Heather Brown – Page 2

Unsentimental Love and ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’

I’ve long been a little troubled by the women characters in Martin Scorsese’s films. I say this as compliment overall, because though the female protagonists are few, they’re far from shallow and weak. From Lorraine Bracco’s Karen in Goodfellas to Vera Farmiga’s Madolyn in The Departed, Scorsese has shown that he can depict women who are multi-faceted and complex. It’s just that their stories are always told in relation to the men their lives. Theirs is always a kind of power struggle with their husbands or boyfriends, and in the end, that power is rarely on par with men’s. I had heard that Scorsese’s 1974 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was different, but since it’s one that so rarely talked about, it took awhile for me to finally check it out. And I’m so glad I did.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore poster — *Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore* poster

This is a guest post by Heather Brown.

I’ve long been a little troubled by the women characters in Martin Scorsese’s films. I say this as compliment overall, because though the female protagonists are few, they’re far from shallow and weak. From Lorraine Bracco’s Karen in Goodfellas to Vera Farmiga’s Madolyn in The Departed, Scorsese has shown that he can depict women who are multi-faceted and complex. It’s just that their stories are always told in relation to the men their lives. Theirs is always a kind of power struggle with their husbands or boyfriends, and in the end, that power is rarely on par with men’s. I had heard that Scorsese’s 1974 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was different, but since it’s one that so rarely talked about, it took awhile for me to finally check it out. And I’m so glad I did.

Ellen Burstyn’s Alice is a 30-something mother in Socorro, New Mexico, where she lives with her husband Donald (Billy Green Bush) and son Tommy (Alfred Lutter). Donald is an overbearing bastard of a man who does little more than bark at Alice and Tommy, who each take care to stay out of his way. Nothing Alice does is ever good enough for Donald. Thelma and Louise fans won’t be able to help but compare him to Darryl, the lout of a spouse who bullies Thelma. Unfortunately, there’s no Louise in this film to whisk Alice away in a 1966 Ford Thunderbird Convertible. Alice’s release from Donald is spurred by a freak car accident that kills him and leaves her and Tommy to fend for themselves. Just like the viewer up to this point, Alice has wished for Donald to disappear, but her guilt is raw, and Tommy senses her ambivalence. Rather than remain in a town she hates in a house she can no longer afford, Alice packs up the station wagon and heads to Monterey, California to reclaim her first love: singing. What ensues is an unlikely road movie with a mother and son at the center, and men on the periphery.

Alice’s first stop is Phoenix, which is about as far as her money will take her. When she and Tommy settle in to a motel, Alice must go shopping for clothes that will make her look younger, as she tells her Tommy. It was at that moment in watching the film that I saw the story come into focus: what happens when a parent doesn’t hide the difficulty of making ends meet from her kid, but instead matter-of-factly involves him in the day-to-day slog of getting by, promising that good things are to come despite the current circumstances? Rather than keep Tommy in the dark about how broke she is and how no one will hire her for a living wage, Alice unsentimentally–yet lovingly–informs Tommy of her plans as she makes them.

Well, almost. Given that Tommy is still young (10 or 11), Alice does prefer to keep intimate details to herself, particularly when it comes to the first man she meets since her husband’s death, Ben (played by Harvey Keitel), who’s a regular customer at the bar where she lands a singing gig in Phoenix. Tommy is no fool, though, and when he asks one too many personal questions Alice tells him she’s not going to talk to him about her sex life. Sure, she doesn’t take this moment to have the birds and bees discussion, but when was the last time you heard a parent acknowledge the existence of a sex life to their kid? Its instances like that that make this film a fascinating study of a parent-child relationship in the context of shifting gender dynamics in a changing society.

Alice_Doesnt_Live_Here_Anymore_28780_Medium — The film is a fascinating study of a parent-child relationship.

