Cast of The Bling Ring |
Katie Chang as Rebecca in The Bling Ring |
Emma Watson as Nicki in The Bling Ring |
Ladies of The Bling Ring |
The radical notion that women like good movies
Cast of The Bling Ring |
Katie Chang as Rebecca in The Bling Ring |
Emma Watson as Nicki in The Bling Ring |
Ladies of The Bling Ring |
Farah Goes Bang movie poster |
“I wanted to do something I hadn’t done before. Change the world and be awesome.” – 17 year-old female John Kerry Campaign Volunteer in Farah Goes Bang
“Their odyssey through the heartland of America is meant to demonstrate the ways in which these girls are often not seen as American, though they are as American as any other. I really wanted the film to integrate their faces and races into a new sense of American identity, one that embraces the hybrid, cross-cultural form that I have experienced in my own sense of citizenship.”
“I think [the scarf] looks pretty, kinda like it belongs on you.” – KJ “That is so racist.” – Roopa |
Farah Goes Bang passes the Bechdel test all day long. The core of this film is the connection between these three women and how it supports them, gives them strength, allows them their fluidity of identity, and is fun as well as necessary for each of their unique journeys. Menon says,
“The film, at its heart, is about the importance of female friendships during the rapid period of personal growth that is your twenties. I have learned so much through my friends, particularly female, about who I am and the woman I hope to be. This film is a love letter to how formative those relationships are when you are young.”
KJ, Farah, and Roopa enjoying a special night of anticipation and fireworks. |
Frances Ha movie poster. |
Written by Leigh Kolb
Spoilers ahead!
In addition to capturing that moment, Frances Ha also has at its center a friendship between two women. It easily passes the Bechdel Test, and was co-written by the actor Greta Gerwig, who plays Frances.
“I’m not messy, I’m busy.” |
In an interview, Gerwig says that the film and its focus on evolving relationships and changing is about that “moment when you’re exiting your youth and you really only know it when it’s gone. It doesn’t announce that it’s the last day of youth, it just leaves…” While these kinds of stories are not rare, seeing the focus placed on a woman’s life and female friendship is.
Frances Ha is one of those rare films that makes a feminist’s heart grow three sizes in an hour and a half.
The female protagonist and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), are engaged in the most important relationship on screen. Frances and her boyfriend at the beginning of the film break up (he wants to get cats and for her to move in with him; she wants to keep living with Sophie), and Sophie has a relationship with the kind of guy who wears a ball cap and says, “I have to take a leak,” but the central relationships are Frances and Sophie and Frances and herself.
Frances and Sophie’s friendship is incredibly realistic. |
Frances is an aspiring modern dancer (she’s an understudy and teaches dance lessons to children at a dance company), and anyone with minimal knowledge of the dancing profession knows that 27 is likely far too old to have any hope of joining the company, yet Frances hopes. She’s sure that this is the year she will be chosen for the company and at least get to tour.
Sophie moves out to live with an acquaintance in Tribeca, where she’s always wanted to live. Frances haphazardly becomes a roommate to two “rich kid” young men (an artist, Lev, and a writer, Benji, with wealthy parents), and she doesn’t get asked to dance in the Christmas productions, much less be a part of the company. Frances’s life–which hasn’t yet felt like it’s begun–is unraveling.
Frances, Benji and Lev. |
When she goes home for Christmas, she lies in a bathtub full of water as her mother pounds on the door: “Frances, how much longer?” she pleads.
The length of her life seems short and long, and the next step is elusive.
Through it all, Frances perseveres. She doesn’t break down, she doesn’t quit moving, even if her moves sometimes feel clunky–and real.
In what’s arguably her lowest moment, when she’s attending a dinner party with her temporary roommate who doesn’t seem to like her, Frances does break–in her own way. She drinks a bit too much and when she learns (from strangers) that Sophie is moving to Japan with her fiance, Frances decides to go to Paris.
Frances dances through the streets to David Bowie. |
“Sometimes it’s good to do what you’re supposed to do when you’re supposed to do it,” she says. At this moment, she means going to Paris–even on a charge card–and having a worldly experience. It’s disappointing, as most of those experiences that we are “supposed” to have often are. Frances is left feeling empty, and more lost than when she began.
She makes sure to be home on Monday, because the head of the dance company had requested a meeting with her. Frances–charmingly delusional–thinks she’s going to ask her to be a member of the company. Instead, she’s offered an office administration job. Frances says no. She’s not ready to move into that part of her life, where she no longer has that unfettered hope of being who she thought she was going to be.
She returns to her alma mater to be an RA during a summer dance camp (where she discovers she’s not even allowed to take dance classes) and a server for special events. It’s during this experience–the juxtaposition of her life and the college students’ lives, and her being an adult in a place of youthful potential–that something changes. She runs in to a drunk Sophie at a fundraiser. Sophie is belligerent and stays over in Frances’s dorm room. Their roles are reversed that night. Frances seems to have it all together and Sophie is falling apart.
“Your blog looked so happy,” Frances says after Sophie says she’s been miserable and won’t be marrying her fiance. They both had been struggling to do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it, but it’s not working. They must separate themselves from that “romantic idea” they’d had of themselves, their “story of us” that included taking over the world, to move forward.
