Indie Spirit Best Feature Nominee

Indie Spirit Best Feature Nominee: Take Shelter

Take Shelter (2011)

This is a review from Monthly Guest Contributor Carrie Nelson.

Writing about Take Shelter for a website like Bitch Flicks is a challenge. Certainly, I can write endlessly about why I loved Take Shelter. There is no doubt in my mind that it was the best film I saw in 2011. I loved the story, I loved the performances, I loved the cinematography and the overall aesthetics of the film, and I loved the fact that it genuinely surprised me with its suspense. But while Take Shelter addresses a wide range of dynamic themes – family, mental illness, standing up for one’s convictions – it is not an explicitly feminist film, nor is it a film that discusses gender issues overtly. As I think about the film from a feminist perspective, however, I realize more and more that the story is actually quite feminist, even if it doesn’t advertise itself as such or appear to be at first glance.

In Take Shelter, Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon, in a performance that should have garnered him a Best Actor Academy Award nomination) is a husband and a father, working as a construction worker in Ohio. He begins to have a series of nightmares about a storm, one that rains polluted water and causes people and animals to react manically. Fearing that his dreams are prophetic, Curtis decides to build a tornado shelter in his yard, in order to protect his family from the apocalyptic doom he senses is coming. Curtis’ actions cause stress in all of his relationships – familial, social and professional – because no one understands why the shelter construction is so important to him. Curtis does not know if his dreams represent a true impending natural disaster, or if they are actually symptomatic of mental illness, a condition he may be inheriting from his mother (Kathy Baker). Nevertheless, he is driven to build the shelter, and no one can deter him.

The heart of Take Shelter is the relationship between Curtis, his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain, continuing her string of break-out roles in 2011) and their daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). In many ways, the LaForche family structure is traditional. After all, the entire film is about the lengths one is willing to go in order to protect one’s family. Curtis and Samantha are good, church-going parents who put their family before anything else. But within that traditional model, the gender roles are less defined. Both Curtis and Samantha work outside the home to provide for the family, Curtis as a construction worker and Samantha as an artisan who sells crafts at local markets. Both are committed to raising Hannah, participating equally in school functions and spending time with her at home. Both are strong and determined, taking the sanctity and safety of their family incredibly carefully. The household and family may be traditional, but labor is not divided on gendered lines and neither Curtis nor Samantha is defined within the family unit by gender norms.

Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and Curtis (Michael Shannon)

The marriage of Curtis and Samantha is one of the most fascinating elements of the film. When their loving relationship is tested by Curtis’ increasingly erratic behavior, Samantha fears for his well-being, and for the well-being of herself and her daughter. But as worried as he makes her, and as little as she understands what he is experiencing, she stands by him. She doesn’t leave, and she doesn’t speak ill of him to others. She responds in a way that most loving spouses would.

Often in movies, the drama is increased by the collapse of marriages and otherwise committed relationships. I’m not going to say that marriage is easy, or that marriages always work out – it isn’t and they don’t, and it’s good for the media to reflect that reality. But it’s also true that marriages do not just fall apart over one problem. I’ve often seen films about failed marriages that give me pause, because I don’t understand how a strong commitment could fall apart so easily in real life. Part of what I loved about Take Shelter is how believable the LaForche marriage was in this respect. Curtis and Samantha have their problems, but they work through them the way committed couples in real life do. It was refreshing to see an image like that on-screen – an image that I do not think is presented often enough.

But this isn’t just a story of a woman who stands by her husband. It’s more complicated than that. In an interesting twist on traditional gender roles, it is Samantha who ultimately “saves” Curtis in Take Shelter. Without spoiling the film’s climax (a heart-wrenching, suspenseful scene which remains the best cinema I saw in all of 2011), it is important to note that Curtis only overcomes his nightmares with Samantha’s tough love. She doesn’t just support her husband through his struggles, she demands that he trust her and believe in her commitment to him, which is how he begins to rediscover his own strength. Without Samantha, Curtis may have completely lost sight of himself and his reality. It is she who grounds him and forces him, albeit kicking and screaming, to work with her, rather than against her out of fear or suspicion. Samantha and Curtis are able to protect and preserve their marriage, but it is Samantha who does the heavy lifting. She is no waif or pushover. She creates the marriage she wants to have and makes sure that nothing sabotages it, no matter what.

