Ellen Page – Bitch Flicks

‘Hard Candy’: The Razor Blade Hidden in an Apple-Cheeked Confection

Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Even around Halloween time, Hollywood doesn’t hand out movies like Hard Candy all that often. It’s a difficult morsel to swallow, and, despite the presence of adorably teenaged Ellen Page peering meekly from the cast list, not the slightest bit sugary – indeed, much of the exposition is skin-crawling enough to make the hardiest of trick-or-treaters lose their appetites. And yet, beneath its decidedly gruff exterior (understatement of the year, perhaps?) lies the timeless tale of a boy and a girl. But in this case, he’s a man merely masquerading as a responsible adult, and she’s a girl wearing the wiles of a woman in order to achieve a purpose much more sinister than the initial set up would lead one to believe.

Just five minutes into the film, and you’d think it was easy to ascertain the obvious villain: Patrick Wilson, playing a 30-something photographer named Jeff, seduces Page’s 14-year-old Hayley Stark through an online chat window, with the practiced precision of a well-equipped Internet predator. The two agree to meet at a coffee shop, where awkward flirtations quickly lead them back to Jeff’s house. Feeling sick to your stomach yet? You should be, but not because Hayley is dangling on the precipice of statistical tragedy. No, she’s far from being some helpless victim, as Jeff quickly learns when he finds himself waking up in a state of confusion, limbs bound to an office chair as Hayley gleefully rummages through his drawers and cabinets. “You know how they tell us pretty young things not to drink anything we haven’t mixed ourselves? That’s good advice…. for anyone.” Touche. Seems like the only thing more humiliating that being exposed as a pedophile is to be outwitted by the expected target of one’s predatory efforts. Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

May December, or murder and dismember?

But Hayley’s plan isn’t merely to make Jeff suffer the consequences of what he might have intended for her. She’s on a mission to find out what happened to Donna Mauer, a local teenager who’s gone missing. Did Jeff have something to do with it? He lives in a house decorated with near-naked pictures pubescent models; he brought Hayley back home and let her drink copious amounts of alcohol while stripping. Most tellingly of all, he has a picture of Donna locked away in a hidden safe, beneath a decorative living room rock garden. Poor Donna likely fell into a trap from which very few victims of sexual violence manage to emerge unscathed, and Hayley is determined to see that justice is served, no matter what lengths she’s forced to go to in Jeff’s kidnapping and torture.

And speaking of torture, do we need to get into detail about the castration scene? Yup, Hayley is so committed to defanging this predator (to use a rather pointed analogy) that she rigs up a makeshift operating table, lashes an unconscious Jeff down to it, and proceeds to undergo such a wicked game of psychological fuckery, it’s hard to know who to keep rooting for. The scene itself is exquisitely shot – all agonizing closeups and angles designed to elicit maximum proxy discomfort. The dialogue exchanged between the two principle actors is a mastery in cat and mouse tension; best of all is when Hayley draws a brilliant comparison between Jeff’s forthcoming mutilation and the anguish suffered by the victims of rape and abuse on a daily basis. Do your friends know? Do your neighbors know? Who can tell just by looking at you that you’ve been subjected to the most vile sort of personal attack?

Should have just signed up for Ashley Madison.

It’s perhaps this sentiment that best exemplifies what sets Hayley’s violent tactics apart from the intent of her would-be attacker. While it’s safe to say her methods are probably too extreme for the To Catch a Predator crowd, her purpose is – on paper, at least – a noble one. You get the sense that she’s adequately prepared for taking down every neighborhood scumbag that slimes his way into her chatroom; there’s more than subtle indication that she’s done all of this before. For a kid not even in high school yet, she sure knows her way around a taser. It’s disturbing, but in a way that renders the viewer in a challenging state of narrative confusion. Indeed, one of very best elements to Hard Candy is that the primary action sequences make it almost impossible to sympathize with one protagonist over another. Even the most strident of feminists probably can’t help but shudder at Jeff’s predicament – sure, he seems to be a major sleeze-ball, but does Hayley really have to go to these lengths just to make him pay for crimes she can’t confirm that he committed?

In the end, one is forced to conclude that Hard Candy is no easy cinematic meal to digest. It’s a gripping, challenging, often-exceedingly painful film to take in. But like Hayley herself, the movie’s genius lies in its ability to construct so much thought-provoking narrative with so little in the way of material tools. Shot for less than a million dollars, the sets are simple, the cast consists mainly of just Page and Wilson (Sandra Oh, who gets top billing alongside the two principle actors, appears in just one fleeting scene). It’s rare to see a story accomplish such a lasting impression with a decidedly minimalist approach. Page’s performance is a hurricane of emotions; she’s the perfect foil to Wilson’s doughy and desperate Jeff, who probably wished he’d kept his freaky tendencies limited to just porn. If Hayley Stark is a prime example of a violent woman, than she represents the very strongest in lashing out to evade victimhood. She is the anger that lives inside us all when we are harmed or abused. As she declares to a defeated Jeff in the film’s climactic scene: “I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.”

Emma Kat Richardson is a Detroit native and freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in xoJane.com, Bitch, Alternative Press, LaughSpin.com, Real Detroit Weekly, 944, and Bust.com. She’s enough of a comedy nerd and cat lady to have named her Maine Coon Michael Ian Cat. Follow her on twitter: @emmakat.

‘Freeheld’ Beautifully Captures the Notion that “Love Is Love”

Like waves lapping persistently against the shore, the film is a succession of small, understated moments. Images of water and the sea are trickled throughout while the power of persistence functions on various symbolic levels.

This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at Ms. blog and is cross-posted with permission.

Love is forged in small moments. Like ragged bits of bottles polished into sea glass, Freeheld‘s lead characters, Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) and Stacie Andree (Ellen Page), are rugged and tough, tumbled unwittingly by societal pressures and personal illness into gems fighting for LGBTQ equality.

In one early scene in the film—which is based on the true story of Laurel and Stacie’s landmark legal battle—the couple walks on the beach. They find a piece of sea glass, joking about wether or not it is an item worth keeping. Later, after Laurel’s death from lung cancer, Stacie lovingly puts this gem from the sea into a box of remembrances.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blk27Jj9UE8″]

Though the word feminism is never used, the film drips with feminist undercurrents. As a detective, Laurel must fight to be valued on the police force and hopes to become the first woman lieutenant in New Jersey, while Stacie has to prove she can rotate tires better than a man to get a job as a mechanic.