Frances does so by taking the administrative job at the dance company, and is able to continue choreographing. Her eyes glisten with happiness in the control booth as dancers on stage perform her choreography. As the gorgeous, disjointed dance goes on, the camera pans through the audience, focusing on all of the people in Frances’s life who care about and support her. The company owner compliments her work, gushing over the performance. Frances briefly talks to one of her old roommates, Benji, and it is clear that something might develop between the two of them. But the person she’s “making eyes” at is Sophie, her best friend.
The framing of Frances’s life around a dance career is perfect, because dance is a profession that one ages out of, and it’s so much, on the surface, about performance. Frances, as she perceives herself getting older, feels like she needs to perform to choreography not her own. When she realizes she can make her life work in another way, she’s rewarded.
In an article at Forbes, Dina Gachman notes the importance of Frances’s career trajectory, and the lesson that there’s something in between getting exactly what you think you want or settling for less:
“That doesn’t mean you should meander all over the place without a plan waiting for success to rain down on you, but one of the great things about Frances Ha is that it’s saying: It’s OK that your life and career aren’t picture perfect. Maybe the picture is just different than you imagined.”
In the end, Frances is moving into her own apartment, a sign of success, since her living arrangements have always been cause for stress and uncertainty. She’s able to work and make a living in the dance world. She’s everything she wanted to be, just in a different way.
Frances dancing in a grown-up pencil skirt. |
As she goes to put her handwritten name plate onto her mailbox, her name is too long to fit. She folds it neatly, and “Frances Ha” peeks out from the window. She did what she needed to do to make it fit, much like she did with her life. When she does figure out how to make all of the pieces fit, she gets everything she needs and realizes what she wants.
In “Why Frances Ha is the Must-See Feminist Film of the Year,” Imran Siddiquee says,
“While capturing the hilarity, awkwardness and anxiety all of us might face in our late 20s – gaining and losing best friends while pursuing what feels like an increasingly impossible dream – Frances Ha says something very specific about gender. It shows us that women can be messy, graceful, sad, funny, artistic, ambitious and caring all at once. You know, human.”
The sheer humanity on display throughout Frances Ha feels much more groundbreaking than it should. The women and men in the film are not people you aspire to be, but they are people, on some level, who you are and who you know.
After watching the film, I immediately told my best friend she had to watch it. The depiction of female friendship and the muddy misery of the mid-20s was breathtaking. There are so many art-house and Hollywood films that center on men’s coming-of-age stories, and so few about women’s. Frances Ha shows that it can be done, and it can be done well.
That moment when you are in the control booth of your life, which may not look how you thought it would, but it’s just how it’s supposed to be? That’s a great moment.
When a flawed and wonderful woman is having that moment on the big screen? That’s a great moment for all of us.
Movie poster for Little Miss Sunshine |
Look around… this place is fucked! I don’t want these people judging Olive—fuck them! You’re the mom—you’re supposed to protect her! Everyone is gonna laugh at her, Mom… please don’t let her do this. Look, she’s not a beauty queen. She’s just not.
Sheryl checking in with Olive before her talent act, with Richard and Dwayne looking on |
Olive’s dad Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear) is a failing motivational speaker (a complete contradiction); brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) is in teenage-boy training to become a jet pilot (which later goes down the tubes when it’s discovered that he’s colorblind); Uncle Frank (Steve Carell), the “number one highly-regarded Proust scholar” in America, is recovering from an attempted suicide after his love interest, a graduate student, dumps him for the “number two highly-regarded Proust scholar” in America; Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin) is a heroin addict who’s been kicked out of his retirement community and has an abiding love of women, porn, and Rick James (and has, possibly, a knack for choreography); and then there’s mom Sheryl (Toni Collette), whose only major flaw seems to be furtively smoking cigarettes (and possibly marrying a failed motivational speaker). Olive (Abigail Breslin) and the pageant represent the movement toward something better, something successful (by literally moving toward the land of sunshine, California), even when it’s clear to everyone that Olive is just not a beauty queen, as Dwayne says. It’s not that she is a real contender that drives the Hoovers toward redemption. It’s the symbolic value of her possible success in the type of contest that society sanctions as a visible indicator of success (however troubling or, well, foolish a beauty contest is as an indicator of success for young girls and women). In other versions of these contests—careers, dreams of careers—Richard, Frank, and Dwayne, in particular, have failed.
Olive as a symbol of redemption (and the need to protect her as such) is established early in the film, when the frazzled Sheryl arrives home with Frank, and the family sits down to a working-mom meal of a bucket of fried chicken, salad, and Sprite Zero. Everyone else seems suited (or apathetic) enough to ignore the bandages on Frank’s wrists, but not Olive. She looks at Frank, gasps, and exclaims, “What happened to your arms?” Richard changes the subject to Olive’s pageant dance routine, but Frank interrupts, saying he’s had an accident and shifts the conversation to Dwayne’s vow of silence. Olive, however, insists. Frank says it’s “okay” to talk about it, which leads Sheryl to indicate that she’s “okay” with talking about it (she’s “pro-honesty”) if Frank is. After Frank permits Sheryl to tell Olive that he attempted suicide, which she does, Richard flips, suggests that it’s not an appropriate conversation to have at dinner, and “shushes” Olive. She’s nonplussed, however, and poignantly asks why Frank would want to kill himself.