In an article for Ms. Magazine Blog, Janell Hobson sums up the message of Take Shelter as such:

Take Shelter asks us to put our faith back into our intuition (usually associated with women), to accept our maternal gifts (even as they veer off from patriarchal rationality), to listen to our inner voices when all others call us crazy and, most of us all, to surround ourselves with love.

I couldn’t agree with Hobson more. Take Shelter is about many things, but the theme of familial love is particularly strong. Curtis and Samantha have their struggles, but they survive together, and that sends a vital message. Storms do come. People do become ill. But as long as we have strength in our own personal convictions and love for the people who love us, we will survive those struggles. Traditional as it may be, it’s an important message, one that I wish I saw more frequently in films. Take Shelter presented it honestly and powerfully. Here’s hoping that more films can do the same.

Carrie Nelson is a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders and a Monthly Guest Contributor for Bitch Flicks. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit organization in NYC.

The Descendants: Oscar Best Picture and Indie Spirit Best Feature Nominee

The Good Patriarch: The Descendants, directed by Alexander Payne

This is a guest post from Stephanie Brown.

The Descendants is a movie about patriarchy, about husbandry and fatherhood as verb and action rather than noun and abstraction, about stewardship and responsibility. It implies that being a responsible and engaged and aware man is the key to being a responsible citizen and human being. It’s an important film that is very much of the current zeitgeist, but its ease and perfection and touches of comedy (very much like the persona of George Clooney himself) may mean that its depth is missed amid the excellent casting and the light touch of director Alexander Payne. The film is based on the book of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings, who was raised in Hawaii by her mother and step-father.

In The Descendants, Clooney’s character, Matt King, is the key decision maker for his family’s trust. Their family has lived in Hawaii for generations, part native Hawaiian and part white. They own a large undeveloped tract of land on Kauai. As the movie begins the family is in the process of selling the land to a developer and the group is poised to profit handsomely. His many cousins, also heirs, are portrayed as decent people, “good guys” who like to drink and hang out: contemporary landed gentry, enjoying their wealth and comfort in paradise. As decision maker for the fate of the fortune for a whole slew of cousins/subjects scattered around the islands and mainland, Matt is aptly named “king,” and he is affable, fair and aims to please. At the same time his wife, Elizabeth, has been in a water skiing accident and is now in a coma. Like many fathers and husbands, he is not very involved in his children’s lives and doesn’t know them very well, and is not really that knowledgeable of his wife’s life either. Soon after he retrieves his older daughter from her private boarding school (she is drunk when he finds her) to return home with him, he discovers from her that his wife has been having an affair. The movie is about the slow unfolding of this secret that has been kept from him by friends and family, and the slow strengthening of his bond with his daughters, especially his oldest daughter, Alex, played by Shailene Woodley. It’s a great performance by Woodley, who is utterly believably as an intelligent and strong but betrayed and angry teenager. She alone knows the exact nature of both her parents’ flaws but is powerless to make them change. Instead she causes problems as school and acts bratty and disagreeable. She is also shown schooling her younger sister in teenage survival skills, and while her methods and language are crude, one knows that this is likely the only practical advice the younger daughter has gotten from anyone. The movie is taken up with a road trip of sorts, actually jaunts between islands and neighborhoods therein, with Alex, the younger daughter Scottie (Amara Miller), and Alex’s friend Sid (Nick Krause) providing the comic relief. Matt and Alex search for and find the man with whom Elizabeth has had an affair and end up awkwardly befriending him and his wife (Matthew Lillard and Judy Green) as they move toward the conclusion—to finalize the sale of the land, and to see if Elizabeth will live or die.