At one point, Laurel references the white male privilege of her detective partner, Dane Wells. Though he’s an ally to the couple through the film, such privilege is shown to shape the political landscape as well as the law—the five “Freeholders” that make up the county’s governing body are an “old boys network” using their white and male privilege to block Laurel’s attempts to ensure her pension will go to her domestic partner, Stacie.

In addition to documenting how Laurel’s battle with cancer became a battle for marriage equality, the film shows the small daily micro-aggressions one must endure as queer person in a heteronormative society, such as when Laurel’s police colleagues take swipes at her same-sex relationship, or when a group of men attempt to rob the couple while they’re out together in public.

The film has not garnered rave reviews—in fact, it has been written off for having cardboard characters and by-the-numbers drama that “undermine its noble intentions.” I disagree. True, the film is not brimming with action scenes or pulsing with dramatic soundscapes—it builds slowly and ends rather quietly. It is, in fact, far more like life and death than most of the movies that try to capture such stories; life is often slow and undramatic, death is often unexpected and quiet. Freeheld is not a crashing wave of drama—it is, rather, characterized by ebb and flow and captures the change of tide towards justice for LGBTQ people.

Like feminism, which is often characterized as coming in waves, Freeheld depicts the slow build of a changing tide; right now, U.S. culture is experiencing such a change in the tide regarding LGBTQ justice. Women like Laurel and Stacie are part of the wellspring that made this wave possible; part of the multitudes of people trying to live their lives and love who they love, despite living in a culture that uses religion, government and the law to keep the tide turned against them. Freeheld may not shine like a diamond, but it certainly offers us a beautiful piece of history—one that has tumbled and turned lives made jagged by injustice into beautiful, unbreakable bits of sea glass.

Natalie Wilson teaches women’s studies and literature at California State University, San Marcos. She is the author of Seduced by Twilight and blogs for Ms., Girl with Pen and Bitch Flicks.

Dude Bros and ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’

With a running time of two hours and 11 minutes, audience members are subjected to some thematic repetition, gratuitous gags, and an unnecessarily meandering plot. That said, there’s no shortage of amazing costumes and make-up to bolster a ton of sweet action sequences depicting mutants kicking serious booty. ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past,’ though, is disappointing in its general dearth of female characters and its under-utilization of the ones it does have.

Huh. No ladies are shown on the movie poster for 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' — Huh. No ladies are shown on the movie poster for *X-Men: Days of Future Past*

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

It’s no secret that I’m a tremendous fan of superheroes nor that I am on a mission to expose the ridiculous lack of superheroines on the big screen. The X-Men movie franchise has been relatively so-so with regard to its general quality: some hits, some misses, some overwhelmingly mediocre films. It’s also been pretty hit-or-miss with its representations of female characters. The latest installment, X-Men: Days of Future Past, is no exception. With a running time of two hours and 11 minutes, audience members are subjected to some thematic repetition, gratuitous gags, and an unnecessarily meandering plot. That said, there’s no shortage of amazing costumes and make-up to bolster a ton of sweet action sequences depicting mutants kicking serious booty. X-Men: Days of Future Past, though, is disappointing in its general dearth of female characters and its under-utilization of the ones it does have.

Blink, a member of the future's mutant resistance. — Blink, a member of the future’s mutant resistance.

Despite the film featuring four female characters, X-Men Days of Future Past fails to pass the Bechdel Test. We have Blink (Bingbing Fan), a mutant in the future reality who has the power to teleport and create portals through which others can teleport. I’m not sure if she speaks at all…maybe a single line. Then we have the classic Storm (Halle Berry), who controls the elements via weather. The talents of Berry, an Academy Award-winning actress, aren’t showcased at all what with her having maybe two lines throughout and, much like Blink, zero character development. The “phasing” and walking-through-walls Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) is back with a slightly more substantial role than Storm, but her character is also static with very few lines. Finally, we have Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique/Raven, the shapeshifting martial arts expert who has the most screen time and the most depth of the bunch.

A sentinel gets the drop on a stoic Storm

Despite the fact that these women aren’t given nearly as much airtime as the dudes in the film, it’s no secret that they’re all seriously badass. In fact, the entire plotline revolves around the sheer power of two of these women’s mutant abilities. Kitty Pryde has managed to hone her phasing ability to allow others to pass through consciousness and time much the way she would pass through a wall. It is her ability that allows Wolverine to travel back in time to prevent a dystopian future fraught with mutant genocide and mutant-sympathizer wholesale slaughter. Kitty’s strength holds Wolverine’s mind in two places at once despite physical and emotional trauma that he may suffer while traipsing through time. In the original comic book storyline, Kitty, herself, travels back into her past consciousness in order to avert disaster, which firmly places her in the position of agent and heroine in an epic tale. In the film, however, her power, though vast, is incidental to the real drama of the story: setting a lost and bitter young Charles Xavier back on the path of hope and mutant/human unity.

Kitty Pryde phases Bishop's consciousness into the past — Kitty Pryde phases Bishop’s consciousness into the past

The entire film itself details the chain reaction the decisions and actions of Mystique set off. Her murder of anti-mutant weapons innovator, Dr. Bolivar Trask (performed by Game of Thrones favorite Peter Dinklage), followed by the synthesis of her shapeshifting capabilities into mutant-hunting sentinels, sets the stage for mutant genocide and a post-apocalyptic Matrix-like future. Mystique’s agency is so influential that she defines the future in a single act. Not only that, but her mutant ability is so powerful that it is coveted by the government and used to create an unstoppable weapon.

