Tag: Films By Women

2013 Golden Globes Week: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Raises Questions On Gender and Torture, Gives No Easy Answers

Jessica Chastain as Maya in Zero Dark Thirty

Written by Megan Kearns. | Warning: Spoilers ahead!!

Driven, relentless, bad-ass women in film always hold a special place in my heart. Ripley from Alien and Aliens, Patty Hewes from Damages, Carrie Mathison from Homeland. Maya, the female protagonist of Zero Dark Thirty, is no exception. But can a film be feminist if it depicts horrific violations of human rights?

Played effortlessly by Jessica Chastain, Maya is a smart, tenacious and perceptive CIA analyst who navigates the 10-year hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Intense and focused, she relentlessly pursues her work with one singular goal: finding bin Laden. Unyielding, she refuses to give up. She’s a cinematic version of Carrie Mathison. Interestingly both women have an irrefutable compass when it comes to being right. They boldly trust and follow their uncanny instincts.
Zero Dark Thirtyis riveting, fascinating and jarring. It assaults the senses with evocative images, haunting music, booming explosions and chilling 911 calls on 9/11. Powerful and exquisitely crafted by Kathryn Bigelow, it is unrelenting in its vision.

As Candice Frederick asserts, Maya anchors and propels the film. With a woman at the center of this story, it’s hard not to question gender. Zero Dark Thirty doesn’t overtly discuss gender politics, as Bigelow points out. Yet it reveals gender dynamics in subtle and important ways.

In the beginning of the film, Maya appears queasy about torture. Yet she refuses to turn away. When Dan (Jason Clarke), another CIA analyst, says she can watch the interrogation on video, she insists on being in the room. Early on, a colleague calls her a “killer,” a moniker that doesn’t quite seem to fit her composed demeanor and soft-spoken voice. Or is that supposed to challenge our stereotypical gender assumptions? But it certainly fits as the film progresses.

Maya (Jessica Chastain) in Zero Dark Thirty

We witness a hyper-masculine environment in which Maya’s boss George (Mark Strong) slams his fist on the desk screaming at CIA analysts, “I want targets. Do your fucking jobs. Bring me people to kill.” After years in the field, after her friends have died, after relentlessly pursuing bin Laden, Maya swears, screams at a superior and boldly tells the CIA Director (James Gandolfini) in a room full of men, “I’m the motherfucker that found this place, sir.” Inoo Kang asserts this one statement draws attention to her gender: “anyone can be a motherfucker, man or woman – just like anyone can find bin Laden.” Does she adopt stereotypical masculine behavior to adapt? Or is her aggression merely a manifestation of her frustration and obsession? Or is she merely a bundle of contradictions, like most people?

Writer Katey Rich said she was fascinated how Maya’s “femininity is never talked about out loud, but influences everything she does and the way her colleagues react to her.” All of the male colleagues and superiors refer to her as the infantilizing term “girl” rather than “woman.” Yet Maya engenders enormous respect from her colleagues and superiors. Two times in the film, a superior asks one of Maya’s colleagues if she’s up for the job. In each instance, she’s described as “a killer” and “intelligent,” although James Gandolfini as the CIA Director dismisses that assertion by saying, “We’re all intelligent.” A Navy SEAL trusts Maya’s judgment on bin Laden’s location because of her unwavering confidence.

One of the best things about having a female director? Not only do we see an intelligent and complex female protagonist. We also see female friendship. Passing the Bechdel Test, we see Maya and her colleague and friend Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) debate, strategize, unwind and challenge each other. Reinforcing their friendship with a visual cue, Maya’s screensaver on her computer is a picture of her and Jessica.

Jennifer Ehle as Jessica in Zero Dark Thirty

After Maya becomes convinced that a vital lead is dead, it’s young analyst Debbie (Jessica Collins) who makes a crucial discovery through researching old files. She tells Maya that she’s been her inspiration. It was nice to see female admiration and camaraderie, even if Maya is too busy, too focused on work to acknowledge her compliment.

When Jessica asks Maya if she has a boyfriend or is sleeping with a co-worker, Maya firmly tells her no. Jessica encourages her to get a little somethin’ somethin’ to take the edge off. She says, “I’m not that girl that fucks – it’s unbecoming.” Now I’m not exactly thrilled with that statement. But I’m delighted Maya isn’t defined by her relationship to a man. She defines herself.

Some have called Zero Dark Thirty “a feminist epic” based on “the real women of the CIA.” But it’s also been criticized for its perpetuation of the Lone Wolf Heroine trope. When asked about the role of Maya’s gender, Bigelow – who was pleasantly surprised to discover how many women were involved in the CIA’s search for bin Laden – said “the beauty of the narrative” is that Maya is “defined by her dedication, her courage, her fearlessness.”

Maya (Jessica Chastain) in Zero Dark Thirty

I’m honestly not entirely sure if Zero Dark Thirty is a feminist film. But with its subtle gender commentary, female friendship, and female protagonist who’s defined by her actions rather than her appearance or her relationships, it’s hard for me to say it’s not.

Bigelow is a talented filmmaker who made an exceptional film. Which is why it’s shocking she didn’t receive an Oscar nomination. Kathryn Bigelow has continually faced sexism, whether it’s with asshat writer Bret Easton Ellis calling her overrated because she’s “hot,” or by not being awarded an Oscar nomination, despite winning numerous film awards. It’s also unfortunate because the Academy so rarely nominates directors of women-centric films.

Only 4 women have ever been nominated for a Best Director Oscar: Lina Wertmüller (Seven Beauties), Jane Campion (The Piano), Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation) and Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker). Out of these 4, only the Piano was female-centric. Bigelow is the only woman to ever win. Ever.

Did the Academy ignore Kathryn Bigelow because of sexism? Did they not want to honor a female director twice? Or was it because of the raging shitstorm of controversy regarding the film’s depiction of torture? Or was it because of the pending Senate investigation? And would the Senate have even investigated Zero Dark Thirty had it been directed by a man? I have a sneaking suspicion that sexism resides at the root of each of these questions.

Maya (Jessica Chastain) in Zero Dark Thirty

Many have raised the question whether Zero Dark Thirty excusesor glorifiesor endorses torture while others have refuted these claims, arguing it depicts but doesn’t defend torture or is ambiguous in its stance. Some of the same people who didn’t give two shits about torture and halting human rights atrocities in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo – including Senator John McCain, himself a torture survivor with a “spotty record on torture” as he speaks out against torture yet votes in favor of it  — are the same vocalizing outrage over Zero Dark Thirty. Both Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have vehemently denied the film being an endorsement of torture. Yet Bigelow has been called a Nazi making propaganda, “torture’s handmaiden” as well as having “zero conscience.” Wow. That’s ridiculously harsh, don’t you think? While I’m all for critiquing art, as Stephen Colbert (of all people!) pointed out, why are we railing against a filmmaker rather than the government who still hasn’t fully investigated the use of torture in the War on Terror?

Now does depicting horrific atrocities equate approval? Absolutely not. Films like The Accused and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo portray rape graphically yet exist to combat victim-blaming rape culture. What matters is in the film’s portrayal.

Zero Dark Thirtydoes not shy away from graphic depictions of torture. Bigelow said that while she wished torture “was not part of that history,” it was. Within the first 20 minutes, we witness detainee Ammar (Reda Kateb) waterboarded, beaten, humiliated, starved, sleep deprived, stress positions by being forced into a tiny box, disoriented with lights and heavy metal music, and walked around with a collar and a chain like a dog. Later, we see other detainees in jumpsuits with wounds and scars. The abuse is horrifying and disturbing to watch. It’s repulsive to see the culmination of the racist, xenophobic colonialism that spurred the use of torture against Muslim Arabs.

Torture does not yield accurate information. Yet Dan repeatedly says to Ammar, “You lie, I hurt you.” When Ammar begs Maya for help, she tells him, “You can help yourself by telling the truth.” Not only does it subvert our gendered assumptions that she would be sympathetic to him. It puts the onus on the tortured detainees, not on the racist atrocities committed by government officials.

Admiral Bill McCraven (Christopher Stanley) and Maya (Jessica Chastain) in Zero Dark Thirty

But Zero Dark Thirtyalso shows the inefficacy of torture. When Ammar is put into the box, he lies that he doesn’t know if there will be another attack. And yet we quickly see an attack in Saudi Arabia. We see CIA analysts uncovering intelligence without torture. After Ammar has been abused, demoralized and dehumanized repeatedly for months (years?), Maya and Dan eventually treat him with a modicum of decency and respect. Only then does he finally provide accurate and vital information.

Most tellingly, Dan says he’s leaving as he no longer can torture people. He says he wants to go to DC and do something “normal.” He warns Maya not to be “the last one holding a dog collar when the oversight committee comes.” This sense of awareness doesn’t acquit Dan’s or Maya’s actions. But it does convey that Dan knows that torture is fundamentally wrong.