Richard explaining to Olive why Uncle Frank may be a loser, but she’s going to be a winner, in the dinner scene |
The reasons for the Hoovers to protect Olive are not always as selfish as those that Richard might have for protecting her (and, on occasion, they have to protect Olive from her father’s philosophy). In fact, the literal protection of Olive from the social pressures that break us down as adults is often incredibly touching, as it is in the diner scene wherein Olive orders her waffles “a la mode-ee.” Although Sheryl questions Olive’s choice of ice cream on the grounds of it being so early in the morning, Richard objects because he’s still got his eye on her success (as a beauty queen specifically, but replace the pageant with anything else and he’d likely have a similar objection). He breaks into a patronizing lesson on how ice cream comes from cream, which comes from cows, and notes that “cream has a lot of fat in it.” Sheryl, bless her, knows where he’s going with this and mutters under her breath “Richh-eerd.” As usual, Richard turns Sheryl’s earlier “pro-honesty” defense of telling Olive about Frank’s suicide attempt against her (“she’s gonna find out anyway”). When Olive asks what she might find out, Richard replies, “Well, when you eat ice cream, the fat in the ice cream becomes fat in the body.”
The Hoovers at their first pit stop on the road, looking totally enthused as Richard explains to Olive how cream makes you fat |
“Does anyone want my ice cream?” Olive sadly asks.
Grandpa to the rescue. “Yeah, I’d like a little…” he says, and then he invites everyone else to have some, as well, until Olive protests “Wait! Stop! Don’t eat it all…” and digs in. (And Sheryl cuts Richard’s attempted interruption of this as Dwayne shoots a spitball through a straw directly into Richard’s face.) Taking their cue from Sheryl, Grandpa, Dwayne, and Frank are not only protecting Olive’s desire to eat ice cream; they are ultimately protecting her right to make her own choices and to disregard what society (a patriarchal society represented by Richard, maybe?) tells her to choose.
This particular scene foreshadows the protection the Hoover men give Olive during her dance performance during the talent portion of Little Miss Sunshine. Having made it to California and only losing one person (poor Grandpa), the Hoovers have everything invested in Olive, including the emotional toll their own failures have taken on them. Olive’s routine to Rick James’ “Super Freak,” choreographed by the recently departed Grandpa, is the film’s true highlight because it does so much in a few minutes: it makes explicit the sexualized undertones of the child glitz pageant world (Olive might be shaking her bootie and doing the ever-lovable “growl crawl,” but the little dolls in their make-up and teased hair represent something similar on a different frequency); it provides the context through which the Hoovers are able to pull together and to accept themselves as they are; but it also provides the moment when Richard, as well as Frank and Dwayne, are really able to protect Olive for who she is and what she’s chosen. With the head pageant judge in a tizzy over the routine, Richard jumps on stage to protect Olive from being pulled off, but instead of quietly suggesting to his daughter that it’s time to go, he begins dancing with her (and is joined by the rest of the Hoovers in quick succession).
Frank, Richard, and Dwayne rockin’ out on stage with Olive |
Which brings me back to the quotation from Dwayne I opened with.
Dwayne and Richard are now mentally awake enough to be concerned about Olive competing in the show; they’ve now seen the polished contestants strut and pose for the judges, and they know she’s not made of that stuff. As Dwayne points out, she’s just not. At first flustered by the sudden concern toward Olive, Sheryl finally explains to them:
Olive is who she is. She has worked so hard, she’s poured everything into this. We can’t just take it away from her—we can’t! I know you wanna protect her… but we gotta let Olive be Olive.
Letting “Olive be Olive”—and learning to protect the choice Olive can make to be herself—is ultimately what allows the Hoovers to accept themselves and one another. We don’t know what life will be like for the Hoovers once they return to New Mexico, but one thing is for certain by the film’s end: they’ve broken through a lot more than the barrier gate in the parking lot of the Redondo Beach Inn.
The Go-Getter movie poster |
This is a guest post by Melanie Killingsworth.
The Go-Getter doesn’t scream “feminist.” The central character is a guy named Mercer; in fact, the movie doesn’t actually pass the Bechdel test, because no one really talks to anyone besides Mercer.
Mercer’s first words – to himself and the audience at large – are about Huckleberry Finn, not remotely feminist literature. After a little soliloquy, Mercer steals a car and starts a road trip in search of his older half-brother, Arlen. Along the way, the imagination interludes and fantastical sequences give the movie a dreamy, slightly drugged quality. Where am I going with this, and how is The Go-Getter feminist? Perhaps I should sum up the plot first.
Mercer stops at a pottery collective where Arlen used to live, only to get punched in the mouth by someone Arlen stole from. The puncher repents and offers Mercer some pot, which Mercer tries for the first time. All the collective members sit down for dinner with Mercer, and a few details about his mother come out. She was a substitute teacher and mom at 45, and though those things are hardly for the faint of heart, Mercer feels a need to portray her as a sled dog racer and later someone who travelled the Australian outback. The conversation and the pot help Mercer air some of his feelings, but he’s not much closer to finding Arlen.
The collective a bust, Mercer goes to find his middle-school crush, Joely, whom he obviously idolized; the camera angles point up at her and down at him while she climbs onto the pedestal of bleachers. Joely joins the road trip for kicks in the hopes of taking Mercer’s virginity, while Mercer dresses up and takes ecstasy to impress her before they have sex. In the end, she’s underwhelmed, and he’s apologetic.
