aren’t that organized. Shit, we buy more books and see more films, yet stuff that appeals to women is constantly demeaned. Aren’t our dollars as green as the guys?”

Eat, Pray, Love

In her articulate and fascinating Bitch Media article, “Eat Pray Spend”, Joshunda Sanders Diana Barnes-Brown look at the gender theme of Eat Pray Love in a different light. Talking about the book, they write about the pervasive problem of privileged literature (“priv-lit”), asserting that women like Gilbert, Oprah and other self-help gurus tell women to buy their way to happiness. She writes:

“Priv-lit perpetuates several negative assumptions about women and their relationship to money and responsibility. The first is that women can or should be willing to spend extravagantly, leave our families, or abandon our jobs in order to fit ill-defined notions of what it is to be “whole.” Another is the infantilizing notion that we need guides—often strangers who don’t know the specifics of our financial, spiritual, or emotional histories—to tell us the best way forward. The most problematic assumption, and the one that ties it most closely to current, mainstream forms of misogyny, is that women are inherently and deeply flawed, in need of consistent improvement throughout their lives, and those who don’t invest in addressing those flaws are ultimately doomed to making themselves, if not others, miserable.”

Sanders and Barnes-Brown raise many valid points on sexism and consumerism. There’s something to be said for how our capitalist culture continually purports money and possessions as the path to happiness. If we buy this skin cream that erases wrinkles…if we lose weight…if we buy new clothes…we’ll fix ourselves, shed all our problems and finally attain happiness. But in all their Eat Pray Love criticism, Sanders and Barnes-Brown fail to mention Gilbert was able to travel in the first place due to an advance on a book deal from her publisher. So technically, she was still working. Of course this crucial piece of information IS woefully absent from the film. And the Eat Pray Lovemerchandising machine” certainly works to undercut existential messages in the film. Regardless of how Liz funded her trip, it doesn’t invalidate the lessons she learned. Gilbert didn’t intentionally write a self-help manual — she shared her individual experiences. Rather, she wrote a manifesto to let go of fear and follow your dreams, whatever they may be.

Now, I’m no fan of director Ryan Murphy. Too often he erases bisexuality, perpetuates racist stereotypes and reinforcing misogyny in his TV series. But I don’t think the film perpetuates the misogynistic idea that all women are flawed and must be fixed. Liz was incredibly depressed and unhappy in her marriage. She struggled to get pregnant only to realize she didn’t want to have children. She wanted to finally stop putting off learning Italian and embrace her love of yoga. Although it could certainly be because I read the book which shares Liz’s background and her internal monologue, many details which the film glosses over or eliminates. “But if all you have to go on is Movie Liz, she seems like kind of a selfish jerk, and that makes her voyage to better self-care very hard to care about.”

Eat, Pray, Love

While most people can’t jet off to Europe and Asia on a year-long trip (um, I sure as hell can’t afford that), I still think there are aspects of the film and Liz’s journey people can relate to. In addition to being eye candy, Eat Pray Love raises interesting questions about gender and expectations. Women are supposed to want marriage and babies. And yet what we want may differ from societal standards. Society rigidly dictates what women are supposed to want but may feel disillusioned when they achieve those goals and still aren’t happy. Too many women sacrifice their own happiness for others. There’s nothing wrong with putting yourself and your needs first.

Many people often let things hold them back from going after what they want. If people want to go back to school to earn their degree, they think they’re too old. If they want to travel, they think they don’t have the money or the time. As someone raised in a financially-struggling, working class household, who’s often worked two jobs to make ends meet, I’m well aware of the fiscal and time constraints in people’s lives. Yet I think Liz’s story is a testament to seize the moment, to pursue your passions. Walking away from the life you have always known to dare to try something different, to push yourself out of your comfort zone is not only daunting but incredibly brave.

Many will bemoan that Liz is a wealthy privileged white woman who could afford to take a year out of her life. And she is. But would anyone utter this complaint if she were a man? Gilbert emphasizes that you don’t need to travel around the world to find happiness. Despite its flaws, the film (and book) reminds us to chart our own course, no matter what anyone tells us. And that lesson is priceless.

Gender and Food Week: The Fork Fatale: Food as Transformation in the Contemporary Chick Flick

Julia Roberts as Liz Gilbert in Eat Pray Love

 
Guest post written by Jessica Habalou, excerpts from her unpublished Master’s thesis. Reprinted with permission.