But Zero Dark Thirtyalso portrays characters who repeatedly say that they can’t do their job without torture — or as they put it “enhanced interrogation techniques” — even after finding leads without torture and even after torture fails to stop terrorist attacks, which undercuts the message that torture is ineffective and reprehensible. It frames torture more as a Machiavellian means to an end: it’s not pleasant but still kinda necessary. But maybe that’s the point — to showcase the traditional thinking of the CIA in how to obtain intelligence, even when everything points in the opposite direction. While it certainly doesn’t condone torture, sadly Zero Dark Thirty doesn’t outright condemn human rights atrocities either.

It is this back and forth, this ambiguous juxtaposition of narratives and views that makes it difficult to analyze and open to interpretation. Zero Dark Thirty has been called a “reverse Rohrsach test” where everyone will see in it “something they would rather not see, but no one can agree on what’s wrong.” Take the opening: some will see replaying voices calling 911 on 9/11 as inciting fear and terror, while others (aka me) will see it as transporting us back to that time, reminding us why we as a nation reacted – right or wrong – the way we did. Bigelow herself said “there’s certainly a moral complexity to that 10-year hunt” for bin Laden. Bigelow and Boal didn’t spell everything out for us and “didn’t spoon-feed their opinions to the audience in a way that made for easy digestion.”  They expect us to complete the puzzle for ourselves.

Maya (Jessica Chastain) in Zero Dark Thirty
However, the biggest clue as to the film’s overall stance appears in its finale. Zero Dark Thirtymay not criticize torture as much as it could or should. But that doesn’t mean it panders to politics. Rather it questions the course the U.S. has taken. It makes a bold and damning statement critiquing post-9/11 failures and the emptiness of the War on Terror. When bin Laden’s compound is invaded and he’s killed, it’s a taut and suspenseful albeit disturbing sequence. In the end, there’s no rejoicing, no celebration.

The last image we see is Maya, alone shedding silent tears. She allows herself a much-needed emotional release. While she should be satisfied at the culmination of her life’s work, pain tinges this moment. Lost and forlorn, she doesn’t know where to go next.

Zero Dark Thirtydoesn’t provide any easy answers. Rather it asks complex questions. Like any masterful work of art, it challenges us and pushes us, at times in uncomfortable ways. It forces us to look at ourselves as a nation, to our collective pain and to our response to tragedy. Zero Dark Thirty essentially asks us if it was all worth it. It asks how we can move forward. Just like Maya, where do we go from here?

2013 Golden Globes Week: Jessica Chastain’s Performance Propels the Exquisitely Sharp But Aloof ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

This is a guest review by Candice Frederick and is cross-posted with permission from her blog Reel Talk.
Zero Dark Thirty teaser
With her latest film Zero Dark Thirty, filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow continues her charge of completely eliminating any doubt that she’s going to be to that type of female director. You know the kind, the one that purposely tries to connect with her female audience by yanking tears from them or providing any real nuance or connectivity.

And she has beaten any expectations to the contrary out of the audience with this movie that exhausts the hunt for and ultimate death of terrorist Osama bin Laden. Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, a smart CIA operative who’s made it her sole mission to lead the search for bin Laden and ensure that he will no longer be a threat to anyone ever again. When we first meet her, however, she’s squeamish at even the sight of blood as she watches her male counterpart (Jason Clarke) brutally interrogate a possible terrorist lackey.

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
But when it seems like she’s played all her cards, she’s the single woman left standing among a weary team of men and bravely rises to the occasion. Though the audience follows her decade-long ordeal to capture and eliminate bin Laden, not without witnessing many innocent deaths, rarely does she ever emit any emotion from the audience. In fact, with the exception of Chastain’s emotionally spent final scene, which is more of a release than anything else, few areas in the film waste time tugging at the heartstrings. Rather, Maya’s relentless journey seems more stressful and high-pressured than wrought with emotion and painful to endure. There could have been more of a balance, rather than a ruler-sharp portrayal of a woman tackling her position. Granted, this is expected from a character in this line of work, but it made for a very detached commitment to the character from the audience. Just when we get to see a trace of personal struggle from Maya, Bigelow quickly snaps us back to the matter at hand.

Even though that’s just not Bigelow’s style, she surprisingly grips audiences in the first few minutes of the film when they listen to the barrage of frightful phone calls to 911 during the September 11th attacks. Reliving those tragic moments, then following it with the scene to Chastain huddled in the corner of the interrogation room sets the tone of the movie and leaves no questions about the intentions of the story. It’s clear, steady and deliberate retaliation. And there is simply no time for fear.

Chastain leaps into the role, completely shedding any remnant of every other character she’s played, and attacks it with the vigor and confidence it needs. Think Carrie on TV’s Homeland minus the glimmer of insanity (though it would have been understandable given her circumstances).

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
Unfolding like a timetable of harrowing events during this time, the movie might not elicit much empathy but it does successfully manage to push audiences to the edge of their seats, creating a heart-pounding thriller that is suspenseful despite the fact that you know what’s going to happen. Alexandre Desplat’s affecting score further heightens that effect. Bigelow’s stark but realistic approach to Mark Boal’s (with whom she first collaborated on The Hurt Locker) story is gritty and firm, leaving no room for fluff scenes (though the fleeting scene between Chastain and Jennifer Ehle, who plays a member of the retaliation crew, is much welcomed).

With a cast, which include James Gandolfini, Kyle Chandler, and Mark Strong, that’s committed to the increasingly tense dialogue and demanding story, Zero Dark Thirty offers audiences a look at the much meticulous investigation that was shrouded in secrecy, one which led to the ultimate capture of bin Laden. But it is Chastain’s performance, as restrained as it is powerful, that may just be the cherry atop this massive and meticulous film.

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Candice Frederick is a former NABJ award-winning journalist for Essence Magazine, and the writer for the film blog, Reel Talk. She is also the TV/Film critic for The Urban Daily. Follow her on Twitter. 

‘Bachelorette’ Proves Bad People Can Make Great Characters

Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, and Lizzy Caplan in Bachelorette
Written by Robin Hitchcock.
[Warning: spoilers ahead!]
When I saw The Hangover, around the time its sequel came out, I was disappointed they didn’t make the sequel the story of “meanwhile, the bride and her girlfriends had an even MORE wild adventure.” Some of us hoped we’d get something along those lines with Bridesmaids, which certainly was an enjoyable movie and huge step forward for female-focused comedies in mainstream Hollywood, but sometimes felt forced when it veered into the “shocking” territory of ladies pooping.
So three cheers for Bachelorette, which certainly stands on the shoulders of Bridesmaids, but makes it look tame in comparison. Bachelorette doesn’t just have its female characters do shocking things, it has the shocking characterizations. For once, we have a movie full of female characters allowed to be the horrifically selfish jerks that routinely populate dude comedies like The Hangover. It’s delightfully bracing.
For some, the ladies of Bachelorette will be too bitchy, or too similar to sexist stereotypes, to bear. Maid of Honor Regan (Kirsten Dunst) is a Type-A ice queen, joined by bridesmaids Gena (Lizzy Caplan), a self-centered fuck-up, and airhead Katie (Isla Fisher). All three enjoy drugs and casual sex, and all three can be jaw-droppingly mean. All are horrified that the bride Becky (Rebel Wilson) is getting married first among them, because, well, she’s fatter than they are. They still use the cruel nickname (“Pig Face”) they gave her in high school, and spend the first act showing shocking disregard for the her well-being and the success of her wedding. [Fortunately for the bride, there are other women in her bridal party lurking on the sidelines of the story, theoretically taking care of most of the wedding business while these three cause trouble].
Rebel Wilson is unfortunately not given much to do as Becky, but I really enjoyed how the movie didn’t just victimize her as the “fat friend”, subverting that dynamic by making it clear that Becky’s size is much more of an issue for her skinnier friends than it is for Becky herself.  Although Gena awkwardly jokes in her rehearsal dinner speech about meeting Becky when she was making herself vomit in the high school bathroom, it’s later revealed that Regan is actually the one with a history of bulimia. It’s made clear that Becky doesn’t tolerate strangers being cruel to her: she puts a stop to her bachelorette festivities the moment the male stripper Katie brought in calls her “Pig Face.” Becky retains her dignity, while Gena, Katie, and Regan pathetically retreat to have their own private coke-fueled hotel room bender without the bride or the other members of the bridal party.
Rebel Wilson as the bride, a well-adjusted foil for the main characters
During this party, the girls cruelly mock the size of Becky’s wedding gown, and Regan and Katie both try to climb into it. But Becky is only twice their size in their demented imaginations, so the gown rips.  The rest of the plot follows their misadventures as they attempt to fix the gown before the next morning.
Gena, Katie, and Regan never stop being selfish bitches in their quest to undo this huge wrong. A potential solution is reached when they are able to get into a bridal shop after hours and there’s another dress available in nearly Becky’s size, but it’s rejected because that dress is Regan’s favorite, and she can’t let her friend wear it instead of her. They’re also all distracted by their own romantic subplots, particularly Gena (who is paired against her former Party Down co-star Adam Scott, to the same irresistibly watchable effect).
But through all of this shocking meanness, there’s a true-to-life thread of the genuine friendship between these women. It may be hard to imagine how these characters became friends in the first place, but who didn’t build some unlikely friendships through the happenstance of high school classroom seating charts and locker assignments? And despite all their nasty behavior, it’s not hard to understand why they are still friends after all these years: Bachelorette masterfully illustrates the bond we feel with the people we’ve known the longest, even if they aren’t the closest people in our present lives. Becky and Regan will always have a bond because Becky covered up for her high school bulimia; Regan and Gena will always have a bond because Regan took Gena to get an abortion when her high school boyfriend (Scott) chickened out. In the final scenes, Regan bounces between finally putting her bitchiness to good use by chewing out Becky’s floundering florist, and saving Katie’s life after she overdoses on Xanax. Gena assures Katie’s bewildered suitor that even though he’s right that Regan is a “head case” it’s also true that “she’s a good friend.” It rings true. Regan is the kind of friend you’d never want, but you would nevertheless be grateful for if you did have her in your life.
Bachelorette has a happy ending without absolving the characters
Still, Regan, Gena, and Katie sit out Becky’s wedding ceremony, beat-down and vomit-covered on a bench, unneeded by Becky the beaming Bride. The film ends with a wedding reception coda that’s appropriately joyful, but there’s no clear-cut redemption for our troubled trio. Bachelorette strikes a delicate balance, getting us to like and root for these flawed characters without denying their shortcomings (as The Hangover and its ilk are wont to do).  It’s a rare feat for any film, and almost unheard of with a female-centric comedy.