I'd watch the hell out of a solo Mystique movie — I’d watch the hell out of a solo Mystique movie

Despite the importance of Mystique not only to the plot of the film but also to the fate of mutants as a species and the world as a whole, her agency is full of negative consequences. The choices she would make on her own lead to destruction and despair. This echoes a generalized fear of the power of female agency and the belief that, if left to their own devices, women can’t or won’t make the right choices. That is why we have the two warring patriarchal, paternalistic forces seeking to shape her: Magneto and Professor X. Professor X evokes her familial bond with him and urges her towards unity and peace while Magneto uses their past sexual relationship, the allure of unfettered power, and the rage inspired by the persecution of fellow mutants to appeal to her. Professor X calls her “Raven,” a name that makes her his, while Magneto dubs her “Mystique,” asserting ownership over her identity.

Raven is Professor X's creature, while Mystique is Magneto's. — Raven is Professor X’s creature, while Mystique is Magneto’s.

An either/or dichotomy is formed in which she must choose to be either Raven or Mystique. Charles’ or Eric’s. There is no third option that allows her to be her own person, to make a choice outside of the ones presented to her by these two men. She is nothing but a symbol of the fight between our two great, male adversaries and their disparate philosophies. Yet again, a woman’s body (in that her DNA is pivotal to the extinction or survival of all mutantkind) is the grounds on which a man’s war is fought. Boo.

Mystique kicks serious as but, in the end, is a pawn — Mystique kicks serious ass but, in the end, is a pawn in a male ideology battle

The representations of race also inspired a “What the hell??” in me with Bishop (Omar Sy) being divested of his time traveling role (in the cartoon TV show version, if not the original comic storyline, Bishop travels back in time, not Wolverine) as well as the lotta people of color being killed off. The use of Peter Dinklage, a little person, to play Trask, a man obsessed with the threat mutants pose, to carry out prejudice and the genocide of those who are simply different from him rang a bit hollow as Dinklage/Trask, himself, is part of a marginalized group who likely knows firsthand what oppression looks like.

Trask, an oppressed little person, seeks to kill all mutants because they're different and scary — Trask, an marginalized little person, seeks to kill all mutants because they’re different and scary

It’s a step in the right direction that there are powerful, pivotal women in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but it’s not enough. Why isn’t this a story about Mystique’s internal landscape, her struggles, and how she learns that she’s not only powerful enough to change the world but powerful enough to change her mind? Why is her story a proxy to tell the tale of the men who seek to shape her? I hoped for better from X-Men: Days of Future Past, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Hollywood keeps churning out sub-par superhero movies with shitty plotlines, an over-reliance on explosions and action sequences, and a general all-about-the-dudes vibe. The X-Men franchise places a lot of emphasis on evolution; it’s time to do more than pay lip service to that notion. It’s time to evolve to the point that we’re telling the heroic arc of women and superheroines with the knowledge that that story is every bit as important as those of their male counterparts.

Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

The Great Actresses: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for The Great Actresses Theme Week here.

Louise Brooks: A Feminist Ahead of Her Time by Victoria Negri

Brooks and her characters were powerful women, fighting for control of their lives. In Roger Ebert’s review of Pandora’s Box, he states, “Life cannot permit such freedom, and so Brooks, in her best films, is ground down—punished for her joy.” Her real life mirrored her characters, often being punished for her freedom and feminist power.

Ellen Page Is Like the Coolest Actress We Know, And She Doesn’t Even Have to Try by Angelina Rodriguez

The Unfinished Legacy of Pam Grier by Leigh Kolb

Grier’s legacy has lasted over four decades, but there’s something about her career that leaves me feeling unsettled, as if her filmography is indicative of larger (backward) social trends. She started out headlining action films–an amazing feat for a woman, much less a black woman in the early 1970s. A glance at a few of these films show incredibly feminist themes that are incredibly rare 40 years later. Her early films were groundbreaking, but nothing much was built after that ground was broken.

Carmen Maura: Pedro Almodóvar’s Essential Star by Ren Jender

Writer-director Pedro Almodóvar was able to ride the wave of art house popularity starting in the 80s when theaters were more likely to program subtitled films. He came to prominence in no small part because of his star, Carmen Maura who first gained the attention of U.S. audiences in ‘Law of Desire,’ Almodóvar’s 1987 film, as Tina, the transsexual actress who is the sister of the main character, the gay director Pablo (Eusebio Poncela).

Conveying a Soul: The Greatness of Meryl Streep by Cynhia Arrieu-King

From the feminist angle, Streep’s mold-breaking of the representation of women and her mark on scripts probably adds to her greatness in a way we can never completely measure because we can’t track it. One particular example worth mentioning is that the script for ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ did not originally explain why Joanna Kramer wants to leave Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and she fought the director Robert Benton on the script until the character is allowed to say why herself.

Why Isn’t Naomie Harris in All the Movies? by Candice Frederick

To say that Harris is a revelation in this film may be an understatement. It not only prepared her to tackle the complex layers of Winnie Madikizela a few years later, but it also proved yet again that she is able to take on a variety of different roles–from heroic to villainous. She solidified a sci-fi fan base with her totally badass performance in 28 Days Later, showed that she can steal scenes from 007 himself, and continues to surprise audiences in roles across all genres.

Another Side of Marilyn Monroe by Gabriella Apicella

Her return to Hollywood in the film version of William Inge’s play Bus Stop was again a chance to shun the glamorous armour of her gold-digger characters, to explore the role of a downtrodden saloon singer with ambitions above her abilities. Not only did her performance stun the film’s director, Joshua Logan, who called her the greatest actress he ever worked with, but it also left critics in no doubt as to her ability.

Pre-Code Hollywood: When the Female Anti-Hero Reigned by Leigh Kolb

We agonize over the lack of female anti-heroes in film and television as if women have never been afforded the opportunity to be good and bad on screen. It clearly wasn’t always this way. And in a time when the regurgitated remake rules Hollywood, perhaps it’s time for producers to dust off some old scripts from the 1920s and 1930s so we can get some fresh, progressive stories about women on screen.

Forgotten Great Black Actresses: “Race Films” in Early Hollywood by Leigh Kolb

Read more about them. Watch their films. Remember who and what has been too easily forgotten.

Great Kate: A Woman for All Ages by Natalia Lauren Fiore

Most of the nine films Kate and Spence did together feature battle-of-the-sex plots which, at certain points, blurred or even reversed the roles women and men typically played in marital or committed relationships. These plots suited Kate’s life-long image of herself as inhabiting both female and male traits, particularly in the wake of her older brother’s tragic death.