A glance at the movie poster for Alice tells you that she’s going to eventually make her way into the arms of a rugged and mostly affable Kris Kristofferson, but she must deal with Ben first. While Alice initially rebuffs his advances, he eventually wears her down and wins her over. Yay, we think! Someone who will treat Alice with the tenderness she deserves. It doesn’t take long for Ben to reveal himself as a philanderer and psychopath, and this realization prompts Alice and Tommy to once again pack up the wagon for the next town, Tucson. Alice decides to make a pragmatic move and start working a job that’s close to their motel and will ensure free food: waiting tables. At this point in the plot the story expands to include the women at the restaurant—the brassy Flo (Dianne Ladd) and timid Vera (Valerie Curtain)—and Tommy’s new friend Audrey, played by a very young and very boyish Jodie Foster (creepy alert: two years later she and Harvey Keitel would be joined as the prostitute/pimp dyad in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, which makes you feel gross when you watch them in Alice). Alice also meets David (Kris Kristofferson), and like her, we’re not altogether sure that his fixation with Tommy is genuine or just a sneaky way to pick up his mom. We see Alice try to work through the challenges of managing her expectations of love and work, and there’s real narrative power in how she fully inhabits all her choices, be they selfish, selfless, stupid, or sane. Though billed as a romance, the real love story has two couples at its core: Alice and Tommy, and Alice and herself.

Heather Brown lives in Chicago, Ill., and works as a freelance instructional designer and online writing instructor. She lives for feminism, movies, live music, road trips, and cheese.

‘Enough Said’: The Ex-Wife, the Masseuse, and Her Lover

James Gandolfini as Albert and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Eva

This is a guest post by Heather Brown.

The only other Nicole Holofcener film I had seen before Enough Said (2013) was Walking and Talking (1996), a delightful indie movie about Gen X-ers trying to navigate love and friendship in NYC. Though there are many fans of the movies she made in between these two—and many compelling reviews—I wasn’t sure I needed to hurry up and watch them. I figured that I, like many viewers, pretty well know that rich, white people have problems just like the rest of us. Granted, most of us generally slog through life without quandaries like having to worry about why the maid insists on putting the hairbrush in the silverware drawer. But now that I’ve seen Holofcener’s latest you can bet that I’ll be moving other films like Please Give (2010) and Lovely and Amazing (2001) up on my Netflix queue.

Enough Said is set against the backdrop of people in L.A. with economic and social privilege that goes unremarked upon, but Holofcener does not dwell on these factors and instead shines a light on the flaws and vulnerabilities of middle-aged single parents in a way that is sympathetic and tender. It doesn’t hurt that one of these characters, Albert, is played by the late James Gandolfini, whose slobby charm is made even more winsome by fact that this was one of his final film performances. Albert is about as sweet and low-key as Tony Soprano was fierce and explosive, and it’s easy to see how the earthy masseuse Eva (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) finds him endearing.

Catherine Keener as Marianne and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Eva in Enough Said — Catherine Keener as Marianne and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Eva in *Enough Said*

As the story goes, Albert and Eva are introduced at a party, and later he asks her out to dinner. Unbeknownst to them both, the party that brought them together also put Eva in conversation with Albert’s ex-wife, Marianne, played by Catherine Keener. Marianne is a poet, which Eva finds intriguing. And as it happens, Marianne is also in need of a good masseuse. You know what happens next. Would that Albert and Marianne’s separation was an amicable one, perhaps there would be nothing to discuss about her ex as she lay prone on the massage table as Eva works her magic. Not so, of course. Once Eva realizes that the man she finds herself growing more and more attracted to is the very man Marianne can’t cease to skewer during each massage, trouble starts brewing.

What follows is Eva eagerly drinking in Marianne’s ire about Albert, as she reads Eva a list of his faults. Unsurprisingly, many of these shortcomings involve his eating, hygiene, dress, and home décor tendencies. (As Marianne tells her, “My ex-husband and I had zero in common, and I was completely repulsed by him sexually.”) Eva can’t seem to trust her own feelings and judgment and gets deeper into a one-sided friendship with Marianne, whose narcissism is almost too obvious for Eva to notice.