Women in Politics Week: Sofia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ Surprisingly Feminist

Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette
This post by Megan Kearns originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 27, 2012.
Many chastised Sofia Coppola’s re-imagining of Marie Antoinette. Some critics complained about the addition of modern music while others thought it looked too slick, like an MTV music video (remember those??). But I think most people missed the point. Beyond the confectionery colors, gorgeous shots of lavish costumes and a teen queen munching on decadent treats and sipping champagne is a compelling and heartbreaking film that transcends eye candy. Underneath the exquisite atmosphere exists a very powerful and feminist commentary on gender and women.
Marie Antoinette chronicles the life of Austrian-born Maria Antonia Josephina Joanna (Kirsten Dunst) as she becomes the Dauphine and then Queen of France leading up to the French Revolution. Writer and director Sofia Coppola loosely based the film on Antonia Fraser’s sympathetic biography of the French queen. Coppola injected the dialogue with actual quotes from the queen’s life. Dunst skillfully exhibits the queen’s naïveté, loneliness and charisma. In an outstanding and underrated performance, she adeptly captures the jubilance of a young woman who desperately desires freedom as well as a woman burdened with the knowledge that her only value lies in her ability to bear children.
In the beginning of the film, we see Marie Antoinette travel from her homeland of Austria to France as her mother has arranged for her to be married to the Dauphin, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) in order to unite the two antagonistic kingdoms of Austria and France. In a heartbreaking scene, Judy Dench tells Marie Antoinette she must leave everything she knows behind to make room for her new French identity, including abandoning her adorbs dog Mops. No, not her dog! That scene seriously broke my heart reducing me to tears. Marie Antoinette is upset yet she swallows her pain and obeys. She enters a tent placed on the two countries’ borders, entering on Austrian soil and exiting on French land. In the tent, she must strip off all of her clothes in order to don her new French garb – a symbol of her having to strip away her identity.
Once Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI, we see Versailles’ ridiculous and over the top traditions again and again. Every morning, an entourage of servants and royalty awakens Marie Antoinette, dressing her in garments with outlandish pomp and ceremony.
As she navigates royal society’s mores, we witness Marie Antoinette’s close friendships with the free spirited Duchesse de Polignac (Rose Byrne) and the reserved Princesse de Lamballe (Mary Nighy). When she is told she should choose more appropriate friends, particularly ditching Duchesse de Polignac, Marie Antoinette defends her friend saying she enjoys her fun spirit. Yes, there are moments when Marie Antoinette indulges in vapid, decadent luxuries. But people forget she’s a teenager. Um, that’s what they do! To take her mind off the constant societal pressure, she distracts herself by gambling, singing in plays and shopping. She’s so confined by societal expectations; she’s exploring her identity and experimenting as much as she can.
Marie Antoinette’s mother, the Austrian duchess Maria Theresa warns her, “All eyes will be on you.” After their wedding night, it’s clear that Louis XVI has no sexual interest in his bride. Through her constant letters, Maria Theresa perpetually reminds her daughter that “nothing is certain” about her place until she gives birth to a son. Even after Louis XVI is crowned king and Marie Antoinette becomes queen, her place is still not entirely secure until she has a son. After her sister-in-law gives birth to a son, Marie-Antoinette feels even more pressure to have a child. Her mother condemns her for not being charming enough or patient enough to entice her husband. As Marie Antoinette reads her mother’s letter, the stinging words wound her, we see and feel her solitary pain.
Women were reduced to their vaginas, only valued if they got pregnant so they could produce an heir. No one bothers Louis XVI about this, even though he’s the one who doesn’t want to have sex. Nope, just the woman; of course she’s to blame. Eventually after 7 years with no children, Marie Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor, talks to him. But Marie Antoinette is repeatedly blamed for not becoming pregnant. Clearly her body and reproduction are her only salient attributes in the eyes of society. 
Throughout the film, we’re reminded that women aren’t desirable, lesser than men. When her first child a daughter is born, Marie Antoinette says to her:

Oh, you were not what was desired, but that makes you no less dear to me. A boy would have been the Son of France, but you, Marie Thérèse, shall be mine.

In a world where nothing, not even her own body truly belongs to her, it’s touching to see Marie Antoinette, a devoted mother, take such joy in her relationship with her daughter.
Throughout history, people erroneously vilified Marie Antoinette, attributing her with more political influence than she actually possessed. And of course she was demonized after she supposedly told starving peasants, “Let them eat cake.” As civil unrest grows inching ever closer to revolution, the film’s Marie Antoinette says she would never say such a thing. Because of her Austrian heritage and I would also argue her gender, Marie Antoinette was repeatedly used as a scapegoat for France’s financial woes and the public’s strife.
The film divided audiences. At the Cannes Film Festival, critics notoriously booed yet it also received a standing ovation. Some critics dismissed it, saying it was nothing more than a pop video or that “all we learn about Marie Antoinette is her love for Laduree macaroons and Manolo Blahnik shoes.” Sofia Coppola, who consciously chose to omit politics from the film, fully acknowledged Marie Antoinette was not a typical historical biopic:

It is not a lesson of history, it’s an interpretation carried by my desire for covering the subject differently. 

Would people still complain and moan if a dude was at the center of the film or a dude had directed this?? Nope, I think not. Does anyone else remember that Mozart acts like an immature douchebag in the critically acclaimed Amadeus??
But some delved deeper, understanding its rare beauty. Critic Roger Ebert praised Marie Antoinette astutely pointing out:

This is Sofia Coppola’s third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you.

Told almost entirely from the Queen’s perspective, we see the world through Marie Antoinette’s eyes. Her loneliness and the pressure she faces to be everything to everyone is palpable. 
With its commentaries on gender, women’s agency, reproduction and female friendships, Marie Antoinette is surprisingly deeper and more feminist than many realize. Sofia Coppola created a lush and sumptuous indulgence for the eyes. More importantly, by humanizing the doomed queen and adding modern touches, Coppola reminds us of the gender constraints women throughout history and today continually endure.

Women in Politics Week: Women, War & Peace: The Roundup

The Women, War & Peace Documentary Series on PBS
This post by Megan Kearns originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on January 9, 2012.
Over the course of the past two months, Megan Kearns of The Opinioness of the World reviewed all five parts of the PBS series Women, War & Peace. We’ve rounded them up here, with excerpts from each review. Be sure to check them out if you missed any! (You can also watch the full episodes online here.)

While rape had been charged as a crime before, it usually falls under the umbrella of hate crimes. With this groundbreaking tribunal, for the first time rape was charged as “a crime against humanity.” The case wouldn’t prevent all rapes. But Kuo said that even though they couldn’t prosecute every rape, it was a significant statement to acknowledge what happens to women during war. The case “transformed the definition of wartime slavery,” laying the “foundation of trials involving violence against women in international courts.”

War leaves devastation in its wake. Yet historically, when we talk about war, we talk about it in terms of soldiers and casualties; too often from a male perspective, forgetting that it equally destroys women’s lives.

In the 2nd installment of the Women, War & Peace series, director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail E. Disney, and WWP series executive producers and co-creators, create a Tribeca Film Festival-winning documentary. Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the powerful and uplifting story of the Liberian women, including activist and social worker Leymah Gbowee, who joined together and peacefully protested, helping end the civil war ravaging their country.