Reflections On A Feminist Icon by Rachael Johnson

Possessing mass and cult appeal, the bilingual, Yale-educated Jodie Foster has, moreover, been popular with both mainstream and indie audiences. Although the adult Foster fulfills conventional ideals of female beauty, she has never been a traditional Hollywood sex symbol. She has been both a figure of identification and desire. In many of her roles, she personifies female independence, heroism and resistance. As an actress, she brings a naturalism, intensity and integrity to her performances. She engages audiences both intellectually and emotionally.

Whatshername as a Great Actress: A Celebration of Character Actresses by Elizabeth Kiy

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A young woman–poised, talented, above all enthusiastic–performs a scene in acting class and is praised by the teacher. The teacher can’t say enough good things about the student, but the main thing she keeps going back to is, “I think you’d be a wonderful character actress!” Now, the student can’t help but beam about this, seeing a brilliant career flashing before her, her name up in lights. She steps back into the group and the woman sitting beside her whispers in her ear, “That’s what they call an actress who isn’t pretty.”

Ellen Page Is Like the Coolest Actress We Know, and She Doesn’t Even Have to Try

This guest post by Angelina Rodriguez appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

Ellen Page already had an acting career in Canada when she came to the states to make her debut in Hard Candy. The young, bright actress kicked off her career in America with a controversial role that many found to be extremely unsettling. Teenage honor student Hayley decides to take justice into her own hands when a local girl goes missing. She uses her wit to overpower the voyeuristic pedophile character played by Patrick Wilson. Page sports a red hoody as if to conjure images of Little Red Riding Hood but, she is somewhat of a wolf in Red’s clothing. She is not to be underestimated.

Hard Candy movie poster — *Hard Candy* movie poster

Hayley is intelligent, confident, and sure of herself in a way that I had never seen before in a character her age. It was extremely empowering to watch the film as a 12-year-old girl with my nose in a book and 90s girl punk blasting in my ears.

Page delivers a layered performance as she commands vulnerability and even turns it into a strength. Her acting skill is obvious as she carries the film with her co-star Wilson. The majority of the scenes are dialogue-rich and only contain the two actors and a single house as the set. Both characters are complex, relatable, and completely human. This movie is unique, in that it does not do the work for you; it really makes you think. Hard Candy drove audiences to play out their own scenarios and call their own ideas about morality and nature vs. nurture into question. It was a daring role selection for the young Page.

Page’s character Hayley declares with tears and determination in her eyes, “I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.” This role was for survivors, for women, for those that have simply had enough. Although violent justice isn’t something that all survivors necessarily wish for, the film brought attention to the subject of rape culture during a time when its existence was completely ignored. The dialogue confronts victim-blaming and addresses that law enforcement, along with society as whole, don’t do their part to stop terrible things from happening or seeking justice when they do.

The film is multifaceted, but it is definitely a comforting story for every girl in need of a good revenge fantasy.

Ellen Page had a smaller part as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand. Although her part is small, Kitty Pryde uses her ability to phase through walls to assist the team of mutants. She is a badass when she faces off against The Juggernaut, a much larger enemy, and manages to be a hero. Hopefully we will be able to see more development in the Kitty Pryde character in X-Men: Days of Future Past, set to be released in summer 2014.

Her biggest role and somewhat of a fame catalyst was Juno MacGuff in Juno. This heartfelt comedy follows a quick-witted high schooler through an unplanned pregnancy. This adult issue is handled well by Juno as she tries to continue to be a teen. She takes the disapproval of her classmates in stride with clever, sarcastic humor. Her parents are accepting and nurturing and help her through the process. Although character Juno makesthe choice to go through with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption, some people were upset about the message in the film, claiming that it was pro-life. Page responded publicly to these concerns when she told The Guardian, “I am a feminist and I am totally pro-choice, but what’s funny is when you say that people assume that you are pro-abortion. I don’t love abortion but I want women to be able to choose and I don’t want white dudes in an office being able to make laws on things like this. I mean what are we going to do – go back to clothes hangers?” Page’s skills in Juno earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Her performance runs the gamut of emotions from side-stitch humorous to deeply moving.

The next underrated film Page starred in was Whip It; she plays Bliss Cavendar. Whip It is a story about a girl from a small town trying to find her niche and navigating the murky, adolescent waters of self discovery, early romance, friendship, and parental approval. Her mother wants her to devote her time to beauty pageants, and Bliss wants to find herself and hang out with rough, tough roller derby girls.

This film shows women being aggressive, competitive, and joining together over the love of the game and in the spirit of sisterhood.

Roller derby is a sport that allows women an outlet to express their athleticism, excludes men, and takes all kinds. Women of all shapes can find a home in the pack. Not only can any body type find a place, but any body type can be an asset. I’m glad the film was made and that it brought derby into the public eye, but it’s unfortunate that there was little diversity shown in the cast. Whip It is definitely a fun, inspirational girl power flick.

Later, Page played the role of Ariadne in Inception alongside star Leonardo DiCaprio. Page plays the intellectually driven, adventurous architect who is necessary to complete the team that illegally searches the sleeping consciousness in order to obtain information.

Recently Page delivered an incredible speech at a Human Rights Campaign about her struggle as a closeted gay person and her hopes for a better future. Although I do not fully support Human Rights Campaign for many reasons, mostly their lack of dedication to the queer community as a whole, Page gave an important speech worth listening to.

She made me proud of my generation and very sure that she is one of the great actresses of my time. Page said in her speech, “I’m here today because I am gay and because maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.”

Page explained that she has a sense of responsibility that compels her to be honest and ethical as a person and a public figure. This same integrity will help her to continue her dedication to playing strong, interesting, dimensional characters that speak to young women. She sets her standards high with her roles and looks for stories with uniqueness, depth, and a message. Ellen Page earned her spot as a Great Actress by demonstrating a commitment to progressive roles and speaking well about the issues within her films and the issues that women face. She is an excellent role model and icon as well as a self-declared feminist.