Joely in The Go-Getter |
Mercer goes from his first sexual experience to the set (shack, really) of a pornographic film where Arlen fleetingly “worked.” The director claims he’s “making art” about “making love,” but the boys in the waiting room talk about girls in dehumanizing ways, and one of the actresses dissolves into tears in the background. “What good is it if she cries before she gets fucked?” the director asks. Mercer isn’t at all sure how to respond, so he steals the camera and runs. They can’t film without it, he figures.
Mercer goes back to find Joely in the hotel with her cousin and a friend. When Mercer tries to take off by himself, the threesome steals Kate’s car and leaves. Mercer hitches a ride after them and steals the car back, again. Next stop is the pet store where Arlen ran a check-scam with an older woman. Said woman ponders Mercer, decides to take a maternal attitude, rambles a bit about free love and choice, then charms Mercer into singing hymns with her not-a-band to fulfill her community service requirements.
All this time, Mercer has been chatting with Kate, the girl from whom he stole the car. One of my favorite sequences is when Mercer is on the phone trying to imagine what Kate might look like, and the visualization runs through several women. It shows only their faces, not their bodies, and some of the suggested mental connections – the oldest of the group liking beer, one of the younger ones coming up on the suggestion of fake teeth – eschew stereotypes.
As Mercer parts ways with the pet shop woman, Kate finally shows up, more angry that Mercer lied than the fact that he still has her car. “Doesn’t anybody know anybody at all?” she asks. The two of them talk as they drive, getting closer emotionally and physically. Eventually, Mercer catches up to Arlen and gets scorn and a bloody lip for his trouble. Kate comforts him, and later they have sex.
Kate as both nurturer and protector |
Mercer is finally able to sit down civilly with Arlen. Mercer is not crushed by Arlen’s anger; he addresses Arlen as an equal. No begging, no insecurity or needing a big brother’s acceptance. All the things Mercer has learned about women along the way led Mercer to his brother. Sex may be the turning point that leads to this conversation, but it’s the conversation that causes Mercer to realize he has “become a man,” and a man mostly shaped by women, at that.
So what makes a man’s coming-of-age story a “feminist” travel film? The fact equal-opportunity is still so rare these days? No, (though on a side note: sadness and anger!). It’s because as Mercer’s trip progresses, the catalysts are fully-realized women who exist for more than just his gratification. His trip is prompted by his mother’s death. All his stops along the way involve women who reveal something about themselves and/or Mercer. Finally, Kate, from whom Mercer stole the car, tracks him down and finishes the road trip with him. In a moment near the end, Mercer asks Kate, “Want to go to Louisiana with me?” and she raises her eyebrows and notes, “It’s my car,” as if to sum up that though Mercer has been making his own way, it’s women who are enabling and teaching him. It’s women he has learned to be like or not-like, from his mom to his first crush to this girl he just met over the phone.
Mercer talking to Kate on the phone, while imagining her as his shoulder angel |
Women are sexual beings who initiate all Mercer’s intimate interludes. Women make small talk about weather and geography and deep conversation weighing fate versus coincidence. Women are nurturing (they cook food and tend to Mercer’s various injuries), but also capable (they make pottery, paint doors, and run stores). Mercer – and at times other men – are also portrayed as nurturing and loving, and none of these are seen as undesirable or distinctly “female” qualities.
A potential negative to the feminist theme is the porn shack scene. Coming-of-age must deal with sex, but since Mercer deals with it in other ways, is this underdeveloped side trip necessary? It has at least one damsel in distress, one predatory director, and three young boys who are likely being taken advantage of by the director, but who are also looking at the experience as their license to take advantage of the girls. Mercer weakly condemns it, then runs from it. The only real reason for its inclusion is – in leading to Mercer stealing the camera – girls again become a catalyst and point out the uncertainty in Mercer’s actions. He won’t be confident in his decisions until the end of the film when he reaches “manhood.” Of course, it also gives Mercer another noble reason to steal a prop useful to the story, so one could argue for pragmatism.
Another possible negative, Joely’s sexual manipulation of various men, is seen as an individual choice. Her “sins” aren’t sex or promiscuity or drugs; they’re theft of things Mercer already stole. She’s only his equal there, and none of her choices are representative of womanhood, just as Mercer’s choices aren’t representative of manhood.
Neither of these quibbles takes away from the overall woman-positive tone of the story. Kate responds to Mercer stealing her car with frustrated intrigue and working things out verbally. In opposition to this method, violence, the “male” answer to problems (as in, here always perpetrated by males), happens four times – the potter lashing out at Mercer because of Arlen; the three friends physically assaulting Mercer to steal Kate’s car; Mercer attempting to steal the car back, being mocked until someone discharges a gun; and finally, after years of repressed emotion, when Arlen demeans their mother and he and Mercer exchange blows. “Get yourself a hunting knife, can’t nobody take your hat,” the liquor salesman advises.
Mercer’s fantasies imagine how the violent road taken would end |
Instead, Mercer becomes strong without violence, has sex without unrealistic idealizations, comes to terms with his brother, and realizes much about himself. All this he learns from women, while he and the story embrace and accept women as equal, strong, complex creatures with agency. Add to that a car trek cross-country to Louisiana – voila! – feminist travel film.
A film doesn’t have to have a woman as the main character to be feminist. This story unabashedly demonstrates the importance of women, not just in relation to men, but to themselves and the world in general.