Recent radio ads for The Descendants are comparing it to Terms of Endearment. I’m not sure Alexander Payne’s subtly crafted movies, Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways, while critical favorites, have become all-time-favorite-movie blockbusters in the way that Terms of Endearment has. I’m betting that the strategy of this comparison is to try to push it into the blockbuster box office realm. Will it ‘play in Peoria,” though? The Descendants does have an emotional death scene, where George Clooney says what is in his heart to his comatose and dying wife, but, like Payne’s other films, scenes such as this are restrained and Clooney’s soliloquy never veers into melodrama. By this point in the film, I didn’t like the wife and I was not sorry to see her die. I did not feel that the scene’s intention was to make me cry in an emotionally cathartic way. I don’t think the comparison between films works, and I think viewers who are expecting a Terms of Endearment will be disappointed. They may, however, see the powerful film that it is and come away awakened by its point of view. Think of the difference between Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment and Jack Nicholson in Payne’s About Schmidt. Schmidt’s character’s sad, reticent and somewhat baffled personality is naked and embarrassing to his daughter, and it’s a fine and restrained performance from Nicholson, who, like Clooney, is a masterful comedic actor. Both have elastic faces and trademark voices, and Payne’s direction keeps them true and honest in these depictions that move from comedic turns to profoundly honest portrayals of wounded American men.

The Descendants has many facets, touching on wealth and its effects on people and the history of the islands of Hawaii themselves, among other things, but to my mind, the most interesting theme in the film is the examination of fatherhood and manhood that is revealed via the relationship of Elizabeth to her father, Scott Thorson, played with frank ferocity by Robert Forster. Like a God, like Thor, Mr. Thorson has thunderous opinions and never wavers in them. We also know that he is wrong and pigheaded and the kind of person who is impossible to live with. He is certain that his daughter was a perfect wife and mother and that her accident could have been prevented if only Matt had bought her a safer boat to use rather than have her rely on her friends’ boats. Like his daughter, Mr. Thorson’s wife is shown as non compos mentis. She is in the throes of dementia and unaware of her surroundings. I do not think this is a coincidence. The only way to endure a man like this is to retreat into silence and passivity symbolized here as states of dementia and coma. His wife never speaks but she smiles. Mr. Thorson is an archetype of a Korean War-era father, all manliness, certainty and uncomplicated self-assurance. He has indulged his daughter and rejected his son—and he is not fond of his son-in-law. It is also clear that Mr. Thorson does not even know his daughter beyond superficial platitudes that he can shout about her being a good wife, mother and athlete (that she might be too much of a risk taker is ignored). He extols that she was a faithful wife when she was not. His fulsome praise has probably inflated his daughter’s ego and created a monster. Mr. Thorson is the figure of a crippled manhood that can exist only by rejecting deep feelings and hard truths about people, a style of fathering that may extol specialness, but rejects complexity and imperfection. Matt resembles him, unfortunately, in his own benign neglect of his children. Matt, whose style is more graceful and contemporary than Thorson’s, is of the generation that seeks to be seen as a “good guy” like his cousins—happy to take a profit and enjoy life, happy to live as a detached “back- up” parent (as he calls himself) who can easily just not pay much attention and not see any pain and suffering his children are feeling. They live in paradise and are quite wealthy, after all. It would never occur to the cousins or Matt to preserve the land for future generations; it is seen as inevitable that it must be sold and profit shared today. Benign neglect.

In the end, Matt decides not to sell the land but to preserve it. It is not a popular decision with the cousins. It is, however, the right decision. Matt uses his power for the first time and he risks not being popular, affable, or liked, and he is not. That is what it means to be a father and a steward and a patriarch, however. It means thinking about the future beyond current gain and comfort. It means thinking of future generations, accepting responsibility and using it reasonably and well. It means choosing not to be part of the rather dissolute landed gentry and not encouraging your children in this direction either. As I watched the film and saw him choose to preserve the land for future generations, it occurred to me that this decision would not have been believable if the film were released ten or twenty years ago. I don’t think I myself would have agreed with the decision. I would have thought, development is inevitable so why not let these decent people profit from it? But it has been released in a very different economic and social climate, where we are questioning the realities of profit and gain run amok. What is the result of all the wealth that we acquired and lost in the last twenty years? The culture tried to live like landed gentry. We exported our jobs and we exported our pollution in order to create our crap without regulations, and we sought to live like the cousins, expecting a good deal to come our way and to continue to come our way. The Descendants got me considering these truths. If one is a patriarch, one should accept it and be a responsible one. One should father and husband as a verb. And that goes the same for matriarchs and mothers and wives. If Mr. Thorson was our father, we need to wake up and pay attention and change the traits that resemble his. We need to be stewards of our families and of the earth for our descendants.