Angelina Rodriguez studies Sociology at Fairmont State University. In her free time she thinks about things and pets puppies.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Why Ellen Page Coming Out Matters In Hollywood by Dorothy Pomerantz at Forbes

Review: PBS’ ‘Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth’ honors a singular life by Mary McNamara at the Los Angeles Times

Five Reasons You Should Be Watching Comedy Central’s “Broad City” by Andi Zeisler at Bitch Media

BBC chief: no more comedy shows with all-male panels by Vanessa Thorpe at The Guardian

Real Talk on the Women of True Detective by Alyssa Rosenberg at Women and Hollywood

Talking ‘Women in Horror Month’ With Nobody Can Cool’s DPYX at Daily Grindhouse

‘About Last Night’ Writer on Reimagining Movie for a Black Cast (Guest Column) by Leslye Headland at The Hollywood Reporter

Beyond the Bechdel Test: Why It’s Not Enough by Tomris Laffly at Indiewire

UCLA Releases Scathing Report on Diversity in Film and TV by Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood

Will Ferrell Launches Female-Focused Film and TV Production Company by Tatiana Siegel at The Hollywood Reporter

It Should Be Called ‘The Real Homophobes of Atlanta’ by Clay Cane at The Root

Greta Gerwig Starring on a CBS Sitcom is Great News by Margaret Lyons at Vulture

Here Are All the Different Genders You Can Be on Facebook by Will Oremus at Slate

Rewrite the Story by The Representation Project on YouTube

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

‘Touchy Feely’ Explores the Link Between Physical and Emotional Contact

Written by Lady T.

Josh Pais and Rosemarie DeWitt in Touchy Feely

A free-spirited massage therapist develops a powerful aversion to touch, alienating herself from her clients, her boyfriend, and even her own body. Meanwhile, her straitlaced, reserved brother develops an almost miraculous ability to heal jaw pain in the patients of his dental practice.

This is the premise of Touchy Feely, a new film by writer-director Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister’s Sister). Rosemarie DeWitt plays Abby and Josh Pais plays Scott in a story where sister and brother find themselves abruptly switching roles. Abby becomes isolated from the people around her, and Scott connects with his patients for the first time and finds a new source of energy and inspiration in his life.


Abby examines her hands after developing her aversion to physical contact

Shelton uses extreme close-ups of the human body to show the source of Abby’s fear of contact, focusing on thin, fine hairs and cracks in the skin. Her approach to depicting Scott’s sudden gift for healing is a little different, giving us a montage of grateful patients hugging the awkward dentist after he cures their problems.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Abby and Scott, though sharing relatively little screentime together, are two sides of the same coin. Their emotional health and sense of well-being are directly linked to their comfort with physical contact. Abby is emotionally connected to others and at peace with herself when she can make physical connections with people, and cut off and withdrawn when physical contact sends her running into the bathroom.

Sometimes, actual touch isn’t necessary to feel a connection. Inspired by his recent successes at work, Scott meets with Abby’s friend Bronwyn (Allison Janney) to learn about the Japanese art of reiki, where little hand-on-skin contact takes place. Abby, meanwhile, experiments with ecstasy, and while it doesn’t immediately cure her aversion to touch, she experiences the world in a different way, with her senses of sight and smell heightened. Jenny (Ellen Page), Scott’s daughter, is one of the only characters who can put her desire for human contact into words, saying, “Do you ever want to kiss someone so badly that it hurts your skin?”


Scott learns about the practice of reiki from Bronwyn (Allison Janney)

Shelton’s direction is careful, patient, and intimate, lingering on her actors’ faces and bodies, letting their physicality do the talking rather than overwhelming the viewer with dialogue. It’s a wise choice in a film that’s so focused on the relationships the characters have with their bodies and their comfort with physical contact.

What’s missing from Touchy Feely is the motivation. We know

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a screenplay, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

I Love ‘Whip It!,’ But You Probably Shouldn’t: A Roller Derby Athlete Reflects

The cast of Whip It!

This review by Sarah Chamberlain originally appeared at her blog Sarah Chamberlain Does Things and is cross-posted with permission.

Whenever I meet a fellow skater, and they ask me how I got into roller derby, I get a little sheepish.

“I was in college and I saw Whip It!, and I decided I wanted to do that,” I say every time, hoping for a nonjudgmental reaction. Joining the sport post-Whip It! is not the coolest thing for a derby athlete to cop to. Unfortunately for me, my simple derby origin story is true. I walked into a movie theater expecting to see a frothy girl-power flick with my friend, and I did—but I also walked out figuring starter skates into my college budget. For at least the first year and a half of my derby career, until I was well past the point of knowing better, I’d watch Whip It! the night before every bout while I painted my nails in my team colors and sipped on a healthy, nonalcoholic beverage. And while I know that Whip It! Is not the best roller derby film out there, when I sat down a few nights ago to re-watch it for the first time in over a year, I cried at the same parts that always made me weepy. I love Whip It!, but I’m a sucker for it.

The cast of Whip It!

Whip It! Was Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut. Based on a young adult novel by Shauna Cross, the screenplay centers around a seventeen-year-old misfit named Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), who spends a lot of time screwing up at the beauty pageants her mom (Marcia Gay Harding) makes her do, until she discovers roller derby while on a shopping trip to Austin. Without permission from her mom or her sports-loving dad, Bliss lies about her age, joins the 21+ league, and becomes star jammer Babe Ruthless. Problems arise when she starts dating an indie rocker she meets at a bout, when she clashes with a member of an opposing team, and when her parents find out about her secret double life. While the plot is heavy on teen and sports movie cliches, it’s also generously sprinkled with esoteric cultural references and cameos. Jimmy Fallon has a minor role as Hot Tub Johnny Rockets, a perpetually hungover announcer who just wants to get laid, and Andrew Wilson (the elusive third Wilson brother!) faces off against opposing coach Har Mar Superstar. Many of the extras, skaters, and non-speaking roles are respected real-life derby skaters, including one of my coaches, who plays the deaf Manson Sister #1—hi, Krissy!