All that said, the plot really turns on Eva’s relationship with her daughter Ellen (Tracey Fairaway), and her impending departure to college on the opposite coast. Eva is having a difficult time losing her daughter to this inevitable next step (and indeed, so is Albert, whose daughter Tess, played by Eve Hawson, is also on her way out of the nest). Because we follow Eva’s story the closest, we, too, are put through the emotional ringer of seeing Eva express her desire to pull Ellen tighter by proxy of Ellen’s friend Chloe (Tavi Gevinson), who feels closer to Eva than she does her own mother. Ellen resents her mother’s misplaced neediness, and their conflict is handled with nuance and grace. And it’s not as if Eva’s married friends Will and Sarah (played by Ben Falcone and Toni Colette) have it figured out; Sarah, for instance, is obsessed with rearranging the furniture, which Will finds perplexing. Their exchanges are especially amusing, as is much of the film overall.

Still from Enough Said — Still from *Enough Said*

What I found most compelling about this film is Eva’s obsession with Albert’s physicality, but not for the reasons you might expect. Yes, Albert is clearly overweight and could stand to show up to a second date with a button-down instead of a T-shirt, but it’s the way that Eva tallies up his faults that shows her to be the one who could stand to do some work on herself. Audiences are quite used to seeing relationships in romantic comedies wherein men and women’s attractiveness is asymmetrical (see: almost every Judd Apatow film). If you’re like me, you find this troubling and tired and yet another example of Hollywood’s gendered double standard. But Enough Said calls into question Eva’s superficiality and preoccupation with Albert’s physical flaws (from his caloric intake to his loud, labored nose breathing) rather than condone her attitude as a reasonable response. Holofcener offers a subtle yet powerful critique of women’s tendencies to promote amongst themselves an ethos of moral superiority as expressed in physical health and well-being. After all, the central irony of Eva is that while her livelihood is to provide a healthful touch, she will not allow herself to be the recipient of the same tenderness. Practicing massage requires acceptance and kindness toward the body—something that does not come easy to her when it comes to letting herself connect with Albert.

Without spoiling the ending, let’s just say Enough Said leaves us with a sweetly unresolved last scene. It’s rare that a romantic-comedy hints that in fact, yes, it is possible for people to come together without the expectation that one or both people need to change in order to win the other’s affection. Holofcener’s film makes a refreshing case for suspending judgment for the sake of trusting one’s gut feeling—and the importance of following your own way.

Heather Brown lives in Chicago, Ill., and works as a freelance instructional designer and online writing instructor. She lives for feminism, movies, live music, road trips, and cheese.

‘Afternoon Delight’: Don’t Hang Your Shame on Me

Let’s face it: many of us feminists will pay lip service to sex workers’ rights while at the same time hold within us a mess of conflicting feelings around the subject. In fact, many of us are probably a bit more repressed about sex than we’d care to admit. The idea that there are women who voluntarily seek out such work has long been a feminist conundrum. But perhaps the bigger problem is the paternalistic impulse of feminists trying to rescue sex workers. Jill Soloway, the writer and director of Afternoon Delight knows this all too well. As she says in an interview about the film, “It’s not just about rescue. If you’re into rescue go rescue the garment workers. It’s about amping up your own relationship to your own shame around sex.”

Afternoon Delight movie poster — *Afternoon Delight* movie poster

This is a guest post by Heather Brown. [contains spoilers]

Let’s face it: many of us feminists will pay lip service to sex workers’ rights while at the same time hold within us a mess of conflicting feelings around the subject. In fact, many of us are probably a bit more repressed about sex than we’d care to admit. The idea that there are women who voluntarily seek out such work has long been a feminist conundrum. But perhaps the bigger problem is the paternalistic impulse of feminists trying to rescue sex workers. Jill Soloway, the writer and director of Afternoon Delight, knows this all too well. As she says in an interview about the film, “It’s not just about rescue. If you’re into rescue go rescue the garment workers. It’s about amping up your own relationship to your own shame around sex.”