I was talking to friends one night and I mentioned that I had seen this movie and Lars Von Trier’s movie Melancholia during the same weekend, and that I liked both of them. Von Trier gets at the gnawing dread that I think we all feel about the world being destroyed. I felt grateful that an artist had made this film, because it forced me to think about my own hopelessness in the face of that destruction. But I added that I felt that The Descendants was just as powerful of a film and just as profound, even if the tone is lighter. In the last scene, Matt and his two daughters are shown sitting on a couch together, eating ice cream and watching TV. We can hear the movie’s narrator, Morgan Freeman, and after a while one realizes that they’re watching March of the Penguins. As my husband pointed out to me as we walked out of the theater, the male penguin is the one who cradles the egg, who protects it and keeps it safe from danger until it hatches. Like the father who has learned to father in film.

Stephanie Brown is the author of two collections of poetry, Domestic Interior and Allegory of the Supermarket. She’s published work in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares and The Best American Poetry series. She was awarded an NEA Fellowship in 2001 and a Breadloaf Fellowship in 2009. She has taught at UC Irvine and the University of Redlands and is a regional branch manager for OC Public Libraries in southern California.

Indie Spirit Best Feature Nominee: ’50/50′

When I look at the sloppy homemade label on my screener of 50/50, it looks like it says, “so-so.” Despite solid reviews and the year-end awards nominations, that pretty much sums up how I feel about the movie.

“‘Oppression’ Is in the Bathroom”: 50/50’s Condemnation of Women as Mothers, Artists, and Professionals

“Liberation”

This is a guest review by Josh Ralske.

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When I look at the sloppy homemade label on my screener of 50/50, it looks like it says, “so-so.” Despite solid reviews and the year-end awards nominations, that pretty much sums up how I feel about the movie.

I’m not one of those people who thinks Judd Apatow is some kind of woman-hating comedy anti-Christ. I mean, the guy is partly responsible for the existence of Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini on Freaks and Geeks), one of the richest, most beautifully written and played female characters I’ve ever seen on television. So the presence of massive-erection-concealer Seth Rogen, or the fact that the film was billed as a kind of amalgam of an Apatow-style dude comedy with a serious, realistic drama about facing cancer didn’t put me off the film.

And yet, something did. Even before I saw 50/50, I had this irritated feeling about it. There was something self-congratulatory in the way the film was being promoted, as though the idea of mixing comedy—sometimes bawdy comedy!—with a drama about cancer was something completely new and original, and anyone who doesn’t realize that having cancer can be funny is kind of a square, right? I mean, almost every movie about every disease, except maybe Love Story, has some humor in it. This is a very traditional human coping mechanism. I guess what separates 50/50 is simply a matter of degree.

Well, that, and the fact that screenwriter Will Reiser was writing from personal experience, and that co-star Seth Rogen plays what I hope is a very fictionalized version of himself in the movie. The film is presented as an honest and realistic depiction of how a serious, likeable young man deals with a potentially terminal illness. Disappointingly, despite its efforts at hip, low-key credibility, 50/50 lapses too frequently into cliché and worse.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Adam, who works for Seattle public radio, and finds out he has a rare form of spinal cancer that he has a 50% chance of surviving. Adam is the type of guy who takes care of himself and is almost pathologically averse to risk. This is illustrated by his refusal to cross a deserted street against the light, and by his lack of a driver’s license, which he attributes to a high risk of accidental death. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think etc. The film depicts Adam’s efforts to cope with his illness, and the effects of treatment, as his personal life also undergoes an upheaval.

The film’s honesty doesn’t extend to the knotty issue of the American health care system. Adam doesn’t seem to be especially wealthy, but he lives in a rich person’s fantasy world where no one worries about how they are going to pay for cancer treatments, let alone where the treatment one chooses might be circumscribed by an insurance company’s bureaucracy. I guess I can accept the argument that the film is supposed to be about Adam’s emotional journey, but I assume that the thought of how Adam’s treatment is being paid for will cross other peoples’ minds, as it did mine.

Adam doesn’t seem to have much of a social life. His only good friend is the loutish, abrasive Kyle (Rogen), his mother is a stereotypical overbearing worrywart (Anjelica Huston), and his girlfriend is played by Bryce Dallas Howard, which means we already know she is essentially a monster.