It barely broke even at the box office and drew mixed reviews. Mainstream critics were on point about the film’s predictability; however, their reviews lose credibility when they make uneducated comments about derby aspects of the film. For example, one critic questioned Page’s casting in the lead role, saying she seemed too small to play roller derby. Never mind the fact that Bliss is a jammer, a position traditionally (though certainly not always) assigned to small, agile skaters. More interesting criticism came from within the roller derby community. If you ask a skater about Whip It!, she’ll probably complain about the “Play #3” scene, when Wilson’s character fields a strategy combining an elbow and a 180-degree turn. In real-life regulation play, this move is grounds for immediate ejection from a bout.

Not okay.

However, the biggest problem with Whip It! isn’t the punches and elbows—if you watch closely, you’ll notice that Barrymore’s Smashley Simpson is always ejected, anyway—it’s the erasure of certain people and philosophies that make roller derby unique among modern sports. No visibly queer characters are included in the film, which is unrealistic for a sport known for its LGBTQ superstars and being relatively trans-inclusive a few years before anyone had ever heard of Fallon Fox. The grown women who drive both the skating and business aspects of competitive roller derby are weirdly two-dimensional. A big reveal happens when Bliss learns that her team captain, Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), skips afterparties because she needs to be with her young son, and another occurs when league bully Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) snarls that she’s earned her derby stardom at age thirty-six—but after that, the film lets those characters return to the background. A large part of the criticism Whip It! received from the roller derby community regarded the age of its protagonist. Roller derby is so transformative and special for women who find it in their 20s, 30s and 40s, the criticism goes. Why make teenage Bliss the heroine, when Maggie’s and Maven’s stories are much more compelling?

Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven in Whip It!

This is where I begin to get soft on Whip It! When I started playing roller derby at twenty-one (not quite a grown-ass woman, to be fair), I became a teenager again. My body changed and I was hungry all the time. I worried about what to wear to practice. My new passion worried my mom, and I had to be a little bit sneaky to keep everybody happy. I had to make choices about relationships and priorities that I’d never had to make before. And I could think of nothing but roller derby: after class, I’d sit in my room ogling gear, watching and re-watching league promo videos. In class, I’d doodle pictures of skates and myself wearing a jammer star on my helmet. I felt about roller derby the way I felt about my crushes in middle and high school. Maybe it’s easier to translate that giddy feeling to non-skaters if you just make the main character a typical teenage girl who is still figuring things out.

Don’t give up on film depictions of roller derby if you’re less sentimental than I am. There are better representations of derby in film, but you have to go looking for them. Brutal Beauty, a documentary which follows Portland’s Rose City Rollers through their 2010 home and travel seasons, is a great introduction to the sport and is available for streaming on Netflix.

Trailer for Brutal Beauty

An upcoming documentary that promises to take a different approach to the topic of derby is Erica Tremblay’s The Vagine Regime, which will profile the titular pan-derby LGBTQ all-star team.

Trailer for Vagine Regime

Finally, my current favorite roller derby film is Turner Van Ryn’s dialogue-free short film Skater 26, which follows San Francisco skater Chantilly Mace through the weekend leading up to a high-stakes home bout. It’s breathtaking to watch, and does an incredible job of quietly creating a detailed narrative out of what is still a niche subject. Best of all, it’s available in full on YouTube.

Skater 26 (full movie)

Personal reasons for loving Whip It! aside—I’ve sat in the penalty box on delicate technical fouls enough times to scoff at “Play #3”—I can detect the tense, rehearsed quality of a new skater in many of the actors’ jumps and sprints. Johnny Rockets’s announcing places a little too much emphasis on the fishnet stockings the players wear, a trope that still crops up in mainstream coverage of derby. The underwater sex scene is truly unnecessary–so unnecessary that I won’t link to it. I cringe when Page’s Bliss tells her mom to “stop shoving your psychotic idea of ’50s womanhood down my throat,” because who actually says that?

But right after that, she throws out her hands and says, “I am in love with this.” I believe you, Bliss. I just understand why a lot of us don’t. Fortunately, there are just enough film options out there for the derby-curious.

Sarah Chamberlain (twitter.com/SChamberlainLA) graduated from DePauw University with degrees in creative writing and flute performance. She lives in Los Angeles, where she works in a charter school and skates and coaches for the Angel City Derby Girls. Her work has been featured on The Billfold and LAist.com.

Brit Marling Co-Writes and Stars in the Murky Yet Gripping Drama, ‘The East’

Sarah (Brit Marling)

This guest post by Candice Frederick previously appeared at her blog Reel Talk and is cross-posted with permission.

Brit Marling is one of the most authentic actresses of her generation. Remarkably so. She’s not a method actor, not someone who is particularly possessed by a character. Rather, her performances are organic, like they’re peeled from her own person, and not a distant portrayal. No matter how flawed her characters are, she plays them with the same amount of caress and kinship as if they were all varied parts of one whole.

And that’s just the type of actress needed to serve as the ambiguous moral compass in the riveting new drama, The East. In a film that right from its start questions its own intent, Marling (who co-wrote the script with the film’s director, Zal Batmanglij, who also teamed with her for 2011’s Sound of My Voice) quietly yet fiercely redefines the political drama genre in which it exists. Marling plays Sarah, a smart, recent college grad who’s just landed a job at an elite private intelligence firm. Her first task? To infiltrate a dissident group of individuals, a freegan collective, whose sole mission it is to punish and take down various pharmaceutical companies that they feel have indirectly poisoned consumers with their products (in a sense, giving them a taste of their own medicine). The East refers to their latest, largest, target company in which they have a more personal interest.

Despite their cause and their ultimate actions, this cartel, so to speak, isn’t an aggressive batch. They live not too far away from the political heartland, Washington D.C., in a wall-less house torched several years ago by their leader, Benji (Alexander Skarsgård in a solemn yet passionate role), who once lived there as a young boy. They munch on earthly cuisine mostly found on the ground or in dumpsters and avoid any processed or store-brought items to eat, wear, or consume in any way. Needless to say, they appear as vagrants, even though they consist of once-valued members of society who played their parts in the America machine. When one of them, Doc (Toby Kebbell), a physician, experiences first hand the effects of the industry’s conspiracy, he completely changes his life focus to join the cause. Each of the players, including Izzy (Ellen Page), who’s a little feisty firecracker, have had similar paths where the cause has affected them personally.