Movie poster for Away We Go |
Burt and Verona |
Roderick, LN, and Bailey |
Tom and Burt |
Verona and Burt |
Teresa shows Sanaz to her room. |
Sanaz must deal with the consequences alone. |
“The Yellow Room, similar to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ is an exploration of an old conundrum. Ultimately it’s the women who deal with the consequences, no matter if you are pro-choice or anti-choice. I just want people to look at the debate from a new angle—from the eyes of the woman who goes through with the experience itself.”
“I don’t think art needs a cause, but every social cause, hell yeah, needs art! … Films can be a canvas in which we can find our own truth. Art encourages free thinking.”
Brave
“Why I’m Excited About Pixar’s Brave & Its Kick-Ass Female Protagonist … Even If She Is Another Princess” by Megan Kearns
“Will Brave‘s Warrior Princess Merida Usher In a New Kind of Role Model for Girls?” by Megan Kearns
“The Princess Archetype In the Movies” by Laura A. Shamas
Beasts of the Southern Wild
“Beasts of the Southern Wild: Gender, Race and a Powerful Female Protagonist in the Most Buzzed About Film” by Megan Kearns
“Beasts of the Southern Wild: I didn’t get it.” by Robin Hitchcock
The Invisible War
“The Invisible War Takes on Sexual Assault in the Military” by Soraya Chemaly
Future Weather
“The Authentic Portrayal of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Future Weather“ by Stephanie Rogers
Movie poster for The Sessions |
Written by Stephanie Rogers.
Helen Hunt as Cheryl Cohen Greene and John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien in The Sessions |
That’s some pretty intense subject matter … not me being a lazy fuck—that’s for my therapist and me to work out SOMEDAY—but the serious exploration of a disabled man’s sexuality. While the focus remains on O’Brien throughout, The Sessions also gives us several comedic moments with other physically disabled characters as O’Brien interviews them for an article he’s writing about the sex lives of the disabled. I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to see an on-screen depiction of people with disabilities who do things like omg have sex and who also enjoy talking candidly and unapologetically about having sex. O’Brien’s reactions are hilarious; he gets fairly embarrassed and weirded out during the interviews, but the stories he hears ultimately empower him to think seriously about his own sex life, or lack thereof.
Enter the inimitable William H. Macy (yes!). He plays O’Brien’s priest, Father Brendan, who listens to O’Brien’s confessions every day while guiding him through the guilt he feels about seeking out a sex surrogate. That relationship soon evolves (once O’Brien begins spending time with the surrogate) into more of a friendship, and it’s wonderful to see those lines blurred; watching Macy go from praying with O’Brien in church for the first half of the film to showing up in sweats with a six-pack at O’Brien’s house in the later half got the whole theater cracking up. That friendship grounds the film and keeps it from veering into sentimental territory; the audience looks forward to their light-hearted conversations about some truly heavy subject matter. At the same time, their friendship adds emotional depth to the characters. We realize it isn’t just O’Brien’s physical disability that complicates his sexual exploration, but his Catholic faith as well. These two immensely likeable men clearly like each other—and their pontifications about the role of religion in their lives, and what God will and won’t forgive—keeps this from turning into yet another film about a dude just trying to get laid.
William H. Macy as Father Brendan and John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien in The Sessions |
Before seeing the movie, I hadn’t heard about sex surrogates. The real Ms. Greene (who still practices at the age of 68) describes the difference between her profession and prostitution as follows:
If you go to a prostitute, it’s like going to a restaurant. You read the menu, you choose what you want, they prepare, they hope that you love it, and hopefully you want to come back.
With a surrogate, it’s like going to cooking school. You get the ingredients, you learn to make a meal together—and then the point is to go out into the world and share that and not come back.
Helen Hunt as Cheryl Cohen Greene in The Sessions |
Most reviews I’ve read of The Sessions focus on Hawkes’ ridiculously good performance as O’Brien—after all, his acting essentially comes from nothing more than his voice and facial expressions. Oscar nomination? Probably. But I’d like to focus on the women in the film, particularly Hunt’s portrayal of Cheryl Cohen Greene.
Helen Hunt ultimately brought The Sessions to life for me. She treats O’Brien with such care, both emotionally and physically, while always maintaining a directness with him that undercuts any potential melodrama. One of my favorite scenes in the film happens right after O’Brien’s first, very brief moment of vaginal penetration. Afterward, he asks, “Did you come, too?” to which she responds, “No, Mark, I didn’t.” I fell in love with the film right then; the innocence of his question and the honesty of her response created more intimacy than most faux-passionate, desperation-filled Hollywood sex scenes could ever hope for.
And that’s the thing about Hunt’s performance. Hawkes, while indisputably great, wouldn’t be half as good in this role if he weren’t playing opposite Helen Hunt. She portrays Greene as confident and self-assured, with no lacy-underweared attempts at sexiness, and with only a tinge of sweetness. This isn’t a film about seduction. It’s mechanical and complicated and wonderful—at one point he has to stop performing cunnilingus because he can’t breathe; at another, she goes to the bathroom in front of him with the door open. Though she forges a strong bond with O’Brien emotionally, the goal always lingers: to help him lose his virginity and help him discover new ways to use and appreciate the human body, his own especially. Hunt says as much in an interview with the L.A. Times:
Maybe it all gets blurry near the end for a second … But I think that’s life—you can have some errant arrow prick your heart, but these two characters have an intention to keep to their mandate that this all is supposed to serve him. And both of them stick to that, painful as it is.
