Tag: independent film

Queer Post-Apocalyptic Western ‘The Lotus Gun’ Director Interview

‘The Lotus Gun’ is a critically acclaimed short, independent student film co-written and directed by Amanda Milius. The film is a beautifully rendered post-apocalyptic story with a Western aesthetic that features a queer relationship between its two female leads.

TheLotusGun-3 LaurenAvery+DashaNekrasova

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

The Lotus Gun is a critically acclaimed short, independent student film co-written and directed by Amanda Milius. The film is a beautifully rendered post-apocalyptic story with a Western aesthetic that features a queer relationship between its two female leads. Set in a future of wide open spaces, The Lotus Gun is a survivor story about Nora (Lauren Avery), its laconic, independent lead, who escaped from a drug cult and a life of sex slavery.

The cinematography of this film is breathtaking, conveying more about a world long gone to seed than any exposition or carefully placed ruins possibly could. The Lotus Gun critiques collectivism, favoring instead an individualistic approach popular in the Western genre. Here the communal, sharing societies are actually patriarchal, and they commodify women, engaging in sex trafficking and sexual slavery. It is then not surprising that naive Daphine (Dasha Nekrasova), Nora’s partner, is fascinated by a young man who wanders onto their property, while Nora plans to kill him, knowing the threat he poses.

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Enter The Lotus Gun.

Guns are often a key feature of the the Western genre, and the relationship between the old West protagonist and his (usually) gun is often a love story. Here, guns are so scarce that few have ever seen them, so the gun itself is a phallic relic. Interestingly, Nora, a woman, is presumably the only person left who has one.

The Lotus Gun is an engaging film with arresting imagery and a plot that took me to surprising places. I look forward to seeing newcomer Amanda Milius’ next projects. My only critique is that the two female leads, being thin, white, blonde women, are not as unique as the story itself. I did, however, appreciate how dirty they were, their skin covered in blemishes and bruises, their clothes ripped and dusty.

TheLotusGun-5 Lauren Avery

I had the privilege of interviewing talented writer and director Amanda Milius.

Bitch Flicks: What made you choose to make this film?

Amanda Milius: I have always been drawn to the things people do when there’s no law around, so in pre- or post- current versions of society or civilization. I had both smaller and larger versions of this particular story I’d had for a while, and at school we got to do these sort of smaller 5-minute films throughout the program. So I explored different aspects of the kinds of people and stories I like, and I just wanted an opportunity to get one fully realized thought out. It happens to be 25 minutes long, which I certainly heard no end about from everyone I know… But I’m glad it is what it is because it wasn’t meant to be 12 minutes long.

I like the idea of these two very different kinds of women and how differently they react to the world and how their basic personality makeups create a conflict just out of that. Nora sees the world as an inherently bad place and Daph feels the opposite. I also just wanted to express my particular style and aesthetic and really have a story where that could be featured… I definitely didn’t want to do anything indoors; I really like people having to survive in nature. I had a very particular visual style I wanted and I used to be a photographer for fashion and music magazines so I’ve had time to sort out the style I like and I wanted a moment to showcase that.

Thankfully, I found a really great team of people who also got it and really expanded on it. Sean Bagley, the director of photography (DP), is just as much a part of it, same with the costume designer Adam Alonso, and the production designers Marcelo Dolce and Katie Pyne — everyone really got it and so it comes together in a very good way, thankfully.

BF: Why do you feel this is an important story to tell?

AM: Because even though society does exist and keeps us safe, there are things we take for granted as reality when they are only just imposed on us from society. So how real are they? How is equality between people maintained? How do the weak stand up to the strong or groups of people when they are outnumbered? I maybe have more of Nora’s point of view of the world: I don’t think people will act the way they do now when civilization is gone, and so then how will people decide what’s right and wrong? What kind of women will survive and how? How will men and women interact? I think it’s important now. I think it’s a good thing to figure out what your values are as an independent person with an independent morality.

At the end of the day, it’s a movie about loyalty and relationships. In two-person relationships, there’s always a power dynamic, which isn’t bad, but it exists. I wanted to deal with ideas about “possessiveness” and ownership and freedom within relationships. Dash splits because she maybe thinks she will find freedom elsewhere. And in this particular world and situation, she finds out she was free before. Nora already knows this, so the way she deals with the betrayal is interesting… how she really does kind of treat Daph as a pet, like she doesn’t know any better. But she saves her and that’s what matters, she still makes sure she has a life. The idea was not that how all these people act is necessarily what I or we would think is correct or right, but in this world it’s what happens.

TheLotusGun_1 LaurenAvery+DashaNekrasova

BF: Why did you choose to make your film a Western?

AM: Technically it’s not a western because it doesn’t take place in the Old West but it is a variation. I chose to place it in a broken down world after civilization for the reasons I mentioned above but I also really like Westerns and the things about people you can explore in those kinds of stories: what people get up to when there’s no real law around, when it’s just people deciding for themselves how to live and what’s right and wrong. I also really like how Nora is basically Clint Eastwood combined with my friend Jennifer Herrema (singer from 90s indie band Royal Trux); there’s no better character than that for me! It’s cool having her be strong in a sort of reserved, silent, resolved, and complicated way. A lot of the “strong” women in films these days, which seems to be the new thing, they are so annoying. I’m not saying people shouldn’t try to have more of those characters, but I haven’t seen one I really liked since Alien or Terminator, which is funny because no one was trying so hard then to make great female characters. That’s probably why there’s not a lot of them, but those two are such great examples and no one notices. Now they have the girls always doing kung fu or something; it’s so awful.

BF: Could you talk about your choice to make the women a couple in the film?

AM: I liked the idea of this sort of sensual relationship in a Blue Lagoon kind of way between the women in their undisturbed environment and how that gets disrupted and altered when the new element shows up.

Basically, they are a couple but that could be seen as being by default, as they are the only two people out there for years together… the idea was that it was a vague kind of non-defined thing where they were best friends and family and probably lovers in this kind of survivalist, futuristic way. When Mike shows up, it can be questioned whether or not Daph is necessarily gay exactly or if she wavers between attraction to the competing personalities in front of her at that moment. He is new, so is it the newness and strangeness that she’s attracted to, or the fact that he’s a guy? I wanted the girls’ relationship to be almost transcendent of a distinct type of relationship; they are every relationship to each other in a way.

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BF: Could you tell us about the significance of the gun (the Lotus Gun) in your film and why you chose it?

AM: The gun itself is kind of like an Excalibur thing, since there’s none around… the idea is both guns and women are rare and therefore of value in this world. But the way they are ‘”valued” is as objects, commodities, things you need to stay alive. The gun is special because the backstory (which you’ll see if I ever get to make the feature or serialized version of this!) is that Dennis, the commune / cult leader, collects artifacts from the past civilization, and this gun is a particular rarity. He had it for some time, and during that time, he had his guys engrave over the original engraving to represent his world. Shotguns like that usually have ducks or dogs or other kinds of hunting imagery on them, really beautiful actually. A lot of those guns have some really amazing art on them. Anyway, so he has this guy crudely engrave his snake image and the Datura flowers they use in their drug ceremonies and weed leaves. Which alone is a cool idea, a shotgun engraved with hippie iconography is so cool. So that’s how it becomes the “Lotus Gun” and it has a sort of mythology pop up around it in this world when it supposedly disappears. When Nora digs it up, it’s a whole new world for her. She has something no one else has, and it’s almost like it was meant for her. No one else ever shot it that we know of, so it’s like Excalibur in that the gun was always waiting for her because she’s the rightful owner of it. Now there is a different balance of power that didn’t exist before.

TheLotusGun-4 Lauren Avery

BF: Could you share a bit about your experiences as a female film writer and director?

AM: I don’t really think about it much, so I can just say that being a writer and a director is great because as of yet, no one has ever taken one of my stories and ruined them, as I’m told will happen when someone finally buys a script from me! I know what you mean though. So far, I guess I’ve been very lucky to work with some very cool people because I hear there are difficult situations for women in this field, but I’ve really loved working with everyone I’ve worked with. I know there are definitely people out there who think maybe someone doesn’t know what they are talking about because they’re female or something, but I just wouldn’t be around that. As a director, for sure I wouldn’t tolerate it, so I just don’t think it would ever get to that. Because that kind of person wouldn’t even be around me anyway. Plus, I made this movie in school, so I had the ability to work with my best friends. Maybe I’ll have more to say on it as I progress through the profession.

I think women in this industry should remember that there are lots of different kinds of women and to not hold us to some idea about ourselves, because it will limit us. We ourselves need to be supportive of other women in a real way, which means supporting all different kinds of films and people. Not box ourselves into one way of thinking. I think women’s film festivals are a great idea because they show that women make very different kinds of films and can excel across all genres. At first, I wasn’t sure about the idea of separating films out based on the gender of the director, but actually I think they make an interesting statement that’s important.

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

Vintage Viewing: Maya Deren, Experimental Eccentric

A student of journalism and political science at Syracuse University, Deren was politically engaged. Her master’s, however, in English and symbolist poetry, point to her contrasting impulses towards abstraction and the poetic. Touring and performing across the USA with the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, Deren met the Czechoslovakian filmmaker Alexander Hammid in Los Angeles, and produced her first and best-known experimental film in collaboration with him: ‘Meshes of the Afternoon.’

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

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Maya Deren: spacetime surrealist

Born Eleanora Derenkowsky in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1917, the Derenkowsky family fled antisemitism to arrive in New York in 1922 and take the name Deren. Maya Deren became a pioneer in the development of experimental cinema in the USA. Like Germaine Dulac, she was film theorist as much as director. As a dancer and choreographer as well as poet, writer and photographer, however, Deren placed her own body at the centre of her most famous works, becoming a performance artist in a way that Dulac did not. Deren experimented with superimposition effects, and the unifying of diverse spaces through the movement of her body to create enmeshing, hallucinogenic dreamscapes recalling Alice’s trip down the rabbit-hole. Her film symphonies are composed using rhythm and the repetitions of ritual to probe questions of identity and the forces entrapping her heroines. Deren was an auteur in the fullest sense: director, writer, cinematographer, editor and performer.