Izzy (Ellen Page) and Benji (Alexander Skarsgard)

It is Sarah’s job to learn their tactics and plans and report back to Sharon (Patricia Clarkson), her manager at Hiller Brood in D.C. But things change once she learns the truth behind their efforts.

What The East does that makes it more interesting than many other films that have saturated the political genre is its distinct intangibility. It doesn’t set out with a particular purpose. Rather, it embodies a general sentiment of frustration and complacency. The film paints a portrait of a young woman, already impressionable due to her age and unwavering drive to succeed. Sarah’s not a martyr because she’s not really sure she wants to be, despite an unspecified determination. She’s not sure which position to play; she knows she wants to be in the one that lets her win. Which makes her a prime target for both Hiller Brood and the anarchist group because she’s not on either side, really. She’s extremely accessible, in part due to Marling’s natural vulnerability, which makes her point of view that much more relatable even if it doesn’t specifically resonate with you.

Thankfully, Batmanglij and Marling’s screenplay approaches the subject on a much broader level so that it never comes off as a public service announcement, despite the course of events. Sarah’s strength, even when she becomes submerged with the group, is so magnetic to watch. The film also does a good job of clenching the viewer with a heart-thumping score that increases the intensity and pace of the events. If you’re a fan of Tony or Ridley Scott’s work, you can see their influence there. They are just two of the producers of the film.

When we first meet Sarah (Marling), we know her as a young woman who jogs to the sound of Christian music playing in her ears. With Marling’s introductory narration in the beginning of the movie, you can tell right away that Sarah is a soft, empathetic young woman who could easily fall prey to a more pragmatic personality (like her boss, Sharon, for instance). She’s just trying to do what’s right, what she knows to be pragmatic. She has a steady live-in boyfriend with whom she is in love, though she does not confide in him about her professional escapades. She does everything her boss tells her to do, but her actions become less dependable when she becomes affected by the group’s efforts, providing the film with its murky transition.

The beauty of The East is that it doesn’t take any side; it humanizes both sides and shows the weaknesses and strengths of both arguments. In that sense, it is an honest movie. It doesn’t tell you to think any one way or change your opinion on the pharmaceutical industry. Though the movie takes you inside the lives of those involved in the protest movement, and one pro-industry magnet who’s gone rogue, it doesn’t beat you over the head with either story. It’s the rather sensitive portrayals from each character that you will remember the most.

Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning print journalist, film critic, and blogger for Reel Talk.

Vanessa Loring: Pathetic or Plausible? A Matter of Perception

Juno meets Vanessa and Mark Loring

This guest post by Talia Liben Yarmush previously appeared at The Accidental Typist and is cross-posted with permission. It appears as part of our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

The first few times that I saw Juno, I was unaware of any of my fertility problems. It wasn’t until April 2010, in between IVF cycles and laparoscopies, that I re-watched the film with some friends, and I viewed it through a new lens. It is a strange phenomenon how a changed circumstance in life can create an entirely different vision of the world. Or, more simply, of a film. The obvious themes of teen pregnancy – the ease and cavalier nature of it, so unplanned, so unexpected, so unwanted – resonated with me again while re-watching Juno. But I felt oddly that the characters were treated with respect. It was acknowledged that however intelligent a typical teenaged girl thinks she is; however witty and wise; however smart-assed and independent; she is never quite as smart as she thinks she is. There is still a big world, and she’s just one small person. And in this movie, at least the title character is wise enough to know that while she may not be ready to be a mother, there are those out there who would suffer unimaginable things to trade positions with her.

What really hit me was Jennifer Garner’s character, Vanessa. In past viewings of the movie, the hopeful adoptive mother seemed somewhat desperate. Her overly enthusiastic smile. The fact that Juno’s snarky remarks would fly past her with barely any recognition. Her obsessive questioning and controlling perfectionism. When saying goodbye after meeting for the first time, Vanessa asks Juno how likely she is to go through with the adoption, and Juno says, nonchalantly, that she is going to do it. “How sure would you say you are? Like, would you say you’re 80% sure, or 90% sure?” Vanessa pushes. She was more than desperate, really. She was pathetic. She seemed to be written for the purpose of added comic relief. But as my friends laughed at her on screen, I felt sad, and angry. Maybe she is desperate, but anyone who has even considered adoption knows that it goes wrong far more often than it goes right. That Vanessa’s pushing wasn’t pathetic, but rather telling the story of a woman who had already been hurt so much. And wouldn’t you be desperate if you dreamed of being a mother your whole life, and then after trying for years to conceive were finally told that it was an impossibility? If you came so close to adopting a child, only for the birth mother to change her mind?

Vanessa touches Juno’s stomach

Earlier in the same scene, when Juno first meets Vanessa, Juno expresses that she’s concerned about when she will have to add elastics to her pants. Vanessa says, “I think pregnancy is beautiful.” And Juno responds, “You’re lucky it’s not you.” And I twinged right along with Vanessa. I knew exactly how she felt – we would take elastic pants for the rest of our lives in exchange for that pregnancy. I knew completely this character and suddenly wondered if she was written to be laughed at, or if the writer too had a deep understanding of the heartbreak of infertility. This character was written beautifully – because she was real. Perhaps she was written so the audience would have these two vastly different interpretations. One for those who don’t understand, and one for those who do.

Well, that last time around, I felt her heartbreak. I knew what it was like to alter my personality in an attempt to deal with my new reality. To dream and have those dreams crushed. But to keep on dreaming anyway. I understood. I only wish my pre-infertile self – the naïve and happy, baby-dreaming me – would also have known Vanessa for who she was, and not have seen her as a pathetic and comical character.

———-

Talia Liben Yarmush is a freelance writer and editor. She is also an infertile mother who writes her own blog, The Accidental Typist.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Inception

This review by Editor and Co-Founder Amber Leab originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on August 30, 2010.

The plot of Inception is deceptively simple: a tale of corporate espionage sidetracked by a man’s obsession with his dead wife and complicated by groovy special effects and dream technology. As far as summer blockbusters and action/heist/corporate espionage movies go, it’s not bad. Once you get beyond the genuinely beautiful camera work and dizzying special effects, however, you’re not left with much.