For almost 15 years, beginning on Christmas Eve in 1989, two civil wars plagued Liberia. Warlord and former president Charles Taylor resided at the center of both. He overthrew the regime during the first civil war and committed war crimes and human rights atrocities while president during the second civil war. Taylor recruited soldiers as young as 9-15 years old. With his private army, the dictator controlled the finances and terrorized the country.

Hasina Safi, one of the 3,000 members of the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a non-partisan NGO working to empower women, visits villages to monitor the programs she coordinates for illiterate women. Classes for women could not be held openly with the Taliban in power. Almost 90% of Afghan women cannot read or write. Through classes, many women are just learning Islam encourages women’s education.
But working women like Safi risk their lives. They receive death threats via horrific letters in the night, telling them they must stop working or else their children will be killed and their homes burned.

Over the course of the last two decades, at least 16 million acres of land have been violently taken from Colombians. In the last 8 years, over 2 million have been displaced. Colombia has the second largest number of internally displaced people in the world after Sudan. With no jobs and contaminated water, displacement traumatizes civilians and rips families apart. Under international law,internally displaced citizens don’t receive the same protections that refugees do. Their government is supposed to address their rights. But in this case, how are Colombians supposed to obtain justice when their own government condemns them?

Afro-Colombians make up one quarter of Colombia’s population. In May 2010, coinciding with Afro-Colombian Day, which commemorates the end of slavery in Colombia, Sarria’s eviction was set to commence. People took to the streets, barricading the road to halt the eviction.

‘War Redefined’ Challenges War as a Male Domain and Examines How Violent Conflict Impacts Women:

When we think of war, we often think of soldiers, tanks, weapons and battlefields. But most wars breach boundaries, affecting civilians, mostly women and children. Soldiers, guerillas and paramilitaries use tactics such as rape, fear, murder and pushing people off their land. We need to shift our paradigm of war and look at how it affects women’s lives.
War Redefined, the 5th and final installment in Women, War & Peace (WWP), is the capstone of the groundbreaking series featuring politicians, military personnel, scholars and activists discussing how women play a vital role in war and peace-keeping. Narrated by actor Geena Davis, a phenomenal women’s media activist, written and produced by Peter Bull, co-produced by Nina Chaudry, this powerful film threads stories told in the other parts of the series: Bosnian women surviving rape camps, Liberian women protesting for peace, Afghan women demanding their rights in negotiations and Afro-Colombian women contending with internal displacement. War Redefined, and the entire WWP series, challenges the assumption that war and peace belong to men’s domain.

A Review and An Interview: ‘Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear’

To say that Aung San Suu Kyi, political prisoner and General Secretary for the Burmese National League of Democracy is one of the world’s most powerful and inspirational women would not be a stretch. Leaving the safety of England and the care of her family she endured 15 years of house arrest in her non-violent quest for removal of the military junta in power and the instating of democracy in Myanmar. Last week I was lucky enough to attend the 12th Annual Gwangju Film Festival here in South Korea and watch the 2010 documentary, Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear. Even luckier was that the director, Anne Gyrithe Bonne, was in attendance and graciously agreed to an interview.

It’s entirely coincidental that my interview with Anne Gyrithe Bonne will be published during the same week that United States President, Barack Obama, will be in Myanmar. While Myanmar’s current leadership has released many of their political prisoners, Myanmar still struggles with human rights violations. The President of Myanmar, Thein Sein, has promised to review all of the current political prisoners and seek their release by the end of the year. Hopefully President Obama’s visit to Myanmar can spur more changes and continue to encourage their transition to a stable and safe country.

The admirable Aung San Suu Kyi, ever mindful of the hard road towards peace, has warned against too early an acceptance of the government’s words, cautioning against their possible motive of appeasement and fearful that the country could slip back into military control with, ‘the mirage of success’ in front of them. Aung San Suu Kyi’s great strength and personal sacrifice in her fight against the government is ongoing and complete, features that are simply displayed in Bonne’s film.

Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear naturally covers Aung San Suu Kyi’s infamous periods of house arrest and the personal discipline and mental fortitude she possessed which allowed her to be such a powerful leader and democratic activist. However, the film focuses on Aung San Suu Kyi’s private life, which Bonne would argue is essential to understanding her involvement in the Burmese struggle for democracy. Bonne specifically chose to focus on the astounding relationship between Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband, Michael Aris, since Aris was a major support to Aung San Suu Kyi and similarly held her belief that Burma was everything: more than each other, more than their children. 

Aung San Suu Kyi

What the film does especially well at demonstrating is the incredible mythic power that Aung San Suu Kyi has over the Burmese people. Because of her background as the daughter of the great commander and soldier of independence, Aung San, as well as her renowned public speaking abilities, Aung San Suu Kyi was able to step into her father’s shoes; as one loyal Burmese supporter said of her, “She is not only a fighter, she is a commander.”

I asked Bonne what she felt that Aung San Suu Kyi had given to women of the world, particularly those involved with the issue of human rights and she suggested something very simple: “rebelliousness.” Without this rebelliousness, a rebelliousness founded in the exemplary cause of civil rights and human freedoms, hierarchies cannot fall and ongoing cycles of violence and abuse and repression cannot be removed. One of the most stunning moments of the film came during a clip of an interview Aung San Suu Kyi had given some years ago. In the interview she’s asked about the situation of her communications with the outside world. While she was given permission to write letters to her family, they were all censored by the government; so, incredibly, she refused to send any more letters because she didn’t want to, “communicate through the authorities.” Even completely isolated from her family she refused to give in to the demands of tyranny and authority.

There is a second side to her though; her graceful and poised nature set her apart from other would-be leaders, and even from her college friends. Aung San Suu Kyi was educated at Oxford during the sixties and while other women were exploring the sexual revolution, Aung San Suu Kyi protested that she wanted to be a virgin when she married and that for now she would, “just hug her pillow at night.” In many ways Aung San Suu Kyi never forgot that she was from Burma, even refusing British citizenship as a way to maintain her heritage, for, as she told Michael when they married, “If Burma needs me, I will go.”

This dual-nature she possesses highlights her relationship to Burma: Burma was always her home, but neither was she the government’s puppet, sporting a rebellious streak of her own. A rebellious streak that Bonne believes is demonstrated in her marriage to Michael Aris, who despite his cosmopolitan upbringing, was still an “enemy of Burma” as an Englishman. Aung San Suu Kyi directly went against her mothers wishes, her family’s wishes, and even the wishes of her country by marrying the man she loved: her mother refused to even attend the wedding.

For many years Aung San Suu Kyi stayed in Oxford with her family, giving birth to two children and supporting her husband’s rising career as a Buddhist scholar, a topic that surprisingly Michael actually taught Aung San Suu Kyi about and an interest that the two of them shared. Eventually, Aung San Suu Kyi began to start her own projects, beginning a biography about her father and even applying to graduate school. However, the sudden failing health of her mother in 1988 called her back to Burma, unknowing that she would become its most outspoken and inspiring democratic activist in just a few short months.

In reference to Aung San Suu Kyi’s sudden propulsion into Burmese politics Bonne felt that Aung San Suu Kyi had been seduced by Burma, stating that, “She had been a proper housewife for a long time, ‘ironing Michael’s socks.’ During that time period the world was more about the man; if you wanted to get a Ph.D you couldn’t because you had your children and your house and your husband. Then there was the 8-8-88 revolution and she went to Burma to visit her mother and she was finally elevated. She gave a lot of public speeches, speeches with some say 250,000 thousand people, some say even 500,000 people; she was an amazing public speaker and people loved her.”

But her success would lead to great personal sacrifice, a situation that Bonne outlines in her film. While many are aware that Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest for almost 15 years, some might not be aware that she was allowed to leave if she chose: she just wouldn’t be allowed to return. The conditions for her release were dependent upon her willingness to live in exile from Burma, however, despite her desire to see her family (Aris and her children were refused visa’s into Burma starting in 1995) she knew that she could only be effective if she stayed in Burma. And how could she leave Burma knowing that so many others could not? How could she leave knowing that Burmese people were suffering and political prisoners were being abused? She therefore chose separation from her family rather than abandon her people, a decision that led to criticism against Aung San Suu Kyi, some saying that she had ‘abandoned her children:’ A harsh accusation against any mother. 

Anne Gyrithe Bonne
Yet the interviews featured in the film point out this damaging double standard, a double standard that one of the greatest proponents of democracy and peace of our generation has had to endure. While male human rights activists have had to leave their families in the past, no one accuses them of child abandonment (Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years, but no one ever mentions his children). One of Aung San Suu Kyi’s friend’s from Oxford pointed out, that even the Buddha left his family in to go into the forest and meditate for a while, and yet a woman of self-sacrifice who gave everything for the family that was her country of Burma, still can’t be free from the lazy and illogical and damaging double standards that still rule our society.
 