50/50’s treatment of its women characters is more problematic. His mother is apparently well-meaning, but she narcissistically draws Adam’s attention back to herself. While he deals with his potentially terminal disease and the severely debilitating chemotherapy, she makes him feel guilty for not letting her “help” enough. There’s also a key scene where she insults a hospital worker because the waiting room temperature is too cold. She puts her own needs first, instead of focusing on Adam. It’s understandable that he does not want to involve her any more than he has to. This characterization isn’t especially hateful or unrealistic; it’s just a bit hackneyed, and in the context of the film, considered among its other depictions of women, it fits in with a disturbing pattern.

Anjelica Huston as Diane in 50/50

Shortly after Adam is diagnosed, he visits with the hospital therapist, Katherine, played by Anna Kendrick. I have been a fan since I saw her in Camp. Kendrick is a terrific actor, with a great, naturalistic sense of comic timing, and her scenes with Gordon-Levitt have an energy and charm that elevate the film. Boyish, wounded Adam and sincere, fumbling Katherine are an adorable couple, but the issue is that if Katherine was any good at all at her job, they wouldn’t ever be a couple. Years of education and, presumably, some professional training have left the amiable Katherine, the world’s worst therapist.

I suppose it’s understandable that she’s a bit unsure of herself, and Kendrick plays that uncertainty realistically and appealingly. But again, in the context of the film, the message that comes across is that she is a terrible therapist in part because she is a young woman. One of the stereotypes about young women perpetuated by mass media from its beginnings is that they are excessively emotional. Katherine cannot put her emotions aside in her dealings with Adam. She doesn’t appear to understand basic concepts of transference. If she were a competent therapist, perhaps she would not be put in the position of having to serve as Adam’s only reliable emotional support when he finally does break down. Katherine is a likeable character, largely due to Kendrick’s charm, but we can’t respect her.

Anna Kendrick as Katherine in 50/50

The movie’s biggest prolonged sour note is its conception of the character of Rachael, Adam’s girlfriend. Woody Allen has taken a lot of flack for the characterization of women in his films, and as The Opinioness points out here, the horrifically two-dimensional, shrewish Inez (Rachel McAdams) from Midnight in Paris is no exception. The makers of 50/50 seem to have pretty much gotten a pass from critics, however, for the misogynistic creation of Rachael.

This is such a problematic character that I barely know where to begin. She’s a straw man. There’s no compelling reason that we see for Adam to be with her, other than her physical beauty, but Adam is not presented as a shallow man who comes to appreciate a woman’s inner beauty through this traumatic experience. He’s essentially presented as a perfect boyfriend, making all the right moves toward a committed domestic relationship.

But then, Rachael is an abstract painter, and while Adam pretends to be interested in and supportive of her work, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t actually give a crap. He shows the painting in their living room to his mother, mistakenly calling it “Oppression.” Rachael points out that the actual title is “Liberation,” and Adam remembers that “Oppression” is the painting in their bathroom. Rachael’s high-minded artistic aspirations are essentially treated as a joke, even before we understand what an awful person she is. She’s just a pretty, solipsistic, talentless airhead. Again, this brings up the question (as with Owen Wilson’s Gil in Midnight in Paris) as to what the poor, sensitive protagonist sees in her.

Bryce Dallas Howard as Rachael in 50/50

Naturally, after gamely taking on the responsibility of being Adam’s caretaker, Rachael fails him in every way, at one point leaving him waiting for hours before picking him up after a chemo session, and betraying him with another man. She’s a hateful character. Adam even says to her at one point after they split, as Rachael, now vulnerable due to career troubles, is trying to apologize and reconcile with him, “I’m sorry I didn’t come to your opening. It’s just ’cause I hate you so much.” This, and a subsequent scene in which Kyle and Adam destroy Rachael’s painting, “Liberation,” are clearly meant to be cathartic moments for the audience. We’re not meant to have any sympathy for Rachael.

Seth Rogen as Kyle and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Adam in 50/50

Kyle also fails Adam, manipulatively and opportunistically taking advantage of Adam’s condition to aid his own pursuit of impossibly credulous young women. Kyle is essentially an asshole. He treats women condescendingly (and this is always presented as humorous and without negative consequences for him), and he’s often insensitive to Adam’s needs. But as with Rogen’s character in Knocked Up, Ben Stone, the presence of a few appropriate self-help books in Kyle’s apartment serve to indicate that, well, at least he’s trying. Like Rachael, Kyle tries and fails to be what Adam needs him to be, but, in the filmmakers’ view, Kyle is redeemable, and Rachael is not.