One thing that really bothers me about the film–aside from its dull, lifeless, stereotypical, and utterly useless female characters (which I’ll get to in a moment)–is that nothing is at stake. Dom Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) and his team take on a big new job: one seemingly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants an idea planted into the mind of another powerful businessman, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, Saito wants Fischer to believe that dear old dad’s dying wish was for him to break up the family business, so that, we assume, Saito wins the game of capitalism. Should the team go through with the profitable job? We aren’t supposed to care about the answer to this question or what is at stake in the plot.

It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?

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Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Juno

This review by Amber Leab originally appeared at Bitch Flicks in October 2008.

Juno(2007)

It took me a long time to see the film Juno. I was thrilled when Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, but at the same time suspicious about her little movie being so lauded. To win an Oscar, the film must be saying the “right” things to the “right” people, a dynamic that rarely favors progressive thinking (see the movie Crash as a recent example). In other words, when too many people love a movie, there’s probably something wrong.

Aside from critical praise and popularity, the topic of teen pregnancy is rarely done without a hefty dose of morality. While we are in a peculiar cultural gray area on the subject—consider the cover of OK Magazine, featuring smiling teen mom Jamie Lynn Spears, or the Republican VP nominee’s pregnant teenage daughter—there seems to be an anti-choice undercurrent running through pregnancy plots, not to mention the culture at large.

The expectations I had going in were also based on reading commentary about the ultra-hip dialogue and soundtrack of the film. While certainly not negative in themselves, coupled with a controversial topic, these features could be enough to couch a conservative, anti-woman message in a hip, fresh film.

It turns out, however, that after an initial adjustment period to the dialogue (and a question about whether the film is set in the early ‘90s), Juno turns out to be planted in a feminist worldview, and is a film that teenagers, especially, ought to see. It was thoroughly enjoyable, funny and touching. I liked it so much that I watched it again, but when I started to write about it, what I liked about the movie became all the more confusing. I loved the music, although Juno MacGuff is way hipper than I was (or am), and I saw a representation that reminded me of myself at that age. I saw a paternal relationship that I never had and a familial openness that I’ve also never had. I saw characters who I wanted as my childhood friends and family.

And while in Juno we have a strong, unconventional female character—and a lead character, at that—the film itself was very, very safe. And I worry whether that’s a good thing. It’s certainly understandable for a first film. A Hollywood outsider would have a much more difficult time making an overtly progressive movie about teen pregnancy, but if she plays the politics safe, and if her own personality is enough of a draw, she just might make it.

I was worried when Juno visited the dumpy abortion clinic and met her pro-life classmate protesting in the parking lot, and I was worried by the very dumpiness of the clinic. I was struck by the notion that a clinic like that would look and feel much more sterile—even in the lobby, as far as Juno went. The thought of fingernails sent her running out of the building. A detail like “fingernails” made the abortion too real for Juno, a teenager, I suppose. Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t know.

Juno, in a rather nonchalant way, seeks permission of the baby’s father, her good friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), for the abortion. Or, rather, she seeks his opinion; she seems to want him to resist her plans. But his lack of resistance causes her to make the following decisions on her own. This straddles the line somewhat. She wants to be told what to do, and rather than seeking out someone smarter and more experienced than she is, she asks the boy whose approval she’s still seeking.

Juno wants her baby to have the perfect family; one unlike her own, which her mother abandoned. Her family now consists of her father, her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney), and her half-sister Liberty Bell. Juno doesn’t have a bad deal going. Her folks are markedly working class (they’re both members of the labor class, a group that doesn’t see much Hollywood recognition; he’s an HVAC repairman, she’s a nail technician). Yet Juno imagines a perfect life to consist of two loving parents and a McMansion.Why would she seek out people of this particular class? Is this a case of Juno’s lack of class awareness or the film’s?

The film’s real progressive moment comes when Juno realizes that her idea of perfection isn’t perfect. She realizes that a father who doesn’t want to be there would be as bad as a mother who hadn’t wanted to be there. She sees that a father isn’t a necessity–or perhaps simply that two parents aren’t a necessity. Yet what does this all add up to mean? There’s certainly a moment of female solidarity (and this isn’t the only one, certainly, in the film), and a difficult decision that she makes independently. But, as with other conclusions I’ve made, I’m left with the question of “So what?”

The film does love all of its characters, which is a refreshing change for a high school flick. Juno’s best friend, Leah, is a cheerleader who exhibits some flaky, teenage qualities (her crush on the chubby, bearded, middle-aged math teacher takes a cliché and gives it a twist), but the film loves her nonetheless. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) is an obsessional, middle-class mommy blogger type, but we see that she would be a good mother, and the film cares for her. We even have sympathy for Mark (Jason Bateman) who, through his relationship with Juno, realizes that he and his wife no longer want the same thing (if they ever did). There are cringe-worthy moments with Mark and Juno, but none that damn him completely. It’s a rare film that gives us no bad guys, which is a large part of its charm.

It’s easy to want to live in a world like this, where a pregnant sixteen-year-old seems to get by pretty well, with her parents’ support and a relationship with her baby’s adoptive family. She has a sweet teenage love affair and doesn’t seem to struggle much. While teen angst is the stuff of Hollywood cliché, things just seemed too easy for Juno. I wish my teenage years could’ve been a bit more like Juno’s. Hell, I wish my life now could be.

The final question remains, though, about whether we should criticize a movie like Juno. Representations of role models for American girls tend to inhabit the poles; either young girls are encouraged to be the beautiful bimbo or the chaste Christian. This film has a strong personality (that masquerades as strong values—even an ethic) without being preachy or moralistic. That can’t inherently be a bad thing. Yet I find myself asking for more, wanting more–something that steps outside of the realm of safety. Perhaps Juno isn’t the film to give me more.

In all, I fear Juno suffers from the same postmodern condition afflicting so many films today. It strives for a non-message in order not to offend anyone, thus allowing anti-choice advocates to cheer the film as loudly as pro-choice feminists. There’s a problem here. If a film that almost universally passes as hip and progressive is so murky in its values and allegiance that we’re not really sure what to think of it, how can a truly hip and progressive film make it today?