It was the necessity of exposing the information about Aung San Suu Kyi leaving her children in England to serve Burma that was Bonne’s greatest concern about producing this film; “I was afraid of destroying her cause. It was a balancing act to make her story and also be respectful because I was afraid that the general [leader of Burma] and others would see the film and think she’s a bad mother and end up damaging her cause.” However, Bonne continued to make the film, believing it was essential to uncover the story behind the icon, to realize what had nurtured such a strong and effective supporter of democracy and civil rights.

The documentary then walks a delicate line in respectfully baring Aung San Suu Kyi’s unique past, highlighting her political achievements, while also demonstrating Aung San Suu Kyi’s own humanity. In that light, the film focuses more on her personal relationships and features interviews from several of her close friends and family. Interviews that reveal just how much Aung San Suu Kyi sacrificed for the people of Burma after the Burmese government refused to allow Aris to visit his wife, even as he was dying of prostate cancer. Michael died in 1999 in England, unable to say goodbye to his beloved wife.

Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding Aris’s death and the Burmese governments unwillingness to allow him into the country, Bonne believes that Michael’s death served to increase Aung San Suu Kyi’s popularity and power among the Burmese people. When it became known that she had given up everything for them, she became even more beloved and her supporters ever more loyal.

While great attention should obviously be paid to Aung San Suu Kyi’s incredible political triumphs, when asked about what she wanted audiences to take away from the film, Bonne explained that she hopes people see, “That there’s always a story behind the person and then realize what price they had to pay to become that person and who they are.” A tie-in to a beautiful line in the film where Aung San Suu Kyi says, “Nothing is free: if you want something of value you must make payments accordingly.” According to Bonne, Aung San Suu Kyi, “paid a big price.”

The extended version of the film (which I was able to view on Monday night) actually starts at the end of her house arrest, the first few minutes of the film showing footage of Aung San Suu Kyi after her 2010 release. This is unique for many reasons: the documentary was originally released a mere two days before Kyi’s 2010 release. Bonne is humble about this astounding coincidence however, acknowledging that the film certainly, “brought people’s eyes to her.” Obviously the film created a fair amount of exposure about Aung San Suu Kyi’s situation and must have helped to place pressure on the Burmese government. In 2011 the film was selected for the exclusive Berlin ‘Cinema for Peace’ Festival, after which a journalist was finally allowed into Burma to photograph Aung San Suu Kyi.

Bonne’s film exposes Aung San Suu Kyi’s humanity and in so doing has shown the strength and desire for freedom that is possible in leaders and which is fundamentally necessary for the development of human rights in the future. As Aung San Suu Kyi has said, “we must nurture mental strength and support each other,” because it is then that we experience true freedom: “freedom from fear.”

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.


Please, ‘Turn Me On, Dammit!’

The 2011 Norwegian film, Turn Me On, Dammit! is, in a word, excellent. In the world of about a thousand American Pie films and cliched male teen sex comedies that usually revolve around bathroom jokes and well-endowed foreign exchange students, Turn Me On, Dammit! follows a more female centered theme that is as insightful as it is witty.
 
The star of Turn Me On, Dammit! is Helene Bergsholm who plays Alma, a 15-year-old girl who lives in a small town in Norway and is just realizing the amazing, albeit embarrassing, world of teenage hormones and sex. One night at a party, Alma’s crush, a boy at her school named Artur, exposes himself to her (or as the film’s refrain goes, “pokes her with his dick”) but when Alma excitedly tells her friends about the encounter, a jealous girl refuses to believe the story and spreads it around that Alma is a liar. Artur as well, embarrassed that he’s been confronted with the situation, denies that it ever happened, sending young Alma into the lonely world of high school drama.
 
The film’s writer and director, Jannicke Systad Jacobsen, fills the film with an excellent commentary on the fact that often, men are believed over women in situations of sexual harassment and assault. Now, while Artur and Alma’s situation is slightly different since it was youthful, consensual experimentation and not assault, the point is still there: women accuse, men deny. Jacobson however doesn’t strike an agressive tone with this theme, rather she couches the exposition of it in terms of courage and cowardice. Artur is a young coward too scared to admit the truth and instead just watches as Alma is increasingly shunned and ostracized from her friends.
Malin Bjorhovde, Helene Bergsholm, Beate Stofring in Turn Me On, Dammit!

This theme is one that avoids blame and victimization, focusing instead on the human propensity to make stupid (and even cruel or damaging) mistakes and either be a coward about it, or face the consequences. A gender-relevant argument that doesn’t feel aggressive, giving the film a wide appeal to audiences.

While there is some slight “slut-shaming” that occurs in the film (Alma’s new nickname, “Dick Alma” is called after her by even small children), there is more of a focus on how Alma’s sexual activities lead the people of the town, as well as her mother, to think that she must be crazy or abnormal in some way. It’s a familiar sort of idea in the teen sex comedy, the raging sexual hormones of youth leading to a certifiably insane son or daughter whose activities seem to be those of pervert. Take for example the famous scene in American Pie when Jim decides to have sex with an apple pie because he believes it will simulate how sex actually feels; naturally, that is the exact moment that his father walks in the room.
 
The scene in American Pie, however, is so extreme that it could never be real, a problem that Jacobsen doesn’t have. Alma’s scene’s of “sexual craziness” are awkward and embarrassing to be sure, but never outside the realm of possibility, grounding her characters in in a more realistic comedy. Because of this, Alma is ultimately able to attain something that most characters in a teen sex comedy never can: self-respect. Turn Me On, Dammit! is at its core a film about growing up and gaining confidence in ourselves, a true coming-of-age story where Alma reaches self-acceptance and Alma’s mother is able to do the same for her daughter.
 
So many parental-child relationships are sacrificed in teen movies, parents becoming bumbling idiots whose outdated slang and terrible educational sexual analogies feed into cliched humor. It’s a shame that’s the case since Alma’s mother’s quiet confusion and occasional fear of her daughters healthy curiosity in sexuality lends a lot of subtle humor to the film. Alma’s mother feels her daughter must be abnormal in some way and so all she begins to see is the apparent erratic and embarrassing behavior of her daughter, not realizing the social exclusion her daughter is experiencing. Alma as well doesn’t see her mother’s loneliness and attraction to her boss; it’s a moment of selfishness for each character in their unwillingness to empathize with the other.
 
While the mother and daughter relationship is a strong plot point for the film, my favorite exposition is the very female-centered, sex-positive demonstration of female fantasy. So often visual sexual fantasy in films remains squarely in the center of the male gaze: women in bikinis washing cars, licking ice cream cones, and rising silkily out of a swimming pool come to mind. Alma not only has a very sweet, male phone sex worker friend (who is willing to also just listen to the problems of a young girl, albeit his solution to those problems are “booze”), but also fantasizes about her crush in both the sweet and the sexy, her boss (hilarity with a bike helmet and  “I’m bringing sexy back”), and most notably, a fantasy about her female friend. Female fantasy is often kept in the overly dramatic (when it is portrayed at all) and rarely are same-sex fantasies expressed from a straight woman, a fact I find unfortunate since it’s been scientifically proven that most straight women are actually more sexually flexible in their arousal than men.
 
I suppose that my analysis has made the film sound like the only thing that is ever discussed is sex; this is however, not the case–obviously the issue of first love is important, drugs make an appearance, as does a surprising commentary on the American legal system. One of the main characters, Alma’s friend Saralou, is a social activist concerned with the plight of American prisoners on death row, she in fact writes letters to American prisoners, often discussing the local high school drama with various offenders.
 
The strengths (as well the flaws) of female friendships are portrayed in the film, giving a varied look at the silly and serious side of young people. Instead of a world bound by stereotype and cheap laughs, Jacobsen has created a rich and deeply human world filled with genuine characters and issues. And sex.
Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and it’s intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

How ‘Vamps’ Showcases the Importance of Women Friendships

I’m reposting my review of Vamps—which previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 3, 2012—in honor of Vamps opening in theaters (in limited release) tonight and releasing on DVD November 12.
Movie poster for Vamps
Vamps, the new indie film directed by Amy Heckerling and starring Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter (the upcoming star of the TV show Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23) takes the vampire genre and turns it into a fun, feminist celebration of youth culture and female friendship. The film is part spoof of the recent onslaught of vampire fare, part romantic comedy, part buddy movie—with women!—part history documentary, with some astute political commentary thrown in, and, ultimately, a film about aging, which pays particular attention to the struggles women face within a culture that values youth and beauty above all else.

Jason Buchanan on Rotten Tomatoes effectively captures the plot as follows: “Radiant New York City vampires Goody (Alicia Silverstone) and Stacy (Krysten Ritter) find their immortality in question after learning that love can still smolder in the realm of the undead. Meanwhile, Russian bloodsucker Vadim (Justin Kirk) prowls the streets in search of the next big thrill, and Dr. Van Helsing (Wallace Shawn) seeks to exterminate the creatures of the night as young Joey Van Helsing develops an unusual fixation on Stacy. As ravenous ‘stem’ vampire Ciccerus (Sigourney Weaver) presides over her dark dynasty with the help of her loyal assistant Ivan (Todd Barry), oddball Renfield (Zak Orth) strives to impress Stacy and Goody by any means necessary. Amidst all of the bloodshed and intrigue, nefarious vampire Vlad (Malcolm McDowell) works to perfect his knitting skills.” 