John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien and Moon Bloodgood as Vera in The Sessions |
I’d like to say that all the women in the film were as wonderfully fleshed out and complex as Hunt’s character, but that isn’t true. O’Brien works with three women caretakers throughout, the first (and least conventionally attractive of which) he fires because she just kind of huffs around acting like an asshole. The second is a beautiful woman whose name I can’t remember, and her character development consists mainly of O’Brien gazing longingly over dreamy sequences of her hair blowing in the breeze and shit. Of course he proposes to her (why not!), at which point she quits … but then randomly shows up again later for an impromptu picnic in the park. Okay. The third woman caretaker, well, I kind of loved her. Vera (played by Moon Bloodgood) eases his anxiety more than anything, often making funny quips about sex and the not-a-big-dealness of it as she transports him to and from his sessions with Greene. That affords her an authentic intimacy that the other women characters—other than Greene, of course—don’t get to have. While the previous caretakers exist as shallow plot points to move O’Brien’s story forward, Vera shares a true friendship with him; in many ways, their relationship mirrors the directness and openness of his relationship with Greene.
John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien in The Sessions |
Movie poster for Vamps |
Jason Buchanan on Rotten Tomatoes effectively captures the plot as follows: “Radiant New York City vampires Goody (Alicia Silverstone) and Stacy (Krysten Ritter) find their immortality in question after learning that love can still smolder in the realm of the undead. Meanwhile, Russian bloodsucker Vadim (Justin Kirk) prowls the streets in search of the next big thrill, and Dr. Van Helsing (Wallace Shawn) seeks to exterminate the creatures of the night as young Joey Van Helsing develops an unusual fixation on Stacy. As ravenous ‘stem’ vampire Ciccerus (Sigourney Weaver) presides over her dark dynasty with the help of her loyal assistant Ivan (Todd Barry), oddball Renfield (Zak Orth) strives to impress Stacy and Goody by any means necessary. Amidst all of the bloodshed and intrigue, nefarious vampire Vlad (Malcolm McDowell) works to perfect his knitting skills.”
Alicia Silverstone as Goody and Krysten Ritter as Stacy in Vamps |
[SPOILER] Case in point: one of my absolute favorite scenes in the film happens early on, when Goody and Stacy head out for their nighttime ritual of club-hopping and imitating the new dance moves of the local youth “Day Walkers” (the term they use to refer to The Living among them). A couple of particularly horrible dude vampires approaches a woman after she bends over, ass in the air, with the word “Juicy” written on her tight pants. The dude vamps merely introduce themselves to her, to which she responds, “I’ll get my coat.” Goody chastises the horrible dude vampires—Goody and Stacy drink only the blood of rodents, not humans—and the dudes respond with, “She’s asking for it,” referring to her “Juicy” attire. It’s a pretty fucking great commentary on the victim-blaming that always accompanies any instance of the rape or sexual assault of women.
Stacy and Goody on the computer |
This scene makes me so happy for a couple of reasons. First, a woman intervening to help another woman avoid getting killed by two horrible dude vampires—an obvious metaphor for rape in this scene, rarely happens in movies. How lovely to see that! Because women looking out for their friends certainly happens in real life—first-hand experience! Second, while I don’t necessarily like the implication that women always go for Bad Boys, I appreciate the acknowledgment that bros like this, who want to harm, abuse, and assault women, definitely exist.
Stacy, Goody, and Sigourney Weaver as Cisserus in Vamps |
Two words: Sigourney Weaver. Do we not adore her? The Alien films, mainly due to Weaver’s badass role as Ellen Ripley, remain one of the quintessential go-to franchises for getting that much-needed feminist fix that Hollywood movies today seem less willing to provide. (Quick shout out to Hunger Games, though!) And Weaver’s role in Vamps as Cisserus, the head vampire, or “Stem,” as they refer to the few vampires who possess the power to turn people into vampires, displays some feminist qualities—strength, leadership, and ambition, to name a few—but her character isn’t without flaws.
While the other vamps fear Weaver’s character—because she’s In Charge—they mainly fear her because she’s the evil, murderous villain. She obsesses over acquiring the love of young men, and when she doesn’t get it, well, you know, she eats them. In many ways, she reminds me of a vampiric version of Miranda Priestly, Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. She often summons Goody and Stacy (by psychically speaking to them), and it’s almost always to make them model clothing. (Ha!) See, vampires can’t see themselves in mirrors (invisible!), so Weaver wants to look at these women wearing her very youthful, fashionable clothing so that she can visualize what it possibly looks like on her. Eventually though, Cisserus’ power goes so far to her head that she begins putting the other vampires in danger, and the tagline for the last act of the film basically becomes “This Bitch Needs to Die.”
Vampires hanging out at the club |
Collider: What made you decide to jump into the vampire genre with Vamps?
Weaver: Well, I’m a big Amy Heckerling fan, and I also loved the character. She was so unrepentant … I love playing delicious, evil parts like that.
Collider: How does your character fit into the story?