50/50 has its low-key charms, and moments of grace, many provided by Kendrick, but the question that continues to nag at me is: Why is it necessary for a purportedly realistic film about a young man dealing with cancer to have a cartoonishly evil villain?

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Josh Ralske is a freelance film critic based in New York. He has written for All Movie Guide and Critical Mob.

Oscar and Indie Spirit Best Picture Nominee: The Artist: "Peppy Miller, Wonder Woman"

This is a guest review by Candice Frederick.

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You know what they say—behind every man is a great woman.

And that’s made evident in the 1920s nostalgia-soaked silent film, The Artist. Although the movie beautifully captures the difficult fall of silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) from Hollywoodland heavyweight to Hollywoodland has-been, the movie’s heart lies with his heroine, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo).

We first meet Peppy as a face in the crowd, scrambling to catch a glimpse of the one, the only George Valentin on the red carpet. Amid the glitz and glamour of the paparazzi swarming Hollywoodland’s biggest star, we see a “regular” girl. In fact, it’s Peppy’s ambiguity that sets her apart from said crowd. While all the other female fans are elbowing each other to get a chance to see their idol strike a pose on the red carpet, Peppy works her way to the front of the pack and just watches George, studying him. It’s like she sees the man behind the star, a man hidden from everyone else. A man she knocks off his feet.

That’s the thing about Peppy—it’s her authenticity that charms audiences. Unlike George’s man-made celebrity, which seduces his loveliest fans, Peppy’s unflinching compassion for those around her downright enchants the audience.

In that way, Peppy becomes George’s guardian angel. When his career begins to slide downhill, and his once marqueed name can’t even fill up a full row of seats at a theater, Peppy is the only one by his side, his number one fan when he has no one left. She picks him up when he hits rock bottom, when his pride stunts his career from forging ahead. As their careers see-saw one another, it is Peppy who remains the emotional compass throughout the entire film, the one who gets what George refuses to get.

This natural clairvoyance propels her own film ambitions. Peppy’s career skyrockets into superstardom, but, with the exception of one significant scene where she tries to play up her career by essentially downplaying those who came before her (like George), she remains unaffected by the Hollywood allure. It’s fascinating to watch a charismatic leading lady remain grounded even after her career takes off.

And it’s even more interesting to see her come to the rescue of her masculine counterpart, even if he did become a washed up star by the time of his rescuing. That’s something that would have never happened during the era the film is set in. In fact, Peppy would have more than likely have been drawn as a mere shallow competitor to George’s steadfast—however delusional—career. Since she was not written that way, it gives this wistful film the modern boost it needs to stand out.

But The Artist doesn’t just paint Peppy as George Valentin’s superhero. Peppy is also a trailblazing woman on her own. Much like many George before her, she knows how to play to a crowd and to the hungry paparazzi. She became such a power player in Hollywood that she was able to negotiate George’s reacceptance into Tinseltown after threatening to drop out of a project herself. That’s major move for a film actress, a bold one her part (that ended up paying off).

Peppy is that person you want in your corner—a bubbly (but not annoyingly so), impossibly adorable, smart, caring person with a good head on her shoulders. She never gets involved in any overblown scandal in order to get her name up in lights. She doesn’t sleep her way to the top of the Hollywood food chain. She never had to. All she was interested in was being a good friend, becoming an actor like her idol George, and spreading happiness to everyone along her path.

This all plays to the deep complexities of her character, which go far beyond uplifting the lead male character. Peppy is a strong character by herself, without even relating to George. They are both equally rounded characters who supply the substance in a movie that’s heightened by their stories and the actors who play them. Their relationship helps stack every layer of this film, therefore elevating it past its seemingly cursory exterior.

While we never really learn much information about Peppy’s background (she remains mostly anonymous on that front throughout the entire film), somehow we still feel as though she gives us a window to her soul. You relate to her, you empathize with her, and you cheer for her each time she steps in front of the camera. In short, Peppy has that likability factor that fans crave. How can they not? She practically waltzes from scene to scene and, before we know it, we’re smitten by her magic.