Alicia Silverstone as Goody and Krysten Ritter as Stacy in Vamps
It’s a fun cast of characters for sure, but Silverstone and Ritter shine as the main (women) characters. And for once there’s almost no reason to discuss The Bechdel Test; these two ladies barely talk about men for the first half of the film. Instead, we get to see them playing practical jokes on each other, hanging out in their shared apartment (often texting back and forth while inside their two side-by-side coffins), discussing their fashion choices—which is hilarious, as they struggle to make sure they’re fitting in with the latest 2012 trends (Stacy was first turned into a vampire in the 80s, and Goody lived all the way through the 1800s)—and generally looking out for each other and even (gasp) looking out for other women.

[SPOILER] Case in point: one of my absolute favorite scenes in the film happens early on, when Goody and Stacy head out for their nighttime ritual of club-hopping and imitating the new dance moves of the local youth “Day Walkers” (the term they use to refer to The Living among them). A couple of particularly horrible dude vampires approaches a woman after she bends over, ass in the air, with the word “Juicy” written on her tight pants. The dude vamps merely introduce themselves to her, to which she responds, “I’ll get my coat.” Goody chastises the horrible dude vampires—Goody and Stacy drink only the blood of rodents, not humans—and the dudes respond with, “She’s asking for it,” referring to her “Juicy” attire. It’s a pretty fucking great commentary on the victim-blaming that always accompanies any instance of the rape or sexual assault of women. 


Stacy and Goody on the computer
Goody walks over to the woman with the goal of getting her to stay away from the vampires, but she ultimately ends up hypnotizing her; in this film, vampires have the power to erase the memories of Day Walkers. At first Goody says something to the woman (paraphrasing), “Listen, you don’t want to leave with them. They’re really bad guys.” The woman says, “I like bad guys.” Goody begins hypnotizing her, repeating, “No, I like nice guys.” The woman walks away, passing the horrible dude vampires, while saying, “I like nice guys. I like guys who listen to me when I say things.” (I laughed out loud at that.)

This scene makes me so happy for a couple of reasons. First, a woman intervening to help another woman avoid getting killed by two horrible dude vampires—an obvious metaphor for rape in this scene, rarely happens in movies. How lovely to see that! Because women looking out for their friends certainly happens in real life—first-hand experience! Second, while I don’t necessarily like the implication that women always go for Bad Boys, I appreciate the acknowledgment that bros like this, who want to harm, abuse, and assault women, definitely exist. 


Stacy, Goody, and Sigourney Weaver as Cisserus in Vamps
Also, get this: I turned 33 six months ago. I still have my crappy 35-dollar Blackberry that my sister’s dog spent an hour chewing on. (There are bite marks on the fucking battery.) Let me just say, I could relate to the commentary about youth culture in this film. Heckerling makes wonderful observations about technology, with constant mentions of Twitter, Facebook, texting (there’s a funny reference to someone being in a “textual relationship” due to lack of real-life communication), and other technological stuff I’m probably forgetting because I don’t know what it is. While the film definitely celebrates youth culture, especially in its appreciation of women’s fashion (which reminded me so much of Heckerling’s famous film Clueless), it also juxtaposes that celebration with a critique of the value our society places on youth. That theme comes into play throughout the film, but the focus on women and aging sharpens with the introduction of the head vampire in charge.

Two words: Sigourney Weaver. Do we not adore her? The Alien films, mainly due to Weaver’s badass role as Ellen Ripley, remain one of the quintessential go-to franchises for getting that much-needed feminist fix that Hollywood movies today seem less willing to provide. (Quick shout out to Hunger Games, though!) And Weaver’s role in Vamps as Cisserus, the head vampire, or “Stem,” as they refer to the few vampires who possess the power to turn people into vampires, displays some feminist qualities—strength, leadership, and ambition, to name a few—but her character isn’t without flaws.

While the other vamps fear Weaver’s character—because she’s In Charge—they mainly fear her because she’s the evil, murderous villain. She obsesses over acquiring the love of young men, and when she doesn’t get it, well, you know, she eats them. In many ways, she reminds me of a vampiric version of Miranda Priestly, Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. She often summons Goody and Stacy (by psychically speaking to them), and it’s almost always to make them model clothing. (Ha!) See, vampires can’t see themselves in mirrors (invisible!), so Weaver wants to look at these women wearing her very youthful, fashionable clothing so that she can visualize what it possibly looks like on her. Eventually though, Cisserus’ power goes so far to her head that she begins putting the other vampires in danger, and the tagline for the last act of the film basically becomes “This Bitch Needs to Die.” 


Vampires hanging out at the club
A woman-in-charge who becomes an evil, power-hungry bitch who ruins lives? Where have I seen that before? (Clue: EVERYWHERE.) I did get the sense from Vamps, though, that it’s making light of that trope rather than relishing in it, and casting feminist film icon Weaver in that role further pushes it toward satire. An interview with Weaver in Collider sheds a bit more light on that:
Collider: What made you decide to jump into the vampire genre with Vamps?

Weaver: Well, I’m a big Amy Heckerling fan, and I also loved the character. She was so unrepentant … I love playing delicious, evil parts like that.

Collider: How does your character fit into the story?

Weaver: She is the person who turned the girls into vampires. So, they have to do her bidding, and she’s very unreasonable and demanding. I would have to say that the one change I made was that I thought she was not really enjoying herself very much, in the original script. I thought, “What’s not to enjoy?” She’s 2,000 years old, she can have anything, she can have anyone, she can do what she wants, so I wanted her to be totally in-the-moment. So, I talked to Amy about it and she just evolved that way. She’s a really happy vampire. She digs it.

(I have to admit, I can kind of get behind a woman—vampire or not—saying, “Fuck it; I own this town.”)
Most of the descriptions and plot summaries I’ve read of Vamps say things like: “Two female vampires in modern-day New York City are faced with daunting romantic possibilities” … (from imdb). True, but not quite. It’s ridiculous to reduce the film to the status of cheesy rom-com because, while both Stacy and Goody somewhat struggle with their hetero-romantic relationships, Vamps ultimately celebrates the friendship and love between the two lead women. (I will say that I have a feminist critique of the ending, but I can’t give it away YET; the movie only recently got picked up by Anchor Bay Films and will be released in theaters around Halloween.)

Stacy and Goody at the club
Overall, it’s pretty significant that I left the theater feeling that this movie—a vampire movie that follows most of the same vampire tropes as all vampire movies—explores something new. It’s also disappointing that I left with that feeling. Because when I thought about it later, I realized what felt so new to me was the depiction of a female friendship that seemed wonderfully authentic. Their dude problems were fairly secondary; their loyalty to each other trumped all other obstacles. Their friendship, in fact, resembled my real-life friendships with women: we don’t fight over men; we don’t sit around endlessly talking about men; we don’t get together and stuff our faces with entire cakes if a man doesn’t call.

That’s why this close relationship between Goody and Stacy is so important to see on The Big Screen in 2012.

In an interview conducted with the director Amy Heckerling by Women and Hollywood, Melissa Silverstein asks the question, “Do you have any comment on the fact that only 5% of movies are directed by women?” Heckerling’s response? “It’s a disgusting industry. I don’t know what else to say. Especially now. I can’t stomach most of the movies about women. I just saw a movie last night—I don’t want to say the name—but again with the fucking wedding, and the only time women say anything is about men.”

Word.

Female Sexuality in Polley’s Disappointing ‘Take This Waltz’

This small, Canadian romantic indie film starring Seth Rogen, Michelle Williams and Luke Kirby and directed by Sarah Polley seems like it should a moving and insightful film about relationships (much like Michelle Williams earlier movie, Blue Valentine, was). However, despite its female centered love triangle, the film offers little of interest.

If you were to read the synopsis of this film on IMDB it would tell you that “A happily married woman falls for the artist across the street,” a pretty uninformative summary since it’s apparent from the first scene that Margot is unhappy and struggling in her marriage.  The film follows Margot (Michelle Williams) as a slightly off-kilter aspiring writer married to chicken cookbook-writer Lou (Seth Rogen). Margot meets Daniel (Luke Kirby) while doing research for a pamphlet she’s writing and then again on the plane, only to discover that he lives on the same street as her. And so begins their romance, full of clichéd significant looks and fevered whispers, as they get lost in the forbidden.

Unfortunately, my two sentence synopsis was far more interesting than the movie itself, since much of the movie was long shots of Williams looking confused and depressed and Rogen acting oblivious.  The music was a particularly pretentious brand of lackluster indie and on the whole, the film just felt like it was trying too hard to be profound.