“Every word in Italian is like a truffle:” Eat Pray Love and Food for Pleasure 
Based on the extremely popular memoir of the same name, Eat Pray Love is the story of Liz Gilbert, who embarks on a year-long stint abroad to help her recover from a bitter divorce and torrid love affair. Her marital malaise is a prime example of the Friedan’s “problem with no name;” she knows that having a big house and being a good wife and one day mother is not enough to satisfy her, and in fact render her desperately unhappy. So she leaves her husband and tried to discover what will bring her satisfaction. Initially, and under the influence of her new lover, Liz turns to religion to help ground herself. She devotes newfound time and energy to meditation, ruminating on God and studying the teachings of an Indian guru. But her holy immersion is misguided, for as Liz’s friend notes: “[Do] you remember a couple years ago when you threw yourself into the renovation of your kitchen? You were completely consumed with being the perfect wife and cook? Well, I think chanting and meditation are the same thing in a different costume.” Tapping into her innate wander-lust, Liz decides to travel to Italy, India and Bali. She announces in her friend’s office the full extent of her unhappiness: “I used to have this appetite for food, for my life, and it’s just gone. I wanna go someplace where I can marvel at something. Language, gelato, spaghetti, something. I have not given myself two weeks of a breather to just deal with, you know, myself.”

Eat Pray Love

In Italy, Liz treats herself with complete abandon to the gastronomic pleasure therein, and in so doing, makes strides in her attempt at personal growth. Food and eating come to replace some of her vices and offer her the comfort of friendship and self-preservation. The visualization of food and the act of eating in the film go to great lengths that they are her supplement to sex. Through close shots of her eyes rolling back in delight as she takes her first bite of a Napoleon, extreme close-ups of her lips wrapped around a forkful of pasta, or detailed shots of her cutlery probing into a plate of fried prawns to release a mini-explosion of juices, there is little subtlety applied to the sensual and erotic role of food. In one scene, Liz is at an outdoor cafe, and the camera cuts between a young couple kissing and fondling each other and Liz at her table, watching them, then her plate of spaghetti appear. The camera continues to shift between the couple and Liz advancing on her plate, grinning with each bite. When the plate is cleaned and the couple is gone, Liz smiles deeply as if she has a secret – the act is finished. Visually, food is heavily sensualized, in a way rivals and often surpasses the sensual display of food on the Food Network. While this is likely do in part to the film appealing to the Food Network demographic, and therefore complying with a certain expected visual aesthetic, the eroticization of food in Liz’s Italy also helps to emphasize that she is single, celibate, and finally experiencing pleasure outside of romance. 

The sensual connection to Italian food and Italian language is another important component of Liz’s experience in Italy. Before her departure, she declares to her friend after studying an Italian dictionary that “every word in Italian is like a truffle.” She finds and becomes friendly with an Italian language tutor, with whom she is often seen at a cafe, eating and drinking. In one scene, the two are at an outdoor cafe (a common motif), eating and sipping red wine. At this point, her tutor introduces her to an idiom meaning “to cross over:” “attraversiamo.” Student and teacher repeat the word several times, and each time to camera zooms tight on the lips of the speaker, similarly to how Liz is shown eating on camera. The word itself, then, and the language, are like food in the sense that they fulfill her physical, emotional and sensual desires.