Weaver: She is the person who turned the girls into vampires. So, they have to do her bidding, and she’s very unreasonable and demanding. I would have to say that the one change I made was that I thought she was not really enjoying herself very much, in the original script. I thought, “What’s not to enjoy?” She’s 2,000 years old, she can have anything, she can have anyone, she can do what she wants, so I wanted her to be totally in-the-moment. So, I talked to Amy about it and she just evolved that way. She’s a really happy vampire. She digs it.
Stacy and Goody at the club |
That’s why this close relationship between Goody and Stacy is so important to see on The Big Screen in 2012.
In an interview conducted with the director Amy Heckerling by Women and Hollywood, Melissa Silverstein asks the question, “Do you have any comment on the fact that only 5% of movies are directed by women?” Heckerling’s response? “It’s a disgusting industry. I don’t know what else to say. Especially now. I can’t stomach most of the movies about women. I just saw a movie last night—I don’t want to say the name—but again with the fucking wedding, and the only time women say anything is about men.”
Word.
Megan‘s Picks:
“No Love in the Wild” [on Beasts of the Southern Wild] by bell hooks via NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Black Power Takes Center Stage at TIFF with Angela Davis Documentary by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood
Fox Host to Scarlett Johansson: “You’re Worth Millions” — Pay for Your Friends’ Contraceptives “Instead of Asking Me” via RH Reality Check
Gender, Power, and Chris Brown’s Battered Woman Tattoo by Lisa Wade via Sociological Images
James Cameron: ‘Hollywood Gets Action Women Wrong’ by Hadley Freeman via The Guardian
From Lena Dunham to Junot Diaz, How to Write People Who Aren’t You by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress
Mandy Patinkin Left Criminal Minds Over Show’s Subversive Misogyny by Alex Cranz via FemPop
Everything You Need to Know About SNL’s New Lady Cast Members by Intern Scarlett via Bust Magazine
Amy Poehler Teaches You to Feel Better About Your Body by Lindy West via Jezebel
Stephanie‘s Picks:
‘Marigold’ and ‘Moonrise’: Summer 2012 Indie B.O. Champs by Scott Myers via Go Into the Story
TIFF Programmer Dishes on Film Roles for Women, George Clooney and Saying No by Derek Carkner via CityNews Toronto
Is Parks and Rec the Most Feminist Show on TV? by Emily Heist Moss via Rosie Says
Beginning to See by Karina Longworth via Slate
Feminist Africa Issue 16. 2012: African Feminist Engagements with Film via African Gender Institute
A Woman Among Warlords via Indiegogo
In Defense of “Bachelorette’s” Mean Girls by Willa Paskin via Salon
The New New Girl: Mindy Kaling Promotes Herself Out of The Office and Into The Mindy Project by Jada Yuan via Vulture
This is a story about lesbian schoolgirls.
Those of you who have already seen Lost and Delirious, The Moth Diaries, D.E.B.S., Therese and Isabelle, Fucking Åmål, But I’m A Cheerleader, Heavenly Creatures, Bilitis, and every other lesbian schoolgirl film out there, just hear me out and try not to roll your eyes yet.
Cracks, the directorial debut of Jordan Scott (daughter of Ridley Scott), is an independent film based on Sheila Kohler’s novel of the same name. Although it was released in Ireland and the UK in 2009, Cracks didn’t come out the US at all until 2011, showing on only six screens. While it takes several liberties with the book, setting it at an isolated British boarding school in the 30’s rather than a South African boarding school in the 60’s, the story faithfully focuses on a group of girls who make up their school’s diving team, their mysterious mentor, Miss G (Green), and the new student who overturns the status quo just by existing.
This is also, mind you, a lesbian boarding school movie in which neither the character with the crush nor the object of the crush tragically commits suicide. Now, I’m not going to swear to you that this is an entirely death-free film, or even that it’s a particularly easy film to watch. I will, however, swear that the characters are fascinating, the score and cinematography are stunning, and Eva Green’s costumes (thank you, Alison Byrne) will take your breath away.
And, for those of you with more refined interests, there’s a scene where she strips off and urges a group of students to join her for some late-night skinny-dipping. This is actually (a) relevant to the plot and (b) shot so beautifully it doesn’t feel gratuitous, both factors that could easily have proven to be pitfalls for several scenes. The entire movie manages to evoke sensuality without crossing the line into lewdness, no mean feat considering how effortlessly it could have portrayed the girls as archetypal nubile young things seething with sexual frustration. Instead, the emphasis is on the characters’ development, not the audience’s titillation.
“To dive is to fly,” says Miss G to her girls. “Set yourself free of the shackles of conformity. Let nothing hold you back except the air itself. You are between heaven and earth. The rules no longer apply.”
And let’s be real, if Eva Green was your diving instructor, you’d probably cede to her every whim too.
When we first meet Miss G, she happens to be wearing the ensemble pictured above while lounging in a rowboat with Di, one of her students, and discussing a scandalous book she had no qualms about lending her.
Di Radfield (Juno Temple) is the star of the diving team and something of a bigwig on campus, the Regina George in the 1934 edition of Mean Girls.
She’s also head over heels for Miss G.
Based on this knowledge alone (and possibly the same three plotlines that tend to occur in most boarding school movies), I personally would already be gritting my teeth in preparation for ninety minutes all about Di’s introspective self-loathing and her efforts to avoid the censure of her peers, the castigation of her teachers, and the denunciation of her desires. In most cases, I wouldn’t be far off the mark: usually, the character with the same-sex crush encounters some kind of scorn from others simply for daring to find another woman attractive, which then becomes the main source of conflict.