A student of journalism and political science at Syracuse University, Deren was politically engaged. Her master’s, however, in English and symbolist poetry, point to her contrasting impulses towards abstraction and the poetic. Touring and performing across the USA with the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, Deren met the Czechoslovakian filmmaker Alexander Hammid in Los Angeles, and produced her first and best-known experimental film in collaboration with him: Meshes of the Afternoon. Marrying Hammid and moving back to New York, Deren took the name Maya, the Buddhist term for the illusionary aspect of existence and, in Greek mythology, a messenger of the Gods. The film critic Thomas Schatz has pointed to Meshes as the first example of “the poetic psychodrama” a “scandalous and radically artistic” form of art film that “emphasized a dreamlike quality, tackled questions of sexual identity, featured taboo or shocking images, and used editing to liberate spatio-temporal logic from the conventions of Hollywood realism.” In this respect, poetic psychodrama was an important source for the art of music video, which illustrates the circular rhythms and alternative moods of the music, rather than limiting itself to the logic of linear storytelling. Though her work was silent, almost musical rhythms of repetitions and variations were central to all Deren’s films.

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As an independent distributor, Deren exhibited her films and gave lectures on them across the USA, Cuba, and Canada, helping to nurture a D.I.Y aesthetic of countercultural arthouse film, directly inspiring Amos Vogel’s formation of Cinema 16, a film society promoting experimental films in New York. In 1947, Deren won the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix Internationale, before receiving a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship to research Haitian voodoo ritual, shooting over 18,000 feet of documentary footage and publishing the study Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Deren became a participant in the ritual and was initiated as a priestess, while remaining simultaneously an academic observer. Tensions between observer and participant were a running theme of her work. In the late 1950s, Deren herself formed the Creative Film Foundation to reward independent filmmakers. Deren died in 1961, aged just 44. She remains a key influence on New American Cinema, homaged by creators such as David Lynch.

Meshes of the Afternoon – 1943

“Everything that happens in the dream has its basis in a suggestion in the first sequence – the knife, the key, the repetition of the stairs, the figure disappearing around a curve in the road.” – Maya Deren

A luxurious Hollywood villa becomes an entrapping nightmare in Meshes of the Afternoon, Deren’s most influential film, where cycles of images become the meshes that bind the heroine. Opening with the delicately feminine image of a bare arm placing a flower carefully onto the ground and abandoning it, the heroine’s shadow, apparently detached, returns to grasp the flower before her body reenters the frame. Fragments and glimpsed body parts resist the tendency of cinema to pan over and survey women, defining Deren’s heroine rather by her actions and movements as the propulsive agent of the film, which shares her gaze as it roams over the house. A lost key falls downstairs in dreamlike slowmotion. A knife stabbing bread unites the feminine domesticity of cookery with a hint of violence. What is the meaning of the tall black figure whose face is a mirror as (s)he steals the heroine’s flower? Death? A male partner onto whom she projects herself? Stairs twist and distort around the angles of her writhing body, like an M. C. Escher optical illusion, until the heroine is looking down on the sleeping self that had started by imagining her. Key objects – knife, record player, key, flower – jump into new positions regularly, further destabilizing the reality of the film’s location and the logic of its timeframe. In an iconic image, the second “dream” version of Maya stands framed at the window, wistfully observing yet another version of herself performing the same looped actions she has just completed. Key becomes knife becomes key: death the only release? Seascape becomes patio becomes carpet in the space of a few steps, making a mockery of Hollywood realism in favor of dream logic. The knife-wielding version of herself becomes a male partner who wakes the dreamer, hangs up the phone and restores spacio-temporal logic. But another leap, from flower to knife, shatters the mirror (or illusory maya?) of reality to reveal a seascape beyond, and the man returns to find his floor covered in mirrored shards and his apparently dead lover draped in seaweed. Where was the “reality” within these meshes?

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSY0TA-ttMA”]

At Land – 1944

“The whole is so related to every part that whether one reads horizontally, vertically, diagonally or even in reverse, the logic of the whole is not disrupted, but remains intact.” – Maya Deren

Like an informal sequel to Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land opens with the heroine lying washed up on a wild seascape whose waves flow backwards upon the opening of her eyes. Driftwood appears beside her and becomes a magically distorting staircase similar to the central staircase of Meshes of the Afternoon. In this case, climbing the driftwood leads Maya to a long dining table full of leering, gossiping, and judging society faces. Crawling down a table and jungle simultaneously, Deren links these wildly different spaces through the movement of her own body. The dinner party ignores her, making her existence seem unreal in their mundane space, while the leaves bend before her reality. Finding a chess board at the end of her crawl, Deren moves the pieces telekinetically, using the movements of her eyeballs alone, a taken piece falling through a hole in the rocky seashore and being swept away by the tide as Deren chases it, in another circular return to the original space. A man joins her on her solitary walk down the countryside – the first living person to interact with her. As the camera switches back and forth between the figures, a different man is substituted for the first, slyly playing an identical role. A third substitution, and the figure is Alexander Hamid, familiar as the male figure in Meshes of the Afternoon. Following him into a wooden hut, she crawls underneath and rises in an empty space of covered furniture, which tents and reveals yet another man. Dropping a cat, Deren walks away through repetitive sequences of door frames that lead her back to the rocky coast (or a cliff of scaffolding?). On the shoreline, two women play chess while chatting – is it a comment on the competitive nature of society? Is Deren herself a lost piece, swept away on the waves and unable to join in? She bends back the heads of both women and strokes their hair while they smile ecstatically, all united on one side in a sensual break from the competitive edge of game logic. Abruptly Maya is doubled – one thief stealing a chess piece and running away with it, another still joined to the female players in smiling sisterhood, watching the runaway with puzzlement. Alternate selves from the stages of her journey turn to frowningly watch the rebel runaway. Her footsteps leave tracks in the sand as she vanishes into the distance, destination unknown.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQw9UX0gN7E”]

Ritual in Transfigured Time – 1946

“And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images?” –Maya Deren

With collaborators Rita Christiani, Frank Westbrook, and Hella Heyman, Ritual in Transfigured Time expands on the experiments in time and space of Deren’s earlier films. Rita Christiani plays a double for Deren as Maya performs ritual repetitions or is frozen in time. Christiani’s outstretched hand moves in slow trance to encounter Deren and complete her wool-gathering. Slow motion is intercut with speeded time to give a surreal edge to the domestic chore, under the stern gaze of a third, older woman – the monitoring mother figure? A party freezes as Christiani enters the doorway with her ball of yarn, and now she is a nun bearing lillies – do they speak to her dislocation from everyday frolics? A dancing partner ends her nun costume and sweeps her into the repetitive rhythms of the house party, where entranced guests bounce from partner to partner. She strikes a pose with a man’s lips intimately brushing her cheek, and instantly they are transported to a garden, where three women play like Botticelli’s three Graces. Christiani and Westbrook dance in the garden, showing Deren’s dance background very clearly in their sinuous movements. As Christiani leaves the dance, she becomes Deren again, watching in perplexity like a dreamer awoken. The three Graces are spun by Westbrook, each falling into their own dynamic freeze frame. Dancing figures become statues on pedestals as Christiani re-enters the garden. Westbrook’s jerky motions, achieved by intercutting with freeze frames, bring him to life and frighten Christiani, driving her away, pursued by Westbrook now in leaping slow motion. Finally, she is Deren again, fleeing through waist-high water and then falling in eerie negative exposure to reveal herself as Christiani once more. The film achieves a sense of dream logic while celebrating the human form in its full variety of poses and rhythms.

 [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IG5K65gkTU”]

Maya Deren’s experiments with rhythm and form through editing draw on a long Slavic tradition. In particular, they draw on the groundbreaking film theory of Sergei Eisenstein and Kinoglaz. Kinoglaz was the partnership of Dziga Vertov and Elizaveta Svilova. Though Vertov is usually credited with its achievements, Svilova was a formidable documentary film director in her own right. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Elizaveta Svilova, Mastering Montage. Stay tuned!

 

Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and boring people with lists of forgotten female artists.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

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

 

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Angry misogynist murders women at showing of film by feminist comedian; police worry “we may not find a motive.” and Did right-wing attacks on “Trainwreck” inspire John Russell Houser’s shooting rampage? by David Futrelle at We Hunted the Mammoth

Proof That Jane Austen and Amy Schumer Would Have Been Friends by Audrey Bilger at Ms. blog

Review: Does Trainwreck Live Up to Its Own Feminist Standards? by Carolyn Cox at The Mary Sue

10 Female Directors of Color You Should Know Now at BET

A Short Film Series Gives Female Athletes the Star Treatment They Deserve by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

5 Ways Marvel Movies Keep Screwing Up Female Superheroes by Kathy Benjamin at Cracked

Hollywood, It’s Time to Retire the ‘Loveable Misogynist’ Movie Hero by Lindsay Ellis at IFC

Jurassic Park: High Heels Edition gives everyone the shoes of a “strong female character” by Caroline Siede at A.V. Club

Can a “Feminist Hero” Save ‘True Detective’? by Heather Havrilesky at Dame Magazine

Which of These 3 Emmett Till Projects Will Be Made First? Will Smith & Jay-Z Have Gotten Behind One of Them by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

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

‘The Foxy Merkins’ and the Uncharted Territory of the Fat, Lesbian Protagonist

That separation is reinforced by much of the film’s comedy, but Margaret isn’t positioned as an object of ridicule or disgust, as is often the case with fat and/or gender non-conforming characters. She is naive, gauche, and in over her head, but she is also the character with whom the audience empathizes most.

This guest post by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

This article contains spoilers for The Foxy Merkins. 

Selected for the NEXT series at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival along with films like Obvious Child and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Foxy Merkins is a comedy by and about queer women with an episodic structure and humor fueled by social awkwardness and mundane absurdism (think Louie). Simply put, it’s part fish out of water comedy, part buddy film, and all lesbian hookers. Set in contemporary New York City, the film creates a world of sex work in homage to Midnight Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, but populated by women who have sex with other women. As with its progenitors, this subculture is scandalous, but hardly clandestine. These sex workers bide their time on the sidewalk in broad daylight until approached by other women, which occurs with relative frequency.

The film charts unexpected territory by merging stereotypes about seemingly disparate subcultures. Its narrative maintains the beats of taboo sex and danger expected from a story about sex workers, but does so through the filter of lesbian culture and stereotypes. In one exchange between the two main characters, Jo (Jackie Monahan) advises Margaret (Lisa Haas) to market her services by using the hanky code. However, the film’s version isn’t quite the same one used by gay men in the 70s to signify their kinky preferences: “A yellow bandana in your left back pocket means you have more than one cat… a red bandana in your right back pocket means you like women who have been through the Change.”

Jo and Margaret at work. “A lot of the girls hang out in front of Talbots.”
Jo and Margaret at work. “A lot of the girls hang out in front of Talbots.”