Eat Pray Love
What is unique about Liz and her relationship with food is that for her, it is not a mere comfort, means of escape, or potential nemesis. Food and the pleasures of eating bring Liz closer to herself, and to other people. Given the frequency with which she dines with companions in Italy, it is difficult to believe that Liz would feel utterly despondent and isolated. The only moment in which she seems to regress to her emotionally fragile, post-breakup self is when she is alone in her apartment, once again pursuing her Italian dictionary, and repeating to herself: “io sono sola,” or, “I am alone” (in this moment, the camerawork shows the dictionary’s words from Liz’s vantage point, blurred as if seen through tears). But all told, she enables her own self-worth through food, and that of her friend’s as well. All the talk about eating and indulging is not without commentary about the effects it has on the figures of the women doing most of the indulging, Liz and her friend, Sofi. In a scene depicting a day trip to Naples, Liz and Sofi are seated across from each other at a crowded, chaotic pizza shop. Per usual, Liz takes a bite and rolls her eyes in pleasure, saying “I am having a relationship with my pizza.” Seeing Sofi with her hands in her lap, she says “You look like you’re breaking up with your pizza. What’s the matter?” “I’ve gained, like, ten pounds,” she says, her eyes shifting guiltily. Rather than trying to amend the situation by offering to start dieting or visiting the gym with her tomorrow, Liz says: “I’m sick and tired of saying no and waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before . . .so I know how much self-loathing to take into the shower. I’m going for it . . . I’m just through with the guilt.” Sofi smiles and eats. Afterward, the scene cuts back and forth between split shots of the women at a crowded bar watching the soccer and in a dressing room attempting to button multiple pairs of jeans. The scene culminates in a Lucille Ball-style moment of comedic excess, with an aerial shot of Liz on the floor of the dressing room, Sofi hovering over her and successfully snapping the button into place, and the image of men at a bar cheering at the soccer game while Liz and Sofi applaud their own “victory.”

Eat Pray Love

Liz’s chapter in Rome concludes with a Thanksgiving celebration with her Italian community of friends. The scene is shot in the cozy quarters of her Italian tutor’s mother’s house, somewhere recessed from the hubbub of the city. It is evening, and the group is preparing vegetables, talking and laughing, when they discover that the turkey is not thawed to roast. In the same “devil-may-care” attitude of which Liz has become so fond, they eat the rest of the meal and save the turkey for later. Around the table, Liz instructs her friends on the American Thanksgiving custom of announcing one’s gratitude. “This,” says Liz, gesturing to the table, “all makes me feel so grateful.” The next shot depicts the friends strewn across the living room, sleeping with heads on laps, across couches and chairs and the floor. Early morning light creeps in the windows, revealing bottles of wine and half-finished plates about. The scene is tranquil. An alarm rings, and Liz wakes to remove the turkey from the oven. The group gathers again around the table for the breakfast bird, and Liz arrives as if out of the Rockwell painting, holding an archetypically dressed bird on a platter. Through her divorce (and severance from marital and familial obligations), she has found all the normative, American comforts of home and family.

“What is it you really like to do?” Julie & Julia and Domestic Ambition 

Amy Adams as Julie Powell in Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron, is based on two textual, real-life accounts: Julie Powell’s weblog project where she spent a year cooking ever recipe in Julia Child’s seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julie Child’s My Life in France, co-authored and published posthumously by her nephew Alex Prudhomme. The film garnered popular and critical acclaim, particularly for Meryl Streep’s performance as Julia Child, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Since Julia Child’s life was so publicly oriented around food, one might expect the “Julia” portion of the film to be as well. On the contrary, food is a secondary function to Julia’s relationship to her husband and professional ambition, particularly when compared to the Julie narrative. No doubt that Julia’s love for food is a driving force in the film – when musing with her husband Paul in a Paris restaurant over how to fulfill her personal void, Paul asks “what is it you really like to do?” “Eat,” she replies, with gusto. Julia’s seemingly charmed life – replete with a loving husband, a girlish exuberance, and a steadfast resolve in the face of setbacks – is surrounded by food. The viewer sees that Julia’s time in Paris is played against the background of crowded outdoor markets brimming with bright, fresh produce and pigs’ heads. She stops at street vendors for chestnuts, hosts dinner parties with friends, and doggedly chops, flips, dices, and whisks her way through her education at the esteemed and deeply traditional Le Cordon Bleu. She is seen offering Paul a plate at lunchtime before he whisks her off to the bedroom. But more important than the food in these sequences is her relationships with the characters – she charms the vendors, listens to her instructor, plays a proper hostess while images of plates and the sounds of clicking silverware occupy the backdrop, and a good wife who both offers food to her husband and forgoes it in the interest of satisfying their sexual desires. In this sense Julia is a free spirit, a professional, a lady, and a lover. She is motivated by food, but not controlled by it.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie & Julia

While food supplements Julia’s already rich life experience, it seems to define Julie’s. Food serves to enrich a visual backdrop in Julia’s world, it is a primary focus in Julie’s. Julia’s time in the kitchen cooking her way through Mastering the Art is visually expressed through multiple tight, close-up shots of the ingredients she is prepping, the food in various stages of cooking, and the finished product. These are much like the shots viewers are accustomed to seeing on the Food Network, with food shown in stages of preparation: butter sizzles in the pan, mushrooms turn in the butter, cream and port gush into the works, chicken browns in the fat, all to the soundtrack of sizzling and cracking. In fact, Susan Spungen, former art director or Martha Stewart Living magazine directed the food styling in both Julie and Julia and Eat Pray Love (Kingston 2010). In these tight, close shots, food is the focus, and occasionally the hand that cooks it. The viewer becomes completely engaged in the cooking, much like Julie is completely immersed in her project.