But that isn’t the case at all for the girls of the fictitious St. Mathilda’s. Di, instead, is admired for being daring. Already a natural leader, she has even more prestige by being the favorite and having the ear of the teacher all the girls idolize.
Nor does Di herself have any apparent issue with her feelings. “I’ve had rather a lot of lustful thoughts,” she admits during confession, one of only a handful of scenes to feature a male character. “Do I have to be sorry for all of them?”
Her teammates and sometimes lackeys, a garden of British blossoms with names like Poppy (Imogen Poots), Lily (Ellie Nunn), Laurel (Adele McCann), Rosie (Zoe Carroll), and awkward Fuzzy (short for Persephone, played by Clemmie Dugdale), are all in awe of her. One of the first scenes features Poppy eagerly asking if Di, emerging from the chapel, admitted to reading the book Miss G let her borrow. Di only scoffs that they can’t stay pure forever and she sees nothing wrong with wanting to know about the real world. And of course, she would never do anything that might get Miss G into trouble.
Miss G, who is cultured and serene and has a killer wardrobe, teaches diving (though always fully clothed and from the safety of a dock or rowboat) and apparently at least one additional class that involves textbooks. The only evidence we see of the latter is when she has the girls put their books away and then proceeds to regale them with tales of her adventures in far-off lands—which her students, of course, lap up without question.
Enter new girl Fiamma (María Valverde), the Spanish noble who happens to actually be as well-traveled as Miss G claims to be.
Fiamma, the living embodiment of the outside world, quietly challenges the authority of both Di and Miss G almost immediately. She joins the team and usurps Di as their top diver, exposes Miss G’s fantastical stories as word-for-word recitations of Mary Kingsley, and demands to know why the divers never compete against other schools. She is every bit the catalyst her name implies, causing the students to consider several of the questions we as viewers have been accumulating all along.
Until now, the girls have been accustomed to the remoteness of their lives, with only Miss G’s stories as a window to anything else. The school itself, located on a fictional island off the coast of England, is accessible only by ferry. Letters home are meant to show students’ “fine penmanship and turn of phrase” and are read by their teacher before being approved and sent. The divers share the same dorm and classes, bound into an elite little coterie by their positions on the team, led all the while by a teacher who never dives, never risks or plunges herself, but swears that the most important thing in life is desire and makes them all believe it.
While the rest of the team is amazed by her, Miss G in particular becomes fascinated with Fiamma, both wanting her and wanting to be her. Di, however, resents Fiamma for replacing her as Miss G’s favorite.
We learn, through Miss G’s snooping, that Fiamma was sent away for becoming involved with a boy of a far lower social status than her own. While Fiamma believes she will only be held at the school until the air clears for her back home, its almost ethereal isolation assumes a more menacing role when Miss G calmly reels off the names of other girls who also thought they would only be there for a short time. “Only Di,” she tells Fiamma, “realized this is forever.”
But Fiamma’s only response is, “It is not forever. They will leave you.”
Gradually it comes to light that, although Miss G constantly tells outrageous anecdotes about her life, she herself is actually a product of the same school. When asked by a ferryman, she coolly admits she does not care for open water. The one time she leaves school grounds, we see her mumbling to herself and visibly steeling up to stroll through the tiny town on the mainland in order to buy treats for Fiamma. As the girls’ coach, she easily plays the sultry storyteller who captivates them all, but once out of her element she literally isn’t able to walk the walk.
Her obsession with Fiamma manifests in progressively disturbing ways, from showering her with affection to stealing her belongings to a truly disturbing scene where she forces Fiamma to dive whilst on the verge of an asthma attack. While the other girls adore Miss G unquestioningly, Fiamma fails time and time again to be ensnared by her spell. And when Miss G learns that she can never regain control or save face while Fiamma is around, her resolution isn’t pretty.
This is a story about three passionate women that just so happens to take place in a boarding school: Miss G, who struggles to uphold the persona she’s created for herself within the institution she can’t leave; Fiamma, everything Miss G could never be; and Di, enthralled by her hero’s tales of far-off places but so reluctant to accept a person actually from one of them.
Cracks is guilty of falling into the characterization trope of the sophisticated mentor who isn’t at all what she seems, as well as the more troubling trope of the predatory deviant who clearly isn’t right in the head. As Miss G’s obsession with Fiamma escalates, so does her exposure as a pathological liar who glamorizes herself for the teams’ affections. The film also borrows liberally from the old boarding school standby of catty girls turning on each other at every opportunity (interestingly, several actors were boarding school students themselves when the movie was filmed) and their motivations blow hot and cold too quickly to seem logical at times—one minute they’re turning on Fiamma at Di’s behest, and the next they’re striking a truce and planning to have a midnight feast.
While the novel Cracks was titled after a slang term for a crush, throughout the movie we see actual cracks as they appear in Miss G, in the sway she holds over her girls, and in the complacence of the girls themselves when their world and their idol are shaken apart. The story ends with all three of the main characters taking leave of the school in different ways, a conclusion just open-ended enough to leave you wondering if the reality created for these girls actually is forever, or if independence is still possible in spite of it all.
Emily Campbell is an M. Ed. candidate who has taught English on three continents and still secretly wants to be an Animorph when she grows up.