Clitoral Readings of ‘The Piano,’ ‘Turn Me On, Dammit,’ and ‘Secretary’

But how can female arousal be visually expressed? If women stereotypically prefer to read literary erotica over watching porn, with erotica’s descriptions of the interior sensations of female arousal, is that because many women imagine that female performers of porn are uncomfortably simulating their pleasure? Can there be a clitoral cinema of female arousal, and what would it look like?


Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.


In Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, a lesbian couple justify their preferred choice of pornography – gay male porn – by the fact that erections make desire excitingly visible and unarguable. The essence of sex positivity is shared arousal, yet, as Nora Ephron and Meg Ryan famously reminded audiences of When Harry Met Sally, female arousal and orgasm are easy to visually fake. Male craving for confirmation of orgasm in their own porn-watching leads to the “cum shot” becoming a standard trope of male-oriented pornography. But how can female arousal be visually expressed? If women stereotypically prefer to read literary erotica over watching porn, with erotica’s descriptions of the interior sensations of female arousal, is that because many women imagine that female performers of porn are uncomfortably simulating their pleasure? Can there be a clitoral cinema of female arousal, and what would it look like?

I would like to investigate that question using examples from three female-authored films: The Piano, Turn Me On, Dammit!, and Secretary. Judged only by their premises, they appear to be the height of exploitation – The Piano explores the sexual blackmail of a mute woman, Turn Me On, Dammit explores the lustful fantasies of a slender, blonde Scandinavian teenager, and Secretary explores an inexperienced young woman’s desire to be spanked and dominated. Yet, by making the female erotic imagination and self-stimulation central to their aesthetic, each of these films became erotic classics for female audiences. How?


The Piano

The Piano

 

Written and directed by Jane Campion, The Piano contains some equal opportunity nudity and straightforward sex scenes, but it also disrupts the male gaze and centers the female spectator at key moments. Consider the scene in which Harvey Keitel’s Baines is examining Holly Hunter’s Ada from every angle, with casual male entitlement, as she plays her piano. Lying on the floor, he discovers a small hole in her thick, woollen stocking. The hole is symbolically clitoral to the female audience, as Baines circles his finger slowly over the little patch of heightened sensation and Ada gasps, but for the male audience it offers no spectacle. It is, rather, an evocation of the sensation of clitoral stimulation, in the same way that a woman licking an ice-cream may evoke oral sex to a male sexual imagination.

With Ada reaching through a crevice of wood to play secretive piano notes, Campion portrays the instrument as inherently sensual. Later comes a lovingly lit shot of a naked Baines caressing and rubbing the piano itself with a cloth. The hetero-female audience can take pleasure in both the spectacle of his body, and the suggestive quality of his attentive and caressing touch, but the female body is removed from the realm of spectacle. Instead, Baines is caressing the piano as a symbol of Ada’s voice and will, representing his deeper appreciation for her. Some critics (including Bitch Flicks) have said that it is problematic for Ada to fall in love with a man who is sexually blackmailing her. I would suggest, however, that, in a society that normalizes the purchase and conquest of women, it is Baines’ initial desire to negotiate, and his eventual total rejection of models of ownership,to request that Ada shows active desire for him, that marks him as her chosen mate.

Sam Neill’s controlling husband Stewart voyeuristically peers through a chink in Baines’ cabin to see his sexual play with Ada. At the moment at which Baines performs oral sex on Ada, Stewart’s gaze is distracted by his dog licking his hand. If Stewart carries the male gaze and male identification in this scene, then Jane Campion playfully interrupts that gaze to turn the man’s own hand into a symbolically clitoral site, vividly evoking the sensation of being licked for female audiences. The Piano, and its reputation as peculiarly erotic to women, is perhaps the strongest evidence that the female imagination responds to clitoral symbolism on a level that equals male susceptibility to phallic symbolism.

When Neill’s Stewart submits to Ada’s exploring his naked body with her hands, the male body becomes available to woman as spectacle and tactile pleasure while the woman herself remains clothed. If the male audience is uncomfortable with this passivity, they can identify with Stewart’s own discomfort, which explodes when Ada reaches the taboo territory of his backside, and he pulls up his hose and dashes from her, eyes averted. Just as his relationship with the Maori is colonial and acquisitive, Stewart’s only model for sex is male conquest and female submission. Just as Baines has surrendered to Maori language and culture, so his model for male/female relationships is a negotiated dual surrender and an attempt to learn the meaning of Ada’s piano language. The film’s finale rewards Baines’ model of negotiated interdependence and dual surrender over the Stewart’s domineering conquest model, with clitoral cinema triumphant.


Turn Me On, Dammit!

 TurnMeOn

Depictions of female masturbation as erotic spectacle tend to focus on a woman moaning softly as she caresses her face, breast and thighs, running her fingers through her hair. The clitoris, effectively, becomes dispersed and distributed across any secondary sexual characteristics that the male audience happens to find attractive, hence the weirdly clitoral scalp of compulsive hair caressing. Female writer-director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen of Turn Me On, Dammit!, by contrast, opens with her teenaged heroine lying clothed on the floor, her hand jammed down her panties, frantically rubbing her clitoris, breathing rapidly and screwing up her face in unphotogenic arousal. This realistic depiction of masturbation immediately establishes the woman as sexual agent, not object. Because it is solitary and largely unphotogenic, masturbation has no function but to be the expression and release of female arousal.