In reality, the best parts of the film came from Margot’s interaction with her sister in law, Geraldine or the brilliant Sarah Silverman. Silverman’s character is a recovering alcoholic who, at the end of the film, offers one of the two best lines in the film, “Life has a gap in it, it just does, but you can’t go crazy trying to fill it.” (She’s also a part of a legitimately funny scene involving the incredible world of water aerobics, I tried to find a clip of it online, but alas, I failed).

It’s after the water aerobics scene when we get the second best line of the film, delivered by a naked older woman in the women’s locker room (a great scene by Polley that doesn’t shy away from the normally unsightly issue of aging and women’s bodies—read more about it here); Margot is wistfully considering the merits of “something new” with Geraldine and the woman smiles wisely and replies “New things become old.”

There was a subplot of the film that had some potential as well had it been developed a bit more, in particular the issue of Margot’s sexuality. It’s obvious that Margot and Lou are not the most sexually active of couples since we see Margot attempt to seduce Lou several times, only to be rejected in favor of his cooking. While the lack of sex doesn’t seem to especially bother him, it could be argued that one of the reasons Margot continues to seek after Daniel is the promise of sexual discovery that he offers her. At one point in the film, there is a montage of Daniel and Margot having sex  (it sounds spicy, but really, don’t get excited) where it becomes apparent that Margot is finally able to explore that part of herself; the premise was interesting and one that I think many women can identify with, however I think it could have been fleshed out a little more.

I wanted this film to be good; the trailer was interesting, all of the actors are talented, and Polley is a promising new director (and you know how Bitch Flicks feels about new female directors). While there were good moments and unique ideas being toyed with, the film was, in reality, a lukewarm portrayal of a good topic; in short, I was bored most of the time. 

**Cross posted from Not Another Wave

—

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and it’s intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

‘Friends With Kids’: When Harry Co-Parented With Sally…

Still from Friends With Kids. [source]

I’ve been excited to see Friends With Kids since Megan Kearns first wrote about it for Bitch Flicks last March. What a cast! A female writer/director! A romcom with a genuinely new and interesting premise!

I finally got the chance to watch Friends With Kids on a long flight this week, and I tremendously enjoyed watching it, but still found myself wanting more.  As Megan expressed in her subsequent review of the film, Friends With Kids falls short of being a “feminist extravaganza” and ultimately isn’t too dissimilar from your standard romantic comedy.  I was constantly reminded of When Harry Met Sally… a film that Friends With Kids echoes not only thematically (testing the limits of men and women in platonic relationships) but also structurally (following its characters over the course of several years of their lives) and tonally (witty comedy striped with serious relationship pathos).

Writer/Director/Producer Jennifer Westfeldt also stars as Julie, whose life seems pretty great even though she’s been unlucky in love (one of the most refreshing things about this movie is how it portrays singledom as Not The End Of The World even for a woman who ultimately does want a committed relationship).  Her best friend is Jason (Adam Scott, as though that guy needed any more crush points), who favors brief dalliances with large-breasted women to actual relationships.  Julie and Jason function as an ersatz couple in their circle of paired-off friends (Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd as the stable and happy partners Leslie and Alex, and Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm as the more tumultuous pair Missy and Ben). After the rest of the gang starts having children, Jason and Jules surprise everyone by deciding to have a kid together.  They both want children and do not want to wait to find “their people” to do so, especially given the negative effects on romantic relationships they’ve seen having children can bring. As best friends, they have a lifelong love and commitment to each other making them suitable co-parents, without having to sacrifice passion or romance to the demands of child rearing.

My disappointment with Friends With Kids is that it doesn’t really explore the promise of that premise.  Jules and Jason’s child-rearing arrangement works seemingly effortlessly, and the film fails to really express why.  When the movie needs to inject some conflict, Friends With Kids retreats to the well-worn issue of whether a woman and a man can enjoy a truly platonic relationship.  Only when romantic drama is thrown into the mix does the pair struggle to divide their time with and responsibilities to their son, which seems to support the wisdom of Jason and Jules’ original arrangement, but in reality nullifies their alternative parenting scheme by suggesting that close male/female friendships are always a pretense ultimately giving way to romance.

Which means that in the end, Friends With Kids doesn’t have that much to say about alternative family structures, which is terribly disappointing.  Lip service is paid to gay couples raising children, and a few divorced straight couples with kids appear on the sidelines, but their struggles aren’t really explored.  So when our heroes end up as yet another “traditional” family by film’s end, it’s quite the let-down to my feminist hopes for the film.

That said, like with When Harry Met Sally…, my id was tickled to see these two characters find love with each other, even though I still long for a movie that explores a male-female friendship that is genuinely platonic.  Jason and Jules were so believable as best friends (I particularly got a kick out of their go-to conversation starter: making the other person choose between two hypothetical causes of death) and initially so believable as people not attracted to each other (their baby-making sex scene was so hilariously awkward I couldn’t help but laugh out loud even though I was watching it on a personal headset with earphones on a crowded airplane) that I was quite surprised when Friends With Kids took the old-fashioned turns it did.

Friends With Kids is still eminently watchable: smart, funny, and really phenomenally cast and acted (this is a movie where even Megan Fox is well-cast!).  Given that I like watching even bad romantic comedies, it feels unfair and greedy to emphasize my disappointment with what is a really, really good one, just for not being exactly the kind of movie I wanted it to be.

—

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer currently living in Cape Town, South Africa. She would choose death by shark over death by alligator.

‘Friends With Kids’: When Harry Co-Parented With Sally…

Still from Friends With Kids. [source]

I’ve been excited to see Friends With Kids since Megan Kearns first wrote about it for Bitch Flicks last March. What a cast! A female writer/director! A romcom with a genuinely new and interesting premise!

I finally got the chance to watch Friends With Kids on a long flight this week, and I tremendously enjoyed watching it, but still found myself wanting more.  As Megan expressed in her subsequent review of the film, Friends With Kids falls short of being a “feminist extravaganza” and ultimately isn’t too dissimilar from your standard romantic comedy.  I was constantly reminded of When Harry Met Sally… a film that Friends With Kids echoes not only thematically (testing the limits of men and women in platonic relationships) but also structurally (following its characters over the course of several years of their lives) and tonally (witty comedy striped with serious relationship pathos).

Writer/Director/Producer Jennifer Westfeldt also stars as Julie, whose life seems pretty great even though she’s been unlucky in love (one of the most refreshing things about this movie is how it portrays singledom as Not The End Of The World even for a woman who ultimately does want a committed relationship).  Her best friend is Jason (Adam Scott, as though that guy needed any more crush points), who favors brief dalliances with large-breasted women to actual relationships.  Julie and Jason function as an ersatz couple in their circle of paired-off friends (Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd as the stable and happy partners Leslie and Alex, and Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm as the more tumultuous pair Missy and Ben). After the rest of the gang starts having children, Jason and Jules surprise everyone by deciding to have a kid together.  They both want children and do not want to wait to find “their people” to do so, especially given the negative effects on romantic relationships they’ve seen having children can bring. As best friends, they have a lifelong love and commitment to each other making them suitable co-parents, without having to sacrifice passion or romance to the demands of child rearing.

My disappointment with Friends With Kids is that it doesn’t really explore the promise of that premise.  Jules and Jason’s child-rearing arrangement works seemingly effortlessly, and the film fails to really express why.  When the movie needs to inject some conflict, Friends With Kids retreats to the well-worn issue of whether a woman and a man can enjoy a truly platonic relationship.  Only when romantic drama is thrown into the mix does the pair struggle to divide their time with and responsibilities to their son, which seems to support the wisdom of Jason and Jules’ original arrangement, but in reality nullifies their alternative parenting scheme by suggesting that close male/female friendships are always a pretense ultimately giving way to romance.

Which means that in the end, Friends With Kids doesn’t have that much to say about alternative family structures, which is terribly disappointing.  Lip service is paid to gay couples raising children, and a few divorced straight couples with kids appear on the sidelines, but their struggles aren’t really explored.  So when our heroes end up as yet another “traditional” family by film’s end, it’s quite the let-down to my feminist hopes for the film.

That said, like with When Harry Met Sally…, my id was tickled to see these two characters find love with each other, even though I still long for a movie that explores a male-female friendship that is genuinely platonic.  Jason and Jules were so believable as best friends (I particularly got a kick out of their go-to conversation starter: making the other person choose between two hypothetical causes of death) and initially so believable as people not attracted to each other (their baby-making sex scene was so hilariously awkward I couldn’t help but laugh out loud even though I was watching it on a personal headset with earphones on a crowded airplane) that I was quite surprised when Friends With Kids took the old-fashioned turns it did.

Friends With Kids is still eminently watchable: smart, funny, and really phenomenally cast and acted (this is a movie where even Megan Fox is well-cast!).  Given that I like watching even bad romantic comedies, it feels unfair and greedy to emphasize my disappointment with what is a really, really good one, just for not being exactly the kind of movie I wanted it to be.