 

The film predominantly focuses on Margaret, a newbie sex worker with a degree in Women’s Studies who happens to be fat and butch. She is a pastiche of red-blooded hunk Joe Buck (Jon Voight) from Midnight Cowboy and sulky sylph Mike (River Phoenix) from My Own Private Idaho, but her size and gender expression set her apart from their more normative representations of beauty. That separation is reinforced by much of the film’s comedy, but Margaret isn’t positioned as an object of ridicule or disgust, as is often the case with fat and/or gender non-conforming characters. She is naive, gauche, and in over her head, but she is also the character with whom the audience empathizes most.

Margaret bumbles her way through interactions with clients, but this characteristic diverts from the standard depiction of fat and/or gender non-conforming women as undeserving of sexual desire. The Foxy Merkins uses a more nuanced approach. We do see glimpses of her as a sexual being, such as a scene that begins by implying she’s just had an orgasm, even if it quickly turns its focus on her awkwardness. This trait is partially inherited from Joe Buck, who isn’t genteel enough to seduce the rich Manhattanites he targets. It’s charming in its relatability: as someone who can barely navigate small talk in a professional setting, let alone a sexual encounter, I could easily see myself in Margaret’s shoes. But these scenes are also ground for meta-humor, as film trope clashes with cultural expectations. What happens when someone who looks like Margaret assumes the role of soul-searching hustler formerly and famously occupied by normatively attractive men? The Foxy Merkins’ predecessors supply setting, story, and characters, but like a Warner Brothers cartoon character running off their background onto a blank screen, there is a dearth of precedent for a fat, butch film character to communicate sexual allure, either to fellow characters or to an audience who has been groomed to lust after thin, feminine women. The energy that Haas brings to these scenes suggests an undercurrent of resigned bewilderment.

Margaret socially functions as a sexual being by virtue of existing within a subculture of lesbian sex work, but that subculture largely retains real-world beauty standards, rendering her body simultaneously unattractive and sexually commodified. Jo explains to Margaret how she is seen by potential clients: “You’re the type of lesbian they are mortified to be seen with… they do not want to be caught with you. So they’re gonna pay you extra to sneak around with them… honestly, you should have so much more money.” Thin, femme Jo takes on the role of Margaret’s docent, as well as her foil. Carefree (and often careless), Jo opts to do sex work as a way of rebelling against her wealthy upbringing. Despite repeatedly stating that she is not sexually attracted to women, she is more experienced and successful than Margaret in their profession. In one scene, the two walk down a busy Manhattan street as Jo casually claims to have slept with every woman they pass, while Margaret seems to barely keep up with mentally processing what her friend is telling her.

Margaret’s allergies are triggered while visiting a client’s house.
Margaret’s allergies are triggered while visiting a client’s house.

 

The film continues to grapple with the clashing expectations of Margaret’s profession and appearance through a sequence of encounters with a rich, conservative client (Susan Ziegler). During their first encounter, the client asks Margaret to take her clothes off. In opposition to the sexy tone she ought to set, she chastely removes her bra and underwear once she is under the bedsheet. (Her client coquettishly refers to this maneuver as a “magic trick.”) While another film might construct an erotic scene with gliding closeups and sensual music, this one involves a stationary shot of Margaret squirming and rocking under the sheet as her client waits patiently off to the side, amplified sounds of rustling cloth the only soundtrack. The scene self-consciously buys into the mainstream trope that “nobody wants to see” fat bodies or expressions of queer sexuality. The client obviously wants to see Margaret’s body and have sex with her, but Margaret remains in her culturally sanctioned role of chaste lesbian/unseen fat person to the point of absurdity.

Unsurprisingly, this is not a film that passes up a chance to satirize the right wing. Margaret’s aforementioned client has hired two men (Charles Rogers and Lee Eaton) to dress as cops, burst into her hotel room, and terrorize Margaret, who is unaware that the scene is staged. In the second of three scenes to this effect, Margaret is completely naked. Fat bodies in a state of undress are usually cause for a film protagonist to express disgust, with the expectation that the audience will empathize with that disgust. This time, however, the fat body belongs to our protagonist. She isn’t modestly positioned with her back to the camera or cheekily blocked by an object in the foreground. The audience sees her full frontal in the center of the screen, flanked by the two cops pointing guns at her. As with her “striptease,” the camera is unwavering. This static view heightens our sense of Margaret’s shock and embarrassment, but is also confrontational.  This is a film that asks the audience to relate to a fat, lesbian protagonist: if a viewer has been trying to empathize with Margaret by downplaying her size or queerness up to this point in the movie, those characteristics have become starkly unavoidable.

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The male gaze that reinforces standards of thinness and straightness and is ubiquitous in cinema, even if only present in a handful of scenes in The Foxy Merkins, is embodied in this scene by the two cops. They repeatedly tell Margaret to drop what she’s holding, despite her protests that she isn’t holding anything and attempts to placate them by making dropping motions with her empty hands. They even insist that she has “something tied around [her] waist” and is wearing “a collared shirt,” as if they have no sense of what a fat woman’s body looks like in the nude. An absurdist feedback loop is created of a command that cannot be followed and cooperation that is inherently uncooperative. This dynamic is reminiscent of the often frustrating relationship that queer and fat people have with a dominant culture that demands compliance even when attempts to do so are demonstrably futile. We still hear voices of authority telling us to “drop it” with regards to weight and desire for non-heteronormative love and sex, despite evidence that diets don’t work in the long run and sexual orientation can’t be changed at will.

But these two men have no genuine authority, they have been ordered to act as police by the client. As Jo later explains to Margaret, “It’s her fetish, it’s her kink.  She likes to see people naked with the police.” The client watches these confrontations from behind the bedsheets, distancing herself from the situation by feigning shock and claiming that Margaret showed up in her room uninvited. This rich, white, thin woman who is hiding her own queerness to maintain her privilege actively seeks pleasure from seeing the oppression of marginalized people. Their third date even includes a Black woman, ostensibly the client’s maid, getting shot by the cops. Jo, who has the privileges of her appearance and wealthy upbringing, similarly benefits from the situation, as she has been paid to withhold from Margaret that the scenes aren’t real. The client’s fetish parallels the common use of schadenfreude in film to entertain at the expense of not only fat people, but people of color, sex workers, and queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people.

Of course, The Foxy Merkins is a comedy, and the scenarios it presents are not as cruel as the realities it satirizes, or even the films to which it pays homage. The pretend bust is the closest Margaret comes to experiencing violence on the job, and even that ends with the cops and their shooting victim laughing and walking offscreen together. Nevertheless, the lighthearted humor speaks to real disparities in media representation. The audience is not allowed to forget that Margaret is occupying a position that the film industry did not historically intend to include someone of her sexuality, gender expression, or size. Both as a lesbian hooker and as a film character, her existence is a struggle. She ultimately realizes that she must move on from the former role, but as the latter, she is a quiet triumph.

 

Tessa Racked is a Women’s Studies major who makes a living as a social worker, writes about fat representation in film at Consistent Panda Bear Shape, and dispenses witticisms @tessa_racked. They live in Chicago.

 

 

The Future Is Behind You: David Robert Mitchell and Maika Monroe on the Chilling, Thoughtful ‘It Follows’

The fact that ‘It Follows’ is a horror film, and a surprisingly effective one, is almost secondary to the respectful way it develops its characters, particularly its protagonist, Jay, portrayed in a breakout performance by Maika Monroe.

The film is a huge sleeper hit, by low-budget indie standards. This week, it expanded to an astonishing 1,655 theaters nationwide. I spoke with Monroe and Mitchell recently by phone about how the film was made and what makes it so unique.

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This is a guest post by Josh Ralske.

In 2010, writer-director David Robert Mitchell made his feature directorial debut with the charming and insightful The Myth of the American Sleepover. Unlike many contemporary coming-of-age comedies, Sleepover evinces nostalgia for youth, but shows tremendous respect and honesty in its treatment of its adolescent characters, male and female, and is beautifully shot, with the smooth camerawork tracking the teens, and a gradually darkening palette giving a sense of the potential trials of impending adulthood. The influences, notably George Lucas’s American Graffiti and Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, are evident, but Mitchell has his own gently observant style.

In a way, It Follows picks up where Sleepover left off. Poignant drama over a first kiss or a missed opportunity at love is replaced with the uncertainty of first sexual encounters and an underlying genuine terror at the responsibilities of adulthood. The fact that It Follows is a horror film, and a surprisingly effective one, is almost secondary to the respectful way it develops its characters, particularly its protagonist, Jay, portrayed in a breakout performance by Maika Monroe.

After what seems a lengthy courtship, Jay has a sexual encounter with Hugh (Jake Weary), who infects her with a kind of sexually transmitted poltergeist: a malevolent entity that can take the form of any person, and will stalk Jay until it kills her, or until she has sex with someone else, passing it onto that unfortunate person. Hugh (who turns out to be using a fake name) tells the terrified Jay that if the slow moving entity succeeds in killing her, it will move back on to him. Jay has to balance the immediate physical danger to her life with the moral quandary of passing along the curse. She’s lucky enough to have a support system: her tough-minded sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe), brainy pal Yara (Olivia Luccardi), sexually confident dreamboat neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto), and her friend Paul (Keir Gilchrist), who’s had an unrequited crush on Jay since they were children. Once she convinces her friends the threat is real, the group goes to great lengths to help Jay save herself. In a way, the film is sort of like a more thoughtful, slowed down, and thematically denser version of the Final Destination films, with a relentless, inexorable force pursuing a group of kids, as they desperately seek a way to put a stop to it.

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The film is a huge sleeper hit, by low-budget indie standards. This week, it expanded to an astonishing 1,655 theaters nationwide. I spoke with Monroe and Mitchell recently by phone about how the film was made and what makes it so unique.

“Calm” is an odd way to describe a horror film, particularly one as chilling as It Follows, but that’s the word Mitchell uses, and it’s apt. This is a beautifully structured film.

“There’s a simplicity to it, to a certain degree,” Mitchell says, “and it’s actually quite complicated in other ways. It’s very simple and balanced, and calm most of the time, but there’s also a certain amount of staging and planning that goes into making it feel that simple and calm.” The film’s camerawork is intrinsic to its slow-burn paranoid terror. “We have a very steady, cool, objective camera a lot of the time,” Mitchell explains. “We often use a very wide-angle lens, and we leave a lot of space in the frame, so you can kind of see along the edges. If the characters are in the foreground, you can see into the background, and the idea was to actually place the audience within the environment that the actors are within. So that you are sort of an active participant within the film.” This effectively puts the viewer on edge, on the lookout for that slow-walking human-shaped monster on the edge of the frame. In one chilling sequence, when Jay and Greg visit a local high school looking for a lead on “Hugh,” Mitchell’s camera does a slow 360 degree pan around the pair, showing the entity moving slowly toward them outside the school, then unnervingly coming to rest on Jay and Greg, viewed through the window of a school office, and as unaware of the entity’s current location as we in the audience are.