Julie’s obsession renders her more flawed than Julia’s character, even to the point of being unlikable. As Benson-Allott suggests, “[b]ecause Child is an idealization…Powell seems deeply flawed in contrast.” She concedes that “Adams makes a bold choice to allow her character at times to become quite annoying” (85). She bumbles her way through her marriage as she becomes selfishly consumed by the popularity of her blog. The couple fights over her selfishness, prompting him to storm off in a rage. In a separate incident, her husband diagnoses their marital problems as being symptomatic of “too much food, not enough sex,” as if to suggest that she is neglecting her conjugal and marital obligations in the interest of pursuing her own gain.

Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Eric Powell (Chris Messina) in Julie & Julia

Julie’s obsessive relationship with food manifests itself not only through her marriage, but physically as well. In one scene, Julie goes on a spending spree at the gourmet goods store Dean and Deluca. She wedges herself and her parcels through a turnstile, then lugs her bags and parcels with her down the subway stairs, bangs into exasperated commuters and runs to catch a train while her voiceover explains “[I was] sweating like a pig, which is not surprising because I’ve been way too busy cooking fattening foods to bother exercising.” This claustrophobic environment reveals some of the ill effects of her personal and gustatory indulgences. The frustrated looks on commuters’ faces while she tries to navigate her way through rush hour while bearing the load of consumerism both on and in her body is like society’s judgmental gaze at a women’s overindulgence. Like the characters of Sex and the City and post-9/11 New York-based chick flicks that Negra analyzes, Julie is navigating through the anxious, often dissatisfying climate of “cultural dilemmas and stigmas.”

Julie & Julia

Julie’s high points are reflected in the success and visual quality of the food she produces – and vice versa. When she initially hatches her blogging idea, she is making bruschetta. Hunks of bread sizzle and brown, and she chops impossibly red tomatoes and verdant basil leaves. The combined dish is a food stylist’s masterpiece, as if to verify that Julie not only has the chops to take on her idea, but that only good, delicious things will come as a result. Things are looking up when she learns that Knopf’s powerhouse Judith Jones will be dinning at her house; in preparation, Julie prepares boeuf bourguignon, a dish whose rustic charm is deliberately revealed in a close shot, exposing the parsley-flecked stew’s deep, earthy tones, enrobed by a Le Creuset pot. The shot radiates authenticity and perfection. Of course, as evidenced above, Julie’s ambition is not without its flaws. Her short-tempered in the kitchen coincide with some of the ugliest food in the film: aspics. As the brown, gelatinous mess slips off the plate and into sink, she rails against the inadequacies of the kitchen space in her apartment. And after a raw chicken stuffed with liver and cream cheese hits the floor with a sickening splatter, she splays out on her back on the tile, kicking her feet and weeping like a petulant child. Despite her blog despite her self-conscious weight gain, her strained marriage, her overwrought schedule, her tenuous start, she continues to blog. Interestingly, she maintains a generally ambivalent attitude toward eating itself. Her husband, her friends, and her guests are the ones who seem to enjoy the fruits of her labor. For Julie, the satisfaction is in the effort, and the perceived control. “I love the after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing I mean nothing you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.” The pleasure for Julie is not in consuming, but in producing. The act of production is what fulfills her, and for it she sacrifices conventional domestic obligations.

Works Cited 

Benson-Allott, Caetlin. “Mastering the Art of Feminist Mentorship.” Gastronomica: A Journal of Food and Culture. Spring 2010: pp. 83-85. Print.

Negra, Diane. “Quality Postfeminism? Sex and the Single Girl on HBO.” Genders Journal. Issue 39, 2004. Web. Google Scholar.

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Jessica Habalou works with food and wine at Boston University, and is a degree candidate for BU’s Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy. Her research interests include food, feminism, and popular culture, which involves lots of eating, drinking, and watching movies.