Although this season’s awards race may have you under the impression that Peppy is indeed a supporting character, Bejo’s performance of her will have you believing differently. Bejo brings out all the key qualities of Peppy in a performance that’s not emotionally powerful, but emotionally resounding nonetheless.

Even in silence, you hear the tapping of her shoes, the pep in her step, and her infectious laugh. How can a film with no words emit such a roaring character? Put Bejo front and center and she becomes one with the music. Every sympathetic look, impossibly happy reaction and playful gesture becomes a full fledged sympathy with Bejo. She doesn’t need any words, because the audience just knows. And, you know what, she and us are right here.

Too often people equate a good performance to one that’s grandiose, a powerhouse portrayal. Though some of those performances are in fact riveting, Bejo’s performance isn’t less so. She sparkles as Peppy, bringing out her magnetism as the gargantuan starlet she becomes, while also humanizing her and keeping her grounded. In other words, you take Peppy out of the City of Angels and she’d still be the same Peppy, girl wonder. Superhero to George Valentin, fallen star.

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Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning print journalist, film critic, and blogger for Reel Talk. She is also the co-host of Blog Talk Radio’s “Cinema in Noir.”

‘Drive’ and the Need to Identify the Virgin or Whore in the Passenger Seat

This is a guest review by Leigh Kolb.

The 2011 film Drive opens by plunging the audience into an 80s-insipired neo-noir world, where the beats are hard, the car chases gripping, and the femme fatale seductively leads the real chase. Or at least it seems that simple.

The protagonist, simply named Driver (Ryan Gosling), may not appear to have clear motivations or desires throughout, but he is in control. He’s a stunt driver and auto mechanic by day, and an outlaw getaway driver at night. He seems to be content with this LA life he’s carved for himself.

Until he meets his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan). The name Irene means peace—which could very well describe her disposition, but certainly not her role in Driver’s life. He first spots her carrying a laundry basket, then grocery shopping with her small son, and later helplessly looking under the hood of her stalled vehicle—the archetype of helpless femininity and quiet motherhood. She comes to the garage where he works for a repair and a ride home, and so begins their friendship/romance.

Carey Mulligan as “damsel in distress” Irene

Driver takes on an immediate fatherly role to Irene’s son, Benicio, and the three have idyllic car rides and moments by a river. They are on a journey, but a journey that doesn’t really go anywhere. Irene, always in the passenger seat, places her hand on Driver’s on the gear shift. We see Driver smile at Irene, and Benecio seems protected and comfortable, especially in the scene that Driver carries a sleeping Benecio home while Irene follows, carrying Driver’s bright white satin jacket emblazoned with a gold scorpion.

Irene makes a passing comment that Benecio’s father is in prison.

She fails to mention he’s her husband. And he’s about to come home.

That white jacket doesn’t stay clean for long.

What comes next is a tour de force of quick, graphic violence. (Or, as the New York Times rating more romantically describes it, “gruesomely violent chivalry”—he’s just valiantly protecting Irene, after all.)

The scorpion dances around its prey and its deadliness is swift and unsuspected. It also is a fiercely protective creature, and mothers keep their young nestled on their backs. Driver reminds a victim-to-be of the fable of the scorpion and the frog, in which the scorpion kills the frog (ultimately killing them both) simply because it’s his “nature.” The scorpion, upon first glance, reminds us of Driver. But who holds the “scorpion’s” fate—figuratively and literally—in her arms? Irene.

Of course, even as Driver is driving off with blood on his hands, no money, and no Irene, he calls her to tell her “Getting to be around you and Benicio was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

He has ensured their safety, while unraveling his own life. Unknowing, she stands silently, fingers to her lips.

A.O. Scott, in his New York Times review, says “Ms. Mulligan’s whispery diction and kewpie-doll features have a similarly disarming effect. Irene seems like much too nice a person to be mixed up in such nasty business. Not that she’s really mixed up in it. Her innocence is axiomatic and part of the reason the driver goes to such messianic lengths to protect her.”

In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers says, “Mulligan is glorious, inhabiting a role that is barely there and making it resonant and whole.”

The audience knows nothing about Irene, except that she met her husband when she was 17, she’s a waitress, and she’s pretty. How are we supposed to assume she’s “too nice to be mixed up in such nasty business”? How are we supposed to cling to her innocence and need for protection? How is a character who serves as a catalyst for almost the entire plot “barely there”?