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“The goal is to be very deliberate,” Mitchell says. “Pretty much everything in the film was about being very precise and specific. Everything needed to be a choice. You don’t always hit this, but the goal is for everything to be a deliberate part of a plan. Nothing just happens because that’s what we have to do. I didn’t want to have to put a cut in a sequence unless I wanted a cut in the sequence. I didn’t want to have to move the camera unless I needed to move the camera. Everything had to be a very strong choice.”

For Monroe, in her first starring role, acting in the film was a strange, but intense experience. “It was just physically and mentally very demanding,” she tells me. “It was having to be in a dark place for almost the entire five weeks, which is not easy to do. Every day, screaming, running, crying. It’s not easy.”

Despite the intensity of the process, because of the way the film was made, Monroe had little sense of what its impact on audiences would be. “You’re filming it, and most of the time you just feel kind of ridiculous, or you’re just not thinking about trying to scare someone. I’m just more focused on the role and making it as real as possible. It only comes up with an audience, and seeing how an audience reacts, you think, ‘Oh, this might actually be scary!'” Having watched Myth before accepting the role of Jay, Monroe says, “When I was reading it, I wasn’t sure how it was going to translate into a movie, or how audiences would take it, but I had complete faith in David.”

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Monroe also co-starred in another buzzed-about indie horror film, Adam Wingard’s The Guest and has a longtime interest in the genre. “Well, I grew up watching. I remember the first horror movie I watched was The Shining. My dad showed me that. And then Blue Velvet, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street. Those were all movies that I really loved and that really freaked me out. They scarred me for life. I really like them.”

Monroe remembers Mitchell asking the cast to watch David Lynch’s suburban nightmare, Blue Velvet, before making the film. A big fan of horror, he cites a number of other influences. “There’s a lot [of] stuff I like, and it’s probably entered into this, in some way. Creature from the Black Lagoon is probably my favorite horror movie. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the original, [and] the [Philip] Kaufman version from the ’70s is a tonal influence. The original Thing and the [John] Carpenter remake as well. I watched both of them religiously. The Shining. A lot of Cronenberg. Romero. Lynch. At least in terms of horror, these are some of the people that I love.”

Monroe was also struck by the setting of the film, a Metro-Detroit suburb that grows increasingly ramshackle and dilapidated as the characters approach the battle-scarred city.

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“Detroit’s just a fascinating place,” she tells me. “So many abandoned buildings where nature has taken over. It’s quite cinematic, in kind of a darker way. It was very cool to explore. I probably never would have gone to Detroit if not for filming the movie, and I think it was a really cool experience. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a place like it in the United States. It’s pretty fascinating. I feel like everybody should go there at some point.”

Mitchell set the film in the area, as he did with Myth, in part because he grew up there and knew what locations would look right on film. But there’s an undercurrent of despair to the film that the location suits perfectly. “Within the story, one of the things that I wanted to highlight a little bit was people talking about the separation between the city and the suburbs, and how sad that is, and shitty that is, to be honest,” he explains.

When I asked Mitchell about the strong female protagonists of his first two features, he seemed hesitant to engage the question. “I write stories about all different kinds of characters, but these are the two that I’ve been able to make. I don’t know.” He went on to explain, “I guess it depends on the film. In regards to It Follows, it just seemed like an interesting perspective to take. I think we’re sort of playing on one of the cliches of horror films — this sort of female protagonist — and I guess I just thought I could maybe add something a little unique to that. I don’t know what to say other than I think it’s interesting to write a female character. It’s just interesting to me as a writer/filmmaker to try to see things from different points of view. When I write a character, I try to put a little bit of myself into their personality, or I try to imagine myself in that world.” Mitchell apologizes to me for that answer, but I think his empathy with Jay and the other characters is a salient and laudable feature of his work to date.

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Despite the virtues of Myth, in a way, It Follows is a big step forward for Mitchell. It’s a more polished work and also one that lends itself to a wealth of interpretations. It’s a scary good time at the movies, for sure, but it also seems like the kind of film that will be studied and written about in thesis papers for generations to come.

“I’ve heard all kinds of interesting interpretations of the film,” Mitchell states, “some of which I intended, some of which I didn’t, but I love that. To me, this kind of movie is designed with that in mind.”

 

Josh Ralske is a freelance film writer based in New York. He has written for MovieMaker Magazine and All Movie Guide.

‘Her Side of the Bed’: One Bitch’s Story in Navigating the World of Indie Film Production

If I were to give any advice to indie filmmakers, and especially women in this industry it would be this: It’s going to be hard. Really, really hard. You must be unrelenting. But practice tact, learn how to read people, know when to to keep pushing and when to let go. You’re going to need to hustle. Grow a thick skin. Learn to take rejection gracefully, because it’s going to happen. A lot.

This is a guest post by Bryn Woznicki.

As a female, indie filmmaker, you must be a Jane of all trades. At once a benevolent monarch, the next minute kissing someone’s ass. Constantly selling yourself, but maintaining confidence (this makes you attractive). Toeing the line of being interested but not being too eager (we don’t want to appear desperate, after all) and keeping a stiff upper lip, and just the right amount of bend-or-else-you’ll-break attitude so you can adeptly navigate inevitable rejection and whatever Murphy’s Law may throw your way. Cake, right?

I’m Bryn Woznicki, director, co-producer and co-writer of Her Side of the Bed (if that isn’t enough, I’m also in the damn thing).

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Her Side of the Bed is about Rachel Nolan, a recently dumped, 20-something writer living in New York. She moves in with her best friend Nicole, who vows to get her over the heartbreak by any means possible, but after sharing an intimate night together their friendship is forever changed. It is a coming-of-age story that follows one womanʼs journey through self discovery and the evolution and ultimate deterioration of a friendship. The film channels the raunch, wit, and self-aware insecurity of Girls as well as the explorative vulnerability of Blue is the Warmest Color.

In the film, best friend Nicole (Bryn Woznicki) and Rachel (Chelsea Morgan) discover a lot about themselves, and each other.
In the film, best friend Nicole (Bryn Woznicki) and Rachel (Chelsea Morgan) discover a lot about themselves, and each other.

 

The film was written by me and my my co-star, Chelsea Morgan, who plays Rachel. We began this journey in 2012, and the cultivation and birth of this film baby has been a real bumpy fucking road.

On set and in bed, Nicole mugs for the camera while Rachel sets her sights set on something else.
On set and in bed, Nicole mugs for the camera while Rachel sets her sights set on something else.

 

Both creators and performers by nature, Chelsea and I met in a musical theatre class in community college. Upon meeting each other, we both had the distinct feeling that we’d met somewhere before. We were sure of it, in fact. But in comparing our histories, we realized that we had never met. We agreed our previous meeting must have been in a past life and we left it at that. We created together. We had chemistry. We had fun. We both had an innate sense of humor and a penchant for “yes, and-ing.”

We found that we were vibrating on the same frequency. Creating together came naturally, and laughs were abundant. We shared common ground: we wanted to tell stories and we wanted to act, but we were left in limbo. Skimming through casting notices was always disheartening: not ugly or fat enough to play the ugly fat friend, and not perfect enough to play anyone else. And that’s what the casting notices focused on. Looks and body types. “Overweight best friend; she’s very happy despite never having had a boyfriend.” Or “Sexy, gorgeous legal assistant.” Or “Fit and pretty waitress.” Or “Girl next door… think Keira Knightly.”

Bryn Woznicki directs Rachel (Chelsea Morgan) as she walks home barefoot through the streets of Brooklyn.
Bryn Woznicki directs Rachel (Chelsea Morgan) as she walks home barefoot through the streets of Brooklyn.

 

We didn’t fit into the molds presented to us, and we weren’t sure we wanted to. And anyway, who’s to say we weren’t sexy and gorgeous? Who’s to say we must be happy in spite of never having had a boyfriend? Who’s to say any boyfriend, lack thereof, or any other person aside from OURSELVES should be in charge of our happiness? And where are the deep, layered, female roles? Characters with personalities, defining qualities outside of their outward appearance or ability to pull dudes? So we started creating our own projects and our own roles.

At the time, I was in film school and was spending a ton of time in production, learning every job on an indie set, the dynamics and idiosyncrasies, and the most important lesson of indie filmmaking: making something from nothing, creating with no money, little help and few resources.

In 2012, I teamed up with the talented Fiona Bates and together we produced Love On-The-Line, an 11-episode web series that I directed and produced. Chelsea and I also played supporting roles.

Love On-The-Line, an 11 episode web series produced and directed by Bryn, starring Chelsea and Bryn.
Love On-The-Line, an 11-episode web series produced and directed by Bryn, starring Chelsea and Bryn.

 

This was the first project where I directed and acted at once. It’s very difficult. At that point I had directed half a dozen projects and produced several dozen, and only then did I feel somewhat comfortable bridging the gap between actor and director. For those just starting out, I suggest you find strong footing in both roles before you perform both at the same time. It’s still a struggle, at once being the “watcher” and the “watched,” and it calls for a ton of grace under pressure.

Love On-The-Line was a lot of work. It was calling in all of our favors, asking our talented friends to work for free, giving up our weekend, every weekend, and hustling. Lots and lots of hustling. But we were creating. And we were being funny. And we were paving the road for ourselves.

The summer of 2012 we wrote and shot a pilot in two months. After a particularly adventuresome summer, we were high on life and our creative accomplishments. We wanted to do more. But bigger this time. We’d just shot a half hour pilot… next step, feature film! How hard could it be, right?

I called Chelsea one day. “I have an story for a feature film,” I told her. “So do I,” she countered. “You go first.” Much like our first meeting, by some strange, cosmic coincidence, our ideas for our features were eerily similar. We essentially both came up with the same idea, independently of one another. We took this as a sign, and we went to work.

For two months we overdosed on each other. We slept at each other’s houses nearly every night. We watched movies for reference, we drank a lot of wine. Sometimes, many times, the wording of a sentence wouldn’t ring true to us. We’d mull it over, turn it upside down, search for alternatives, and an hour later conclude that our original wording was the best. We sent our first draft around and had people read it. We revised it half a dozen times. Then a dozen. We acted scenes out to see how they felt. We lived and breathed this film.

In a way we kind of put the cart before the horse. We were so high on our idea, so confident, that we raised what money we could, flew to New York and shot what we could on our small budget. “The money will fall into place…” “Wait till they see this footage, investors will be chomping at the bit!” But that’s not what happened. We did capture some gorgeous footage, as well as some important lessons.