—

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer currently living in Cape Town, South Africa. She would choose death by shark over death by alligator.

LGBTQI Week: The Kids Are Terrible, The Sex Is Worse

 
(Pour me another … this is going to be a long night.)
 
This is a guest review by Nino Testa. When The Kids Are All Right came out in 2010, it was widely considered one of the best films of the year. (I happen to think the movie kind of sucked, but there is no accounting for taste.) The film was written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, who is best known for her 1998 film High Art, perhaps giving Kids queer cred in LGBT and straight circles. Kids tells the story of two queer mothers, Jules and Nic (played by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening respectively), whose annoying teenage children initiate contact with the donor whose sperm was used to impregnate each of the women. The mothers begrudgingly allow the contact, and in the middle of the movie Jules begins an affair with the sperm donor, played by the calm, cool and scruffy Mark Ruffalo. The emotional crux of the narrative revolves around Nic’s discovery of the affair, her subsequent emotional breakdown and the restoration of family tranquility as Nic decides to salvage her marriage despite Jules’ infidelity. Also: this is supposedly a comedy.

The film wasn’t just lauded as a cinematic achievement, it was also celebrated as a “positive” and “honest” representation of quotidian lesbian life in an age where gay marriage dominates any discussion of LGBT people. In addition to multiple Academy Award nominations—for acting, writing, and best picture, but not, interestingly enough, best director—the film has 93% positive reviews on rottentomatoes, so pretty much everyone who gets to decide that movies are good told us that this one was worthy of our time. Many of the reviews focus on the film’s supposedly groundbreaking “realistic” depiction of lesbians (I guess these people have never seen The Hunger.) Eric Snider from film.com refers to the characters as “realistically portrayed.” A.O. Scott from the New York Times writes: “The performances are all close to perfect, which is to say that the imperfections of each character are precisely measured and honestly presented.” Tom Long of the Detroit News called it “one of the year’s most honest and endearing films.” (“Honest” is the key word in all of these reviews. We might want to think about what it means to call a work of fiction “honest.” To say that it is “honest” means that it confirms, in some way, our worldview; it proves something we think to be true.) And then there is this gem from The Wall Street Journal, which really sums up the self-congratulatory, progressive reviews of this film: “The basic joke here, and it’s a rich one, is that the dynamics of gay marriages differ little from those of straight marriages.” This is, of course, the ultimate compliment that the mainstream press can make about queer people—that they are just like straight people. Judging from the film, what seems to be at stake is whether or not gay married couples can be as unhappy and passive aggressive as straight married couples, thus making them more deserving of legal protections.

In a Shewired.com article by Kathy Wolfe, the founder of Wolfe, the world’s largest exclusive distributor of lesbian and gay movies, Wolfe sings the film’s praises for its place in lesbian film history, calling it, without a shred of irony, “The Lesbian Brokeback Mountain”:

For a variety of reasons, The Kids Are All Right will be the most widely distributed lesbian-themed mainstream movie in history. Like that beloved yet sad gay cowboy movie, it has major stars in the gay roles: Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as lesbian moms. This ensures that the film will reach a wide audience. Most exciting of all — with its entertaining yet ultimately politically powerful message of putting a lesbian family front and center — the film will open hearts and minds very much like Brokeback did on its theatrical release.

Let’s read that statement again: “the politically powerful message of putting a lesbian family front and center.” What makes the film a positive political intervention, for Wolfe, is that lesbians exist as subjects, never mind the content of the film. Wolfe goes on to discuss “how far we’ve come” in the representation of lesbians in cinema and express her gratitude for the wide release of this film—suggesting that the sheer existence of LGBT-themed films by LGBT people (Cholodenko is queer-identified) is an unquestionably good thing for LGBT people, no matter what the films are about.

OK—so that’s the story about the film. Now, what of the film itself?

Let’s start with perhaps the most memorable scene in the movie, which finds Jules and Nic trying to make whoopee, but unable to get into the groove. They call in the big guns, as it were, and pop in some outdated gay male porn to get their juices flowing. Nic watches the porn while Jules—completely covered by bedding, because, you know, why would anyone want to see themselves having sex with Julianne Moore? So much for realism—takes care of business. Their annoying son catches them in the act and has a few questions about their choice of aphrodisiac. The entire sexual encounter has been a letdown from the get-go, but the interruption by the annoying son ensures that nobody will be getting off tonight. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, Jules comments on the “realism” of lesbian pornography, suggesting that it isn’t erotic because the women in the film aren’t lesbians, which is, I’m assuming, a kind of joke about the film we are watching, in which two A-list straight actors are playing gay. What is so interesting about that joke is that it complicates the film’s own politics of representation (as articulated by Wolfe): Jules’ comment debunks the myth that any representation of queerness is as satisfying (sexually or otherwise) as any other.

(Headache? Great. I hate having sex with women.)

Contrast this underwhelming sex scene with the two opposite-sex sex scenes in the film. At the risk of generalizing and making normative claims about what constitutes good sex, both of the opposite-sex sex scenes—one with the Hulk and Julianne Moore, the other with the Hulk and Yaya DaCosta—are, objectively speaking, super f’ing hot. I mean, they are legit sex scenes. People are naked. People are getting off. Bodies are touching. There are noises. And rhythms. When Mark Ruffalo has sex with women, it is sweaty, passionate, multi-positioned, ass-baring, the-hills-are-alive-with-the-sound-of-heterosexuality sex; when Jules and Nic have sex, it is sad, lifeless, awkward and unsatisfying for literally everyone involved. It is unsatisfying for the women, who have a grin-and-bear it look on their faces; it is unsatisfying for the audience if they came to see cunnilingus so realistic that it would make them regret going to see the film with their parents (luckily Black Swan also came out in 2010); and it is unsatisfying for the women’s children, for whom their moms’ sexuality is a perpetual source of embarrassment: their porn, their toys, their PDA all elicit disgust from their children. And not just the typical “Ew gross my parents have sex” response, but legitimate mortification that the movie suggests feeds the children’s desire to meet their sperm donor. Their parents, according to the narrative, just aren’t enough for them—and they certainly aren’t enough for each other.

(Lesbian heartthrob, Mark Ruffalo.)

The contrast is, of course, the point. Jules and Nic are in a marriage-funk—Lesbian Bed Death and all that—thus Jules’s decision to look for new sexual thrills. I don’t think there is anything wrong with showing an unsuccessful or disappointing sexual encounter between queer women. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the fact that in a movie about queer women, the women need gay male porn to get off, or even that they desire and engage in sex with men, something to which some LGBT blogs and writers took exception (“girl, do you” pretty much sums up my philosophy on consensual sexual activity in movies or real life). But it does give one pause that a movie ostensibly about lesbians cannot imagine the possibility of satisfying sex between women, even as opposite-sex sex is portrayed as reliably orgasmic (newsflash: it ain’t). This film, which is being called the “the Lesbian Brokeback,” is organized almost entirely around the rise and fall of Mark Ruffalo’s penis. The narrative is phallocentric in much the same way as pornography featuring a male-female-female threesome (or any hetero-aimed porno) is phallocentric: the man’s penis is depicted as the most satisfying sexual toy, the most direct line to women’s pleasure. Sure, women can do some stuff to each other…but it’s basically foreplay, if it amounts to anything at all.

Further proof of the film’s phallocentrism comes from a quick search on IMDB where the plot key words listed for this film are:

Sperm | Sperm Donor | Biological Father | College | Restaurant

There is no mention of lesbians, motherhood, marital problems, or women at all. The fact that Mark Ruffalo’s character owns a goddamn restaurant seems to have more relevance than the fact that this is a movie about queer women. Moreover, the title of the film, which is the name of a Who song, emphasizes the well-being of the children—(See, gay moms can produce annoying, maladjusted and ungrateful teens, just like you!)—and deemphasizes the women who are supposedly kept “front and center.” For a movie that is being called a crowning achievement of lesbian cinema, lesbianism always seems to be not quite the point.

(They are the worst.)

Now, a movie about lesbian moms and the grown children who resulted from their insemination could, one would imagine, take on many forms. What we should be asking is: why this form? Why this story, and why this story as the one that we elevate to an enshrined place in lesbian cinema (It made the top 30 on an IMDB list of the “Best Lesbian Movies”). When critics call the depiction of lesbians “honest” what worldview has the film confirmed for them? It seems to me to confirm the lesson espoused by another “classic lesbian-themed” film, Chasing Amy—that all lesbians really want, all they really need, is sex with men. And none of this would bother me nearly as much if people didn’t talk about movies like this as “changing hearts and minds” and battling homophobia. It’s Glee-syndrome. If everyone involved in the movie—including the critics who reviewed it and the audiences who raved about it—weren’t so self-congratulatory, you might just be able to experience this as the mediocre film it is and relish in Annette Bening’s mastery of awkward tipsy dinner conversation.

———-
Nino Testa is a doctoral candidate in English at Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. He also works at the Tufts Women’s Center and LGBT Center.