Instead, the femme fatale role is squarely placed on the shoulders of Blanche. Travers writes, “Violence drives Drive. A heist gone bad involving a femme fatale (an incendiary cameo from Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks) puts blood on the walls.” This isn’t untrue—there is a heist gone wrong and it does get bloody, fast. But Blanche is an accomplice, not a seductive force that lures Driver in.

The classic definition of femme fatale is “an irresistibly attractive woman, especially one who leads men into difficult, dangerous, or disastrous situations…” Scott and Travers would certainly contend that Irene is too pretty and innocent to fit that mold—but someone needed to fit that mold, so Blanche it is.

Instead, Irene’s character is flattened into oblivion, “barely there,” as the reviewer states. Even though we know so little about her and her motivations, we are given clues. While she has an air of subservience (working as a waitress, fetching glasses of water and dinner for her male visitors), she is clearly in control at the beginning of the narrative. She goes to Driver’s work, she touches his hand, she withholds pertinent information about her personal life.

Ryan Gosling as Driver and Mulligan’s Irene–she holds his jacket (a symbol of his character) against the red and blue backdrop

Irene is also presented in a constant mural of red and blue—the bright, dark red of cherries and blood, lust and violence, and the Wedgewood blue of the Virgin Mary’s mantle, innocent and pure. The colors of her apartment and her shirts and dresses mirror this color scheme, challenging us to imagine her as a complex woman, one who could inhabit both worlds of innocence and experience.

In the garage scenes, we’re reminded of the fact that cars get designated feminine pronouns (because they are designed to be owned and shown off), and are tools to attract women. Driver’s car of choice, as Shannon (Bryan Cranston) says, is “plain Jane boring… There she is. Chevy Impala, most popular car in the state of California. No one will be looking at you.”

While Irene isn’t “plain Jane boring”—of course she’s quite beautiful—perhaps her nondescript nature and lack of flash is what kept audiences from noticing her important role.

In the animal kingdom, impalas are largely gender-segregated, except during mating seasons, when males will work so hard at competing for the females that they often get exhausted and will lose their territories; they are showy creatures, leaping and running from prey and for fun. The females isolate themselves with their calves. This speed and agility makes it clear why Chevy would use them as a namesake for a model of car, but we would be remiss at not drawing the similarities between the gender roles in the film.

At the end, no one has gained, only lost. Driver leaves with his bloody, dirt-stained jacket, and Irene silently puts down the phone. They are separate—her with her child and safety, and him with his masculinity and “chivalrous violence” having come out on top, but with no reward but the protection of someone he’d just met. His femme fatale, if we must label.

Christina Hendricks as “femme fatale” Blanche

And in the testosterone-fueled action genre, we must label our women. Even when it’s clear we’re supposed to challenge the virgin/whore dichotomy, even slightly, we cannot be trusted to. Irene and Blanche cannot be full, round characters—they must be caricatures to audiences and reviewers alike.

Much like the color imagery—from the aforementioned blues and reds to the hot pink Mistral font used on posters and in the opening credits—we can listen to the soundtrack to hear women setting the beat for the film, as stereotypically masculine as so many of the themes are. The opening sequence is set to Kavinsky’s “Nightcall,” an intense electro house track, which starts with a gravely male voice and soon switches over to a melodic female singer. The bulk of the singing on the sountrack is by women, and this should remind us that the women are tuning the strings that will make the music of the plot.

Over the climactic shooting at the pizza parlor, the haunting voice of Katyna Ranieri sings Riz Ortolani’s “Oh My Love.” Her voice soars, loudly and clearly over the bloody scene: “But this light / Is not for those men / Still lost in / An old black shadow / Won’t you help me to believe / That they will see / A day / A brighter day / When all the shadows / Will fade away.” She pleads for our protagonist, and she pleads for us, to look beyond the flat facades of what we expect, and to instead find the complexity of characters we think we know.

For the “kewpie-doll” can be the femme fatale, and the femme fatale can simply be an accomplice. Or perhaps the shadows of those labels can be lifted entirely, and we can be left with multidimensional female characters who are recognized for who they are.

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Leigh Kolb is an English and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri, and has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing. She lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, chickens, and garden, and makes a terrible dinner party guest because all she wants to talk about is feminism and reproductive rights.