Armed with a small budget and a positive attitude, the crew flew to New York to begin shooting.
Armed with a small budget and a positive attitude, the crew flew to New York to begin shooting.

 

After we returned from New York, we used what little money we had left to shoot in L.A. We weren’t remotely close to being finished but we had enough footage to make a nice trailer for fundraising purposes. And we created a Facebook. And a Twitter. A Tumblr. We held and Indiegogo campaign, and a Kickstarter. And made a website. We got fiscal sponsorship from The Film Collaborative. We took meetings with anyone who would meet us. We showed the trailer to everyone. We get interviewed and written up, but still we could not finish the film.

Some of the players pose for a photo during Her Side of the Bed’s Film Finishing Fundraiser held in 2014, (L to R) Chris Ferro (playing “Ernest” in the film), Bryn Woznicki (“Nicole”), Chelsea Morgan (“Rachel”), and Steven Anthony Lawrence (who plays a caricatured, drug-dealer version of himself in the film)
Some of the players pose for a photo during Her Side of the Bed’s Film Finishing Fundraiser held in 2014, (L to R) Chris Ferro (playing “Ernest” in the film), Bryn Woznicki (“Nicole”), Chelsea Morgan (“Rachel”), and Steven Anthony Lawrence (who plays a caricatured, drug-dealer version of himself in the film)

 

Creation of an independent feature film and all that its production entails was outside of the scope of our understanding. It takes a LOT of money. And a LOT of people. Good, competent people. who believe in the work and who are willing to put in crazy hours and energy, probably getting paid a lot less than their worth.

After sitting on our footage and our social media campaigns for over a year, I was feeling very depressed. I’d heard it takes three years, start to finish, to make an indie film. But no one told me it would feel so long. We had almost everything in place that we needed to finish this film: gorgeous locations, talented crew, a few actors with recognizable faces… but we didn’t have the money. And we didn’t know where to get it.

Although we’d received a ton of support from friends online… even garnering a bunch of fans from around the world that we’d never met before, these numbers didn’t, unfortunately, translate to money. We didn’t know if the lack of financial support was due to the fact that most of our friends are starving artists like we are, or perhaps people weren’t so quick to advertise their support of such seemingly “subversive” material. All we know is we put in a ton of work for very little payout and we still didn’t have to resources to finish our film.

But the long, excruciating pause between bouts of production was also fruitful. It allowed our frenetic energy to settle a bit, giving us time and space to become more grounded. No longer in a race to the finish line, we had something very valuable: time. We had time to sit back and review what we’d done thus far. We made space for learning and for changes. We had time to reassess and then reassemble our team, hiring new crew where we found it beneficial, letting go of others that didn’t quite fit. The year plus of non-shooting allowed us to really appreciate this project, to yearn for its fruition, and to appreciate it in the way that you can only appreciate something that’s elusive, dangling attractively in front of you yet slightly beyond your grasp.

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By some stoke of luck, or as my grandmother would call it, “a little mazel,” we found a benevolent donor. A family friend. Someone with some cash and a belief in us, and we made budget. We will finish shooting in May.

What would we have done had we not received money from this gracious supporter? I shudder to think. It would have probably been a mix of grant applications upon grant applications (WHICH of course, is still on our agenda), scrimping and saving our own money, conducting another low-yielding fundraising campaign. And lots of hairs graying, and pacing, and panic attacks, and wondering, “Am I wasting my time? Should I just give this up and get a ‘big girl’ job with more security? Will I ever forgive myself if I abandon my dreams?” But the money did come. And we are moving forward, and this film, this child, which has given me so much hope, and joy, and anxiety and pain, will finally evolve into its next stage of being.

If I were to give any advice to indie filmmakers, and especially women in this industry it would be this: It’s going to be hard. Really, really hard. You must be unrelenting. But practice tact, learn how to read people, know when to to keep pushing and when to let go. You’re going to need to hustle. Grow a thick skin. Learn to take rejection gracefully, because it’s going to happen. A lot. You can’t let it break you and you can’t take it personally; you just need to learn whatever you can (all bad experiences are a chance to learn, dontchya know!), dust yourself off, and try again tomorrow.

Hold onto the people who build you up: positive people who believe in you. Dump the people who don’t. Learn positive self talk, at the very least create three positive thoughts for each negative one. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others, but don’t be a pushover. Don’t be afraid to say exactly what’s on your mind, and ask for exactly what you need.

People will underestimate you. If you’re a woman, you may be labeled “bossy” or a “bitch.” Or more likely, the sexism won’t be blatant, but rather subtle and insidious. You won’t be exactly sure why, but you’re left with a bad taste in your mouth. I found that it most often rears its ugly head when I’m at a film festival; the program directors call the directors on stage and there’s one woman to every 10 men. Or it is manifest in the form of someone’s incredulity. “Oh, wow. A feature film? How did you manage that?” A subtle put down, that could almost be misinterpreted as kind. Or when speaking to people about your work, they won’t give you their full attention. As if you’re not worth it. As if you’re not to be taken seriously. “Oh, you’re a filmmaker? How fun!” Yeah, guy. Fun. Barrels of it.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what they think. Whether it’s filmmaking or shoemaking, directing or designing, if you’ve found something that calls to you… something that excites you, turns you on mentally and emotionally… something that makes you feel happy when you’re doing it… run toward it. Keep running. And don’t look back.

 

Bryn Woznicki is a writer, director, producer, and (although she doesn’t like to admit it) actor living in her hometown of Los Angeles, California. When not making art, she likes making people laugh, speaking Italian and experimenting in the kitchen. You can find her on IMDb here and on Twitter here. 

 

Black Solidarity and Family in ‘The Retrieval’

There is a lot said in this film without dialogue, and without anything spoken within the first few minutes of the film. Most of the African American characters have an unspoken sense of solidarity, one which Will eventually learns to hear. The film explores how Black families are often torn apart and turned against each other by the pressures of a white patriarchal society.

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This guest post by Jackson Adler previously appeared at his blog, The Windowsill, and appears as part of our theme week on Black Families. Cross-posted with permission.

Chris Eska’s independent film The Retrieval (2013) is a coming of age/road trip/period drama in which a young teenage boy named Will and his uncle Marcus are forced into working for white bounty hunters to “retrieve” escaped slaves during The American Civil War. There is a lot said in this film without dialogue, and without anything spoken within the first few minutes of the film. Most of the African American characters have an unspoken sense of solidarity, one which Will eventually learns to hear. The film explores how Black families are often torn apart and turned against each other by the pressures of a white patriarchal society. Will needs the money not only to get by, but also to reunite with his father. He and Marcus know that if they do not do as they are told, they could very well be murdered by their employers. When Marcus sees that his nephew is beginning to feel empathy for Nate, a man they are hired to “retrieve,” Marcus points to Nate and says, “That’s money.” Marcus encourages Will to see fellow African Americans as less than people for the sake of his own gain, as well as to make it easier to set aside his guilt.  However, Will learns solidarity through his interactions with other African Americans in the film, and creates surrogate families in spite of the pressures of white patriarchy. Though most of the film focuses on Will, Marcus, and Nate, women play crucial roles in the story. It is mostly through the example of women that Will begins to understand that African Americans need to support and stand up for each other.

The escaped slave whom Will betrays, played by Charissa Jarrett.
The escaped slave whom Will betrays, played by Charissa Jarrett.

 

At the very beginning of the film, a white woman with a shotgun offers safety on the Underground Railroad to Will, thinking he is a runaway slave. Once hidden, a Black woman offers him some of the little food she has. He betrays these women, but the memory of his betrayal haunts him and sets the foundation for his actions throughout the rest of the film, particularly toward Nate. Marcus and Will tell Nate that they were hired by his sick brother to help him travel south safely in order to visit his brother before he dies. This is a lie, as the brother is already dead and Will’s and Marcus’ true employers have evil intentions, but Nate believes it and goes on the journey with them out of loyalty to his brother. When Marcus is shot and killed by a white soldier, Will realizes he has to make up his own mind about what to do. While Nate and Will are traveling, a second Black woman accepts them into an all-Black camp in the woods, giving them food and a feeling of community. While there, Will meets a girl his age and they share an emotional connection. Will is offered the chance to stay with this community, where African Americans look out for one another and are one family. Though he and Nate end up travelling on, Will has become more humanized by the camp, and encourages Nate to visit his “woman,” Rachel, whom he was forced to leave years before at the risk of re-enslavement or death.

Will (Ashton Sanders) and Nate (Tishuan Scott)
Will (Ashton Sanders) and Nate (Tishuan Scott)

 

Rachel’s new “man” is the one to first greet Nate, accompanied by Will, at Rachel’s house. There is no animosity between Nate and this man as they talk, but a warm and sad understanding – no explanations needed. While left unsaid, it is the White patriarchy that broke up Nate and Rachel, and Rachel is not blamed for finding comfort in someone else. When Rachel and Nate see each other, Rachel is at first upset that Nate never came back for her to help her achieve freedom – “Why now?!” However, each understands that the other has had to make a new life for themselves. Once again, no explanation is needed, and no blame to be had between them – only upon the hateful and harmful society in which they live. Will soon finds he is not just an observer in this, as Rachel asks Nate, “Are you responsible for this boy?” She says that Will and Nate sound so much alike that they might as well be father and son, though she knows they aren’t. This comment seems to resonate with Will. It also seems to touch Will when Rachel mothers him for a bit, checking his clothes and hair. For a moment, it is like the three of them – Rachel, Nate, and Will, are family. Shortly after this scene, Will attempts to bail out of his assignment, but is scared into doing so when his boss confronts him. Will is aptly named, as it is his will to do right by his fellow African Americans, especially Nate, that eventually makes him turn against his employers. However, when he does so, his boss and his posse are already approaching. Nate, knowing that Will faces death if his boss finds out about the betrayal, stabs Will in the leg to make it look as though Will tried to keep him from running. Will’s attempt to save Nate results in Nate saving Will’s life. Though Will’s actions do not spare the life of his newfound friend and father figure, Nate dies with dignity and on his own terms due to Will’s actions. At the end of the film, Will returns to Rachel, who takes him in.

Black families are still torn apart by systems that were built on the backs of slavery. African American women are still especially marginalized. In America, Black families are still heavily oppressed and pushed to make difficult choices. Police violence threatens their lives, and low minimum wages keep their children hungry. The Retrieval is incredibly relevant to today’s world, as solidarity is needed behind every movement, and every person needs the welcoming warmth of a family. In the film, Will learns what a Black family truly is – one of solidarity and support in the face of those who would break and oppress them.