Here’s the story: a bored woman named Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) lives in a bright, airy Silver Lake, L.A. home with her app-designing husband and toddler. Rachel doesn’t work but busies herself with event planning and local charities linked to her local Jewish Community Center. We see her in therapy sessions, spinning her wheels to justify and normalize her ennui (“Six months, no sex…I feel like there are a lot of couples who go through dry spells.” Her therapist, played by a wry Jane Lynch, replies, “Not healthy couples”). Her best friend, Stephanie (Jessica St. Clair), suggests that Rachel go to a strip club for a change of pace. She says of she and her husband: “We go there, get all hot, and then we bang each other when we get home.” Then, a night out with friends at a strip club finds her face-to-face with a young woman named McKenna (Juno Temple), who delivers Rachel a lap-dance at the behest of her husband. She’s sufficiently discomfited, but her curiosity is awakened.

McKenna (Juno Temple) and Rachel (Kathryn Hahn)

It’s Rachel’s curiosity that leads her back to the neighborhood of the strip club in the sober light of day, where she happens to see McKenna in the midst of one of those breakups where everything you own ends up in the trunk of a car and strewn on the sidewalk. Rachel invites McKenna to stay with her for a few days, and then offers her the long-term gig of being her live-in nanny. Soon, Rachel learns that McKenna is more than a stripper when McKenna reveals matter-of-factly, “I’m a full service sex worker.” This knowledge changes Rachel’s posture toward McKenna, and she tells her, “If you want out of that life, I can help you.” So it begins: Rachel attempts to take McKenna under her wing, but as the film progresses, we start to wonder exactly who most needs being saved—and all signs point to Rachel.

While the film crescendos with a big “uh-oh” scene, the most compelling moments are those in which women are sharing experiences of raw, ugly honesty. These are instances when shame is pulled back, and we see the guts and blood of their perfectly curated lives. Two scenes are especially haunting (you won’t see these in the trailer).

In the first, Rachel accompanies McKenna on a call to one of her clients. This is a man who enjoys having another woman watch him while he is having sex with McKenna, and Rachel tells her she wants to do it. Rather than giving us just a taste of what happens in a before-and-after editing sequence, Soloway brings us into the room to watch Rachel watch McKenna on the job, as it were. The camera holds the gaze of the client, an overweight middle-aged man with ample body hair, who remains fixed on Rachel as he climaxes with McKenna sitting on top of him.

To me, what’s most troubling is the way that Rachel regards McKenna afterward. She becomes withholding, and in a symbolic rejection, prevents McKenna from babysitting a large group of her friends’ kids so they can have a ladies’ wine night. Rachel blames McKenna for what she has now learned about herself—which is a dehumanizing act. Yet, Kathryn Hahn imbues such a degree of sympathy to the performance that we can almost forgive her. This brings me to the second scene.

Ladies’ wine night: as the night begins, women are talking, laughing, over-sharing in ways that are funny and blunt. Soon, the teeth become wine-stained and—yep—out pours Rachel’s shame. When Stephanie reveals that she’s pregnant (no wine for her), Rachel’s first response is that this now means she’s going to be the only one among them with just one child. Later, as she’s drunker and drunker, Rachel weeps and self-flagellates for never printing out any of the photos of her child (she only has them on the “cloud”).

What I find so amazing about these two scenes (and don’t worry, there’s plenty I didn’t spoil) is that they show how Rachel is so desperate to reveal herself, to be intimately known. But when confronted with someone like McKenna—who is in the business of doing this and lot more—she can’t handle it.

I was reminded of another film after I saw this one: Elles (2011), in which Juliette Binoche plays a journalist writing a profile of French student prostitutes. She becomes involved in their world to an extent that it complicates her relationship to her bourgeois married, family life. There seems to be a subgenre of films featuring women who reckon with—or perhaps imagine—the role of the sex worker. While this can make for intriguing and rich storytelling, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we made sex workers the subject, rather than the object.

Heather Brown lives in Chicago, Ill., and works as a freelance instructional designer and online writing instructor. She lives for feminism, movies, live music, road trips, and cheese.