 

Jackson Adler is a transmasculine aromantic bi/pansexual skinny white middle class dude with an Auditory Processing Disorder and a Weak Working Memory who enjoys cartoons, musical theatre, and vegan boba drinks. Jackson has a BA in Theater, and is a writer, activist, performer, director, teacher, and dramaturge.

Life, Death, and Cinema in ‘Benny Loves Killing’

There are plenty of movies about making a movie, to the point where it’s arguably a little passé, and ‘Benny Loves Killing’ is careful not to ever be heavy-handed or obnoxious in its extra layer, addressing it obliquely – by which I absolutely don’t mean obscure or pretentious, but subtle and thought-provoking. This is one of those films where the more you think about it the better it gets.

Written by Max Thornton.

“Why horror?”

“Because I think it’s the most flexible genre…the most malleable genre. You are able to experiment and discuss the text without interfering with the object itself.”

So say Benny and her professor in the first set of dialogue in Ben Woodiwiss’s quietly excellent indie feature Benny Loves Killing, setting the scene for the experimentation and discussion to come. Although it has won at least one award for “Best Horror Film,” Benny Loves Killing isn’t really a horror film as such. Or rather it is, to use Benny’s own words, “a meta-horror film. A horror film about horror film. More importantly, a horror film about cinema.” I think one could argue that, whether or not it’s explicitly meta (and there’s plenty of superb horror that is, from Peeping Tom to Cabin in the Woods), horror is always, to some extent, about cinema. As far back as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, horror films have been self-consciously Jungian, awash with dreamscapes and archetypes, exploiting the visual and sonic immediacy of the medium to inhabit and unsettle the viewer’s psyche.

Notice how her eyes are obscured.
Notice how, in this most visual of media, her eyes are obscured.

But Benny Loves Killing is a meta-meta-horror film, a film about somebody making a film about film. Benny is a French film student in the UK making a horror film for a class, but we don’t actually see very much of her film. There are plenty of movies about making a movie, to the point where it’s arguably a little passé, and Benny Loves Killing is careful not to ever be heavy-handed or obnoxious in its extra layer, addressing it obliquely.

“Oblique” is a good word for most of this film’s approach – by which I absolutely don’t mean obscure or pretentious, but subtle and thought-provoking. This is one of those films where the more you think about it the better it gets. It’s not quite psychological horror, but the narrative does largely follow Benny’s tenuous state: bumming from one friend to another, refusing to take a shower, stealing from those around her, doing way too many drugs, arguing with her mother, having some fantastically creepy nightmares. The direction of the film is gorgeously stylish and evocative, with uses of chiaroscuro and splashes of red that probably deserve scene-by-scene analysis.

There are a few conversations where the characters discuss the film they are making, but the meta-commentary never gets inelegant. In one scene, Benny and her colleague Alex argue about the workings of point-of-view shots: “You sympathize with who you’re looking at, not with the eyes you’re looking through,” Benny insists, invoking the classic killer’s-viewpoint horror shot. If up to this point in the film you had overlooked the subtleties of how point of view is used, from here on you would surely notice how often the camera stays on Benny, with her interlocutor barely in frame – especially when these are men, especially men with power (the professor, the board that controls Benny’s funding, a creeper at a party). The effect is a claustrophobically intense focus on Benny, emphasizing her overwhelming and precarious mental state, but there’s also a complex and nuanced commentary here about gender in cinema.

"You sympathize with who you're looking at"
“You sympathize with who you’re looking at”

The most explicit discussion of gender and cinema occurs in the scene where Benny and Alex are screen-testing an actress who admits that their names had led her to expect two men, and then expresses her wariness of the widespread misogyny in the horror genre. Like any filmmaker who cannot step into the text of the film without thereby becoming a part of it, Benny allows the actress to speak without defending herself. There is no great rush to defend the feminist credentials of horror in general or of Benny’s film in particular, simply the opening of a conversation: is the camera necessarily a male gaze, even when wielded by a woman? Is a camera-on-camera the male gaze doubled or reversed or negated? How do the layers of agency and power operate in a male filmmaker’s film about a female filmmaker’s film?

Benny is surely to some degree an avatar for writer/director Ben Woodiwiss, and the different wigs she dons can be seen as a literalization of the different “hats” an independent filmmaker perhaps inevitable wears, as well as the multiplicity of her relationship to the camera eye. While Benny is not unsympathetic, she is certainly no wish-fulfillment self-insert, either in her personal or her professional life. Her cinematic ambitions are grandiose, but perhaps all talk: she constantly says she’s trying to do something innovative, to make a different kind of film, but nothing we see about the film-within-the-film suggests that it’s anything other than a conventional horror film, with its buckets of fake blood and negotiations with actresses about topless scenes. To what extent, the film seems to be asking, can the filmmaker have mastery over her film and its tropes? Or do film and tropes have mastery over the filmmaker?

The film couldn't work without Pauline Cousty's excellent performance as Benny.
The film couldn’t work without Pauline Cousty’s excellent performance as Benny.

The question is deepened by the mother/child imagery throughout the film. Benny’s fraught relationship with her mother doesn’t precisely parallel her relationship with her film, but it echoes it: despite, or perhaps at the root of, their conflicts, Benny comes from her mother, is shaped by her, inherits her flaws and characteristics. A creative work is its maker’s baby, and the mother gives the baby life but also, in the very life itself, life’s horizon of death, natality and mortality intertwined. The unleashing of the creative work into the world marks the author’s death, but for the auteur, it is also the death of her baby through her loss of control over it, birthed and killed at once in the cutting of the umbilical cord.

If Ben(ny) indeed loves killing, (s)he invites us, with a small smile and a gaze directly into the camera, to confront the lens and its powers of life and death: who, exactly, is being killed? And who, exactly, is doing the killing?

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax.

‘Frances Ha’: Chasing Sophie

In my experience, people who have seen this film often mistake Sophie’s actions as abandoning Frances for her boyfriend, Patch. The fact that it happens differently is a breath of fresh air. Rather, it represents an early point in which audiences experience the divide between Frances and Sophie in physical and emotional aspects. Sophie sees the opportunity to move on and fulfill her dreams, while Frances’ dream is fractured. The story of “us” that precedes this action becomes their separate, respective stories: “the story of Frances” and “the story of Sophie.”

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This guest post by Rachel Wortherley appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

At first glance, director Noah Baumbach’s seventh film, Frances Ha, also co-written by its star, Greta Gerwig (Frances), can be summed up as the following:  20-something Frances Halladay aimlessly struggles to survive in the harsh climate of New York City, while trying to become a professional dancer and mature into adulthood. While this is the case, the most important aspect is the relationship between Frances and her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner). In the scope of cinematic female friendships, Frances Ha explores it as a beautiful story of love, loss, and courage.

The film begins with a dizzying montage of Frances and Sophie engaging in behaviors that range from adolescent to intimate.   They blissfully play fight, giggle uncontrollably, and have cozy bedroom confessions.  They are the epitome of inseparable.   At one point, Frances muses, “Tell me the story of us.” Sophie in a nurturing, maternal tone recites their future as a bedtime story. They achieve all their dreams: Sophie successfully becomes a publishing mogul, and Frances a famous modern dance artist. Their lives will be filled with European excursions and honorary degrees–so many honorary degrees.

So far, we are witnessing the familiar trope of sisterhood, support, and unwavering affection that is inherent in similarly themed films such as Steel Magnolias, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, or Waiting to Exhale.  These women are in love with each another and their friendships can weather the toughest hurdles.  However, the quality that separates Frances Ha from the latter two is that men are a backdrop to the friendship, goals, and ambitions of Frances and Sophie.  The “story of us” does not include husbands and babies.  When men are spoken about, it is usually brief and fleeting. Frances nonchalantly recounts that she and her boyfriend, Dan, have broken up.  He wants to move in together, while Frances’ loyalty is to her lease and partnership with Sophie.  Frances is not heartbroken. She is not sobbing on the window sill as a soulful R&B song swells in the background.  While they love men, men do not dominate their dynamic and neither female is defined by them. At this point, they are one another’s significant other.

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This hazy love story takes a turn when Sophie abruptly moves in with another girlfriend in the trendy and more expensive neighborhood of Tribeca.  In my experience, people who have seen this film often mistake Sophie’s actions as abandoning Frances for her boyfriend, Patch.  The fact that it happens differently is a breath of fresh air.  Rather, it represents an early point in which audiences experience the divide between Frances and Sophie in physical and emotional aspects.  Sophie sees the opportunity to move on and fulfill her dreams, while Frances’ dream is fractured.  The story of “us” that precedes this action becomes their separate, respective stories: “the story of Frances” and “the story of Sophie.”

A friendship that was once whimsical and carefree gives way to passive aggressiveness and tension. Upon Sophie’s move, an irate Frances blasts her over the phone for coveting a tea kettle they bought when moving in together. Yet, at no point does it become Mean Girls.  It is absent of “burn books,” idle gossip, or derision.  Here begins the angst, confusion, and fear that is familiar when the one constant in our lives changes.  Frances is left alone to figure life out by herself.  There is no one present to reprimand her for picking at her acne, share a cigarette, or laugh with hysterically as she urinates off a subway platform.   Thus begins Frances’ search for companionship.

One of the greatest qualities about this film is that Baumbach and Gerwig, whether consciously or unconsciously, adhere to the “Bechdel test.” While Frances interacts with men, the most dominant male/female scenes being with her newfound roommates Lev (Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen), it is quite platonic–almost innocent and childlike.  When they speak it usually involves her job, Sophie, or her feelings of not being “grown up.”  They in turn appreciate her quirkiness and good humor. At this point, we cut to Frances’ sleep being disrupted by Lev and Benji who engage her in a tickle fight.  Laughter resounds and all is well again in her world. In typical comedies, when most writers place a female character in this situation, the easy route is to pair Frances with one of the men (likely Benji who makes his attraction for Frances obvious by the film’s end). But this is a different kind of “romantic comedy.”  It is a platonic love story between two friends.

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Rather, Lev and Benji fill the void of loneliness that pervades sans Sophie. This pattern continues when Frances, unable to afford rent at the guys’ Chinatown apartment, temporarily moves in with Rachel (Grace Gummer), her superior in the dance company.  With her, Frances attempts to vainly re-enact the play fights, as Rachel screams “stop” and “ahoy sexy” inside jokes. At this stage Frances is coping with the emptiness of losing someone she dubs “the same person” as well as a professional impasse. Sophie works in publishing and has a significant other. In terms of the “story of us,” these successes, or failures, are not occurring as they imagined, or simultaneously.  Their story continues to slip out of their grasp.

It should be noted that Frances Ha accurately depicts patterns in female friendships. Usually in films, women engage in a huge blowout that eventually resolves itself at the end of the film.  The heroines usually return to a childhood memory or place from the past that reunites them.  Or, in comedies, their resolution comes by way of a ridiculously, over-the-top physical fight.  But as previously stated, Frances and Sophie are passive aggressive.  Prior to Frances and Sophie’s public bathroom blow-out, a scene in which Frances exclaims, “Don’t treat me like a three-hour brunch friend,” there are quiet moments that led up to this. Sophie makes biting comments to Frances that Frances is still messy. Sophie also makes it clear that Patch is a presence who equally, if not more, knows her on an intimate level.

After their dispute, they don’t speak for a while until Sophie calls Frances to invite her to a party.  She and Patch are moving to Japan.  While they apologize for their behavior toward each other, Sophie for her passiveness and Frances for her aggression, they’re still unable to tell each other their innermost truths.  Frances does not divulge that she did not make it into the company’s Christmas show, while Sophie does not share her apprehensions about getting serious with Patch.  This can be interpreted as prideful, or a way to save face, but it is instead a serene moment in which they resolve their issue rather than dwell on the past.

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Yet, the most pivotal scenes appear toward the end.  At a low point, Frances has now returned to her and Sophie’s alma mater as a residential assistant to make more money, while a newly engaged Sophie and Patch appear at the college’s gala.  Upon Sophie and Patch’s brief falling out, Sophie and Frances are reunited.  An inebriated Sophie expresses her doubts and fears of growing up while Frances confesses that she loves Patch if Sophie does.  They revert to the image in the beginning of the film: cozy twin bed confessions, copious I love yous, and talk of moving back in together.  Frances also complies with Sophie’s pet peeve of no socks in bed.  All is right again.  That is, until sober Sophie leaves Frances in the morning to mend her relationship with Patch.  Frances is abandoned yet again, only this time, a barefoot Frances attempts to chase after her to no avail.  Looking down at her bare feet on the pavement, Frances realizes she has to stop chasing the past.

Frances and Sophie’s “one night stand” allows them to create their separate moments of courage.  Frances finds alternative methods of achieving her success, lives in an apartment by herself, and eventually choreographs her own dance troupe. She learns to be alone, rather than lonely.  Sophie, who appeared as the independent one in their friendship, is now co-dependent in her marriage to Patch. She is committing herself to a long-term relationship that is more complicated than moving in with another friend.  They’re both comfortable living in their own skin. Yet, they experience a moment Frances describes earlier in the film:

“It’s that thing when you’re with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it…but it’s a party…and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing and shining…and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes…but – but not because you’re possessive, or it’s precisely sexual…but because…that is your person in this life.”

Like Frances and Sophie, our first loves are our best friends.  They’re an extension of us so much so, that a proverbial break-up is inherently heartbreaking. It forces us into becoming independent, partake in self-discovery, and recognize that life will take us in different directions. Frances and Sophie’s relationship is fresh because while they are now living separate lives, they still maintain love and respect for each other.  The friendship becomes about the present, rather than the past or future. Ultimately their courage lies in knowing that while their roads may diverge, their bond remains as strong as looking across the room and glowing in each other’s happiness.

 

Rachel Wortherley is a recent graduate of Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.  Her downtime consists of devouring copious amounts of literature, television shows, and films.   She hopes to gain a doctorate in English literature and become a professional screenwriter.

The Queer Female Friendship of ‘Frances Ha’

For ‘Frances Ha’ is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of ‘Frances Ha’ is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

This guest post by Sarah Smyth appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Frances Ha is a love story.

The film opens with a montage of the central couple play-fighting, dancing, reading, cooking, and doing laundry together, which establishes the seemingly blissful and idyllic domestic set-up between the two characters. As the narrative progresses, however, the couple become subject to the usual trials and tribulations of the characters in romantic comedies. Their relationship is complicated by external forces, which becomes intensified by jealousy and miscommunication, before the couple are finally reunited and reconciled.

However, despite the possibility of reducing Frances Ha to a set of generic conventions, to do so is not hugely productive. Firstly, this undermines the charm, intelligence, and self-awareness of the film. Secondly, by only examining Frances Ha in terms of how it upholds generic conventions, we remain unable to see the ways in which the film challenges this very generic set-up. For Frances Ha is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of Frances Ha is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

Frances Ha is a love story between two friends, Frances and Sophie.

Frances Ha is a love story between two friends, Frances and Sophie. Frances and Sophie are sitting at a table outside eating
Frances and Sophie are sitting at a table outside eating

 

Discussing the friendship between Frances and Sophie in an interview in Sight and Sound magazine, Greta Gerwig claims:

“We never started out saying we were going to make a love story between these two friends but it just emerged in the writing of the scenes. Then we went back and actually beat it out like a romcom: she has the girl, she loses the girl, she tries to make the girl jealous. It’s like a will-they-won’t-they tension to the story but you’re never quite sure what they will or won’t do.”

Co-writing the film with Noah Baumbach, who also directed Frances Ha and is Gerwig’s real-life partner, Gerwig’s comments make clear the intended underlying “romantic” trajectory and generic mapping of the film.

Although the friendship between Frances and Sophie sits within the structure of a conventional romantic narrative, Frances Ha never presents these two women as having an explicitly homosexual relationship. Frances and Sophie never engage in sexual activities with each other, nor share anything other than an asexual bed. Yet, within the heteronormative romcom genre and, indeed, wider Western society, which rigidly privileges the heterosexual, monogamous, and cis-gendered couple, the friendship between Frances and Sophie is figured as distinctly queer. In one moment, Frances even jokes to Sophie that, “we are like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore.”

In “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,”  Adrienne Rich writes, “if we consider the possibility…that all women exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify as lesbian or not.” I move away from Rich’s use of the term “lesbian” in favour of the term “queer” as, in this context, the use of “lesbian” reinforces the binary construction of gender and sexuality which, in turn, undermines her proposition of a fluid sexuality. Nevertheless, Rich helpfully dispels the notion of heterosexuality as naturally or essentially given, broadening out the consideration of a fulfilling and satisfying love as going beyond the constraints imposed by rigid heterosexuality. In addition, Rich also demonstrates the way in which Western society’s continual re-iteration of “natural” heterosexuality only serves to reinforce patriarchal interests and perpetuate gender inequality: ‘”The enforcement of heterosexuality for women [is] a means of assuring male right of physical, economic, and emotional access.” In this way, through the centrality of the female friendship to the film’s love story, Frances Ha suggests the possibility of women breaking free from the oppressive constraints of heteronormativity and heterosexuality. By suggesting the possibility of finding love, commitment, satisfaction, and fulfilment from female friendship, Frances Ha not only breaks down a construction of sexuality, love, and relationships which privileges patriarchal power, dominance, and authority. It also proposes a future where there is an alternative, or at least coexistence with, the conventional heteronormative “female” script of marriage, children, and a house in the suburbs.

Frances and Sophie lying in bed together indicates their queer, but not homosexual, relationship.

Frances and Sophie are lying in bed together
Frances and Sophie are lying in bed together

 

However, before we proclaim to have arrived at a feminist utopia, and run off into the sunset with our best female friend, Frances Ha makes plain the difficulties and complications faced by these friendships.  The film continually presents a dissonance between the Frances and Sophie’s fantasy of the future and the expectations of conventional heteronormativity. These expectations continually impose themselves on Frances and Sophie’s friendship, threatening to destroy this queer alternative of female fulfilment. Near the beginning of the film, as the two women sit in bed together, Frances asks Sophie to “tell me the story of us,” which, within cinema, is the kind of pillow talk that’s reserved for heterosexual couples. Frances says Sophie will be “this awesomely bitchy publishing mogul,” and Sophie says Frances will be “this famous modern dancer.” They will have lovers, no children, and honorary degrees – “so many honorary degrees.” Their fantasy subverts heteronormativity’s conventional trajectory of a woman’s life, with Frances and Sophie privileging economic independence, career and academic success, sexual satisfaction, and, most importantly, their friendship above husbands and children. However, Sophie is also in a conventional, heterosexual, monogamous relationship with Patch (Patrick Heusinger), which continually attempts to destroy Frances and Sophie’s queer friendship. In one poignant moment, Frances says to Sophie, “it’s just, if something funny happens on the way to the deli, you’ll only tell one person and that’ll be Patch, and I’ll never hear about it.” Frances’ anxieties make clear the realities of the heteronormative construction of relationships, which privileges the monogamous and heterosexual couple, causing Frances and Sophie’s relationship to wither in comparison.

Sophie most explicitly represents the conflict between alternative forms of female fulfilment through queer friendships and heteronormativity’s imposed expectations of success and satisfaction. In the end, she does not follow the fantasy that she shares with Frances. More concerned with the outward appearance of success than her own happiness, she gives up her job in a publishing house and, possibly, her financial independence, to move to Tokyo with Patch. Although she writes a travel blog in which, as Frances says, she “looks so happy,” she later reveals to Frances that she wants to leave Patch and Japan. In this confessional scene, Frances hopes to repair their relationship and renew their fantasy claiming, “maybe we’ll move back to New York at the same time and be like women who rediscover themselves after a divorce… We should get apartments close to each other in Brooklyn.” However, this idyllic moment is temporal, and the fantasy never becomes realised in the film as Sophie leaves the next morning to return to her boyfriend. Despite acknowledging her unhappiness, Sophie ends up marrying Patch at the end of the film. Frances Ha, it seems, is deeply pessimistic towards women finding fulfilment and satisfaction within their female friendships so long as heteronormativity continues as the dominant social order.

Sophie and Patch’s conventional romantic relationship poses a continual challenge to Frances and Sophie’s friendship.

Sophie and Patch stand together
Sophie and Patch stand together

 

Nevertheless, Frances Ha offers the possibility of women finding happiness and fulfilment both within their own terms and within their female friendships. Frances’ success at the end of the film is not in finding a man and getting married, but in choreographing her own show and finding her own place to live. In addition, the film suggests that the friendship between Frances and Sophie may not only continue to exist but to flourish. During a disastrous dinner party, in a moment of disarming honesty, Frances explains what she wants from a relationship:

“It’s that thing when you’re with someone and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it. But it’s a party, and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing and shining, and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes, but not because you’re possessive or it’s precisely sexual, but because that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess. Love.”

In the final scene between Frances and Sophie, they look over to each other in a crowded room, catch each other’s eye and flash a goofy smile. In that moment, they both exist within their own alternative dimension. In that fleeting and temporal instant, they exist outside of the heteronormative construction of what constitutes a meaningful and satisfying relationship. In that look, they confirm to each other and to the audience that their relationship, so difficult, complex, challenging, powerful, passionate, and meaningful is one of support, fulfilment, and, ultimately love.

Greta Gerwig’s interview appears in the August 2013 issue of Sight and Sound.

 

Sarah Smyth recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

Seed & Spark: Female Friendship On Screen–Art Imitating Life

But what if I spent my time, instead, helping another female filmmaker make her movie involving female friendship? Wouldn’t that be just as meaningful? And could it perhaps be making an even bigger statement—promoting the “cause,” so to speak?

Producer Liz Franke, Writer/Director Augustine Frizzell and Casting Director Tisha Blood having fun during the casting session of Never Goin’ Back.
Producer Liz Franke, Writer/Director Augustine Frizzell and Casting Director Tisha Blood having fun during the casting session of Never Goin’ Back.

 

This guest post by Liz Cardenas Franke appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

The desire to have more female-driven films is such a hot topic in the entertainment industry right now.  And it should be. There is definitely a need for more fully developed, complex female characters in cinema and for stories that are told from a female point of view.

But let’s take it a step further. What I believe is truly lacking are stories that specifically center on female friendships. It seems to me most female-oriented movies often just look at sexual relationships from a female perspective. (OK, sometimes they also show what it’s like to be a mother or juggle family and a career.)

But if you asked someone off the street to name a movie about two female friends, a real movie, not some over-the-top, unrealistic comedy, you would most likely hear Thelma & Louise. Maybe Beaches. And that’s probably it. Sure, there are others. But you have to really think about it for a minute. The same is not true for the male counterpart of this question. Most people would have no problem rattling off a list of pictures that concentrate on male friendship. That’s because there are a ton! There’s even a subgenre for them: the male “buddy” movie.

Liz Franke directing Augustine Frizzell, who had a lead role in the Hungry Bear film, Finding Glory, which is in post-production.
Liz Franke directing Augustine Frizzell, who had a lead role in the Hungry Bear film, Finding Glory, which is in post-production.

 

So, as a female filmmaker myself, what could I do to make a difference? Of course, I could go ahead and make one. I do, after all, write and produce films, alongside my husband, and many of them have strong female lead characters. For example, in our family feature, Summer’s Shadow, the protagonist is a bright and independent 12-year-old girl who rescues a sweet, stray dog and will stop at nothing to save him. And it’s her determination that ultimately impacts those around her, both children and adults.  And I just directed (for the first time!) a short film, titled Treading Water, which I also wrote, and it is about a woman in her 30s who tries to come to grips with her new reality of caring for her elderly father in her childhood home.

But what if I spent my time, instead, helping another female filmmaker make her movie involving female friendship? Wouldn’t that be just as meaningful? And could it perhaps be making an even bigger statement—promoting the “cause,” so to speak?

Well, that is what I’ve done. I am currently a producer on the feature film of a fellow female filmmaker (say that three times fast!) who also happens to be a dear friend of mine. Her name is Augustine Frizzell, and she is the writer/director of Never Goin’ Back. Her movie centers on the friendship between two 16-year-old girls who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds (also grossly underrepresented in cinema) and their misadventures as they try to win back their jobs at the local Pancake House in order to make rent. They have absentee parents and are high school dropouts living on their own, except for an older brother and his friends. So, ultimately, they only have each other. And they go through the ups and downs of life together.

Producers and friends Augustine Frizzell, Liz Franke and Kelly Snowden watching the monitor on Franke’s short film, Treading Water.
Producers and friends Augustine Frizzell, Liz Franke and Kelly Snowden watching the monitor on Franke’s short film, Treading Water.

 

This is a personal story for Augustine. It is based on her own experiences. So by working as a producer on her feature, I am helping her tell her own story. And I believe if we really want to see more narratives about true female friendships on screen, then we must actually experience them in real life, as well.

Augustine and I have worked on each other’s projects in the past— I was an executive producer on her short film, she was a producer and acted in mine. However, due to the magnitude of this project (a full-length feature with an ultra low budget and a three-week shoot), it has taken our relationship to the next level. And through it all, it’s been such a positive experience.

Being filmmakers in a male-dominated industry (who also happen to be married to male directors), we can relate to each other. We can also be vulnerable and let down our guards in front of each other. And that is what has been so special and has, quite honestly, blown me away.  We do not let ego get in the way. There is no jealousy. No backstabbing. No ulterior motives.  We truly support and encourage each other and want each other to be successful, and you hardly ever see that in movies or on TV.

I have to be honest. I have never really had that before in this business. Of course, my husband is always extremely supportive and encouraging, as is hers. But it has been so rewarding to make a real girlfriend in this business, and someone who is pursuing the same thing as I am. It makes me feel like anything is possible. By helping each other, I think we will make a difference. One movie at a time.

Liz Franke and Augustine Frizzell, who both happen to be actresses as well as writers and directors, filming a scene.
Liz Franke and Augustine Frizzell, who both happen to be actresses as well as writers and directors, filming a scene.

 

And it doesn’t end there. We have so many women working on this project, many of whom are donating some or all of their time or services.  Kelly Snowden, my fellow female producer on this project, (there is one male producer—we don’t discriminate after all) has worked tirelessly from the beginning to help our director obtain her vision. And from the Casting Director to our Costumer Designer to our Production Coordinator —they are all women. All of them work regularly in the industry and have still found time to help on this project.  This support system of women we’re creating is truly amazing. I was always taught to lead by example, as opposed to simply talking about wanting change. That’s what we’re doing. And it feels really good.

 

 

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Liz Cardenas Franke is an actress, writer and producer. She and her husband have made seven feature films through their production company, Hungry Bear, including the successful “Adventures of Bailey” series.  A member of Women in Film and SAG-AFTRA, Liz was a former reporter for The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, as well as the Vice President of International Sales for Engine 15 Media Group. She is a graduate of Texas Christian University with a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism.

 

Seed & Spark: Perspective

As the writer, my voice defines each character. Just as male writers paint masculine (or, worse, stereotypical) versions of the female characters they create, my characters each have a decidedly feminine spin. These are not gun-toting, one-dimensional he-men, but rather strong, masculine, flawed characters with quirks and cracks in their armor. They have no need for the mask of locker-room grandstanding. And a woman is telling their story. Unlike other dark comedies/psychological thrillers, this is a character-based story told from a female perspective.

OWEN BY THE LAKE: Brazilian Wood's Owen Bryant portrayed by Bill Wetherill
OWEN BY THE LAKE: Brazilian Wood’s Owen Bryant portrayed by Bill Wetherill

 

This is a guest post by Kristin LaVanway.

Much has been debated about the limited role that women play in film. Many believe that women’s voices are fewer than their male counterparts because of the limited number of strong female roles that are offered.

I was recently invited to participate in a panel discussion entitled “Leading Ladies are People Too.” This title described several topics related to expanding women’s roles in front of and behind the camera. The initial focus was on creating rich, well-developed roles for women, the lack of which is a large concern for many, given Hollywood’s often shallow female representations.

Kristin LaVanway
Kristin LaVanway

 

But as the discussion continued, I suddenly felt pangs of guilt, the need to apologize—an overwhelming dread that I had sold out my sisterhood.

You see, I am making a decidedly male-centered feature film called Brazilian Wood.

All but one of the main characters is a dude. In my defense, the lone woman in the pack is an awesome bad guy. She is a murderous, conniving, delicious, determined woman who knows what she wants.  Surely that counts for something in the broad landscape of feminism?

I began assessing my mostly masculine cast to identify possible ways to support the sisterhood and bring a larger X-chromosome component into the fold. Happily, I began to realize that those components already existed. Not in the most obvious way —the gender of the characters— but in the manner in which the characters have been developed and in the way their story would be told: by a woman.

These Leading Ladies are the "People Too" Panel at the 2014 Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival
These Leading Ladies are the “People Too” Panel at the 2014 Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival

 

As the writer, my voice defines each character. Just as male writers paint masculine (or, worse, stereotypical) versions of the female characters they create, my characters each have a decidedly feminine spin. These are not gun-toting, one-dimensional he-men, but rather strong, masculine, flawed characters with quirks and cracks in their armor.  They have no need for the mask of locker-room grandstanding. And a woman is telling their story. Unlike other dark comedies/psychological thrillers, this is a character-based story told from a female perspective.

These Leading Ladies are the "People Too" Panel at the 2014 Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival
These Leading Ladies are the “People Too” Panel at the 2014 Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival

 

As a director, I can draw out this untold story. The actors portraying these characters know the back-story. They know the emotional arc these characters will be riding. They are ready to let their emotions show through the cracks, just as strong women do among their trusted friends.  In this way, we can explore the motivations that drive them. We will bring more layers, more depth, and at some level, more estrogen to the audience.

As the editor, I have perhaps the strongest voice of all. I can piece together this multi-layered collection of story, emotion, murder, and mayhem, focusing not on the big splashy action sequences, but on the quiet moments, the nuanced expressions —the “girly” stuff. As the last leg in the storytelling journey, editing has a tremendous impact on the final version of the film. It can completely change the tone, message, and even the plot. That this phase is in my control can have an enormous impact in the portrayal of the characters, bringing a richness to a story that is so often told by simply counting the dead bodies and bowing to the last man standing. Bringing that depth into the frame tells the story from a new perspective.

These Leading Ladies are the "People Too" Panel at the 2014 Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival
These Leading Ladies are the “People Too” Panel at the 2014 Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival

 

I don’t view myself as a feminist filmmaker. I am a chick telling stories. I’m telling the stories I want to tell, from my perspective as a woman. I love an intriguing plot with twists and turns, interesting and relatable characters, and yes, even the obligatory happy ending. Whether the characters are male or female, a great story told by talented actors within a well-produced film is much more interesting to me than a film that takes a stand. As an independent filmmaker, my story can be told my way. And the voice behind the camera, my voice, despite the volume of testosterone in front of the camera, is decidedly feminine.  No need to apologize for that.

 

Originally from the beaches of Southern California, Kristin LaVanway is a writer and director living in Mesa, AZ . She has produced numerous short films, including the award-winning  comedy, “Reply Hazy,” “Try Again” and the award-winning drama, Condundrum. In 2014, she joined forces with actor/filmmaker Bill Wetherill to form Resonant Films. She is currently in crowdfunding mode for Resonant Film’s  first feature, Brazilian Wood on Seed & Spark. She is also working with the AZ Audubon Society to develop a multiple film compilation called “Arizona River Stories.”  Kristin is @Rl8rGal on Twitter.