Alma is masturbating to a phone sex hotline, where a male voice describes a hot encounter in the imaginary realm, like narrated literary erotica. Despite its sexed-up publicity, Turn Me On, Dammit! features only one brief, confusing sex act, as Alma is poked in the thigh by the naked erection of her crush, before he immediately withdraws. Instead, the film is saturated with Alma’s erotic imagination as she narrates imaginary encounters over fragmented photographs, ridiculous surrealism and vivid close-ups. Fragmenting the encounters in this way evokes the partial and inadequate imagination of a sexually inexperienced girl, attempting to project what sex might be like. Her fantasies include older men to whom she is not attracted, as well as female rivals, capturing the wide ranging of a horny teenager’s exploratory imagination. By combining fragmented visuals with Alma’s own narrated voiceover, the female viewer never feels an intrusive male gaze. The teenaged female voice of desire and sexual curiosity dominates and narrates throughout.


Secretary

Maggie-in-Secretary

Although the film is directed by Steven Shainberg, he is sensitive to the female origins of his story, adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson from a short story by Mary Gaitskill. Determined to portray the sexual awakening of a submissive woman, rather than the focussing on the pleasure of a dominant man, Secretary harnesses many of the same techniques used by the fully female-authored The Piano and Turn Me On, Dammit. Where Baines demonstrated his attentive, caressing nurture by lovingly wiping Ada’s piano, James Spader’s Mr. Grey demonstrates attentive, caressing nurture to the delicate, vulva-reminiscent orchids in his office. The flowers symbolize burgeoning arousal and desire explicitly in the heroine’s own fantasy sequence, as giant blooms burst open behind Mr. Grey. This fantasy sequence is alternated with shots of the heroine’s frantic, realistic masturbation. Like Turn Me On, Dammit!‘s Alma, Secretary‘s Lee is fully clothed during her masturbations, emphasizing that they are expressions of arousal rather than spectacle. After the film’s most potentially degrading act of domination, where Lee is required to bare her ass while Mr. Grey masturbates over it, the act is reclaimed for audiences as having been arousing for Lee, by her immediate withdrawal into the bathroom to masturbate over the memory of it. A middle-aged woman in a neighbouring stall is shown overhearing her masturbation with a look of compassionate understanding that emphasizes the universal female experience of arousal and desire. Finally, however, it is Lee’s own narrating voice, like Alma’s, that owns the film and challengingly asserts her active role in submitting.


So, can we say that these three films – The Piano, Turn Me On, Dammit! and Secretary – are sex-positive films? I would argue that their clitoral aesthetic of female-authored desire and imaginative sensation make them sex-positive for their female audience. However, in the world of the film, its men are still technically committing acts of sexual harassment where the woman consents by her imagination rather than her voice. This harassment is reclaimed for the female audience by our insight into the heroine’s desire. Can we assume that the male heroes are aware of the women’s desire, because they’ve read it on her face or in her subtler physical responses? We are still a long way from a society that takes it for granted that women should voice their desires, and that sex should be openly negotiated. But recognizing and developing a clitoral aesthetic of film is a step in the right direction. A cinematic language of female desire can be harnessed to support conversations about female needs and sensitivities.

 


Brigit McCone became obsessed with Harvey Keitel after seeing The Piano at an impressionable age. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and reveling in trashy romances.

 

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

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

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One Feminist Critic’s Battle With Gaming’s Darker Side at NPR

The tyranny of maternity on TV by Mary McNamara at Los Angeles Times

Lena Dunham Adapting YA Novel ‘Catherine, Called Birdy’ Into Movie by Julia Zdrojewski at BUST

Wonder Woman’s Kinky Feminist Roots by Katha Pollitt at The Atlantic

Elizabeth Peña paved the way for Latinas in Hollywood at PRI’s The World

Frances McDormand is much more than the role in Fargo that made her famous at PRI

How Gail Simone changed the way we think about female superheroes by Alex Abad-Santos at VOX

How One Casting Director Made Television More Diverse by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong at Fast Company

Director Justin Simien on Dear White People and Black Stories in Hollywood by Jesse David Fox at Vulture

“Pride” is a Joyful Film About the Need for Unlikely Allies by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

Jane Campion’s ‘Top of the Lake’ to Return for Season 2 by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

5 Things to Know About Jane the Virgin by Nolan Feeney at TIME

London Film Festival Review: ‘Honeytrap’ – Engaging Story of a Young Woman Who Lets Yearning for Acceptance Spiral Out of Control by Wendy Okoi-Obuli at Shadow and Act

Working with Laverne Cox, Standing in Solidarity with Trans Women of Color by Mitch Kellaway at The Advocate

Everything We Know About ‘XX,’ The All-Female Horror Anthology You’ve Been Waiting For by Kate Erbland at Film School Rejects

 

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

 

 

 

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

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

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Cannes Film Festival: Jane Campion Accuses Film Industry of ‘Inherent Sexism’ by Rachel Donadio at The New York Times

This History-Making Marriage Equality Documentary is a Joyful Tearjerker by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

Op-ed: Why Days of Our Lives‘ Will & Sonny Might Be the Most Important Couple on TV by Jeremy Helligar at Advocate

Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists Theme Week here.

Almost 20 years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.


Are You There, Hollywood? It’s Me, the Average Girl by Carrie Gambino

The expectations for girls in film and television are incredibly mixed. It is naïve to say that girls nowadays are just expected to be a sexy sidekick or afterthought. With more strong female roles popping up in bigger budget films such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, there is the expectation that girls should also be intelligent and incredibly clever (while also being visually pleasing)… There isn’t really a place for the all-around average girl. The first two examples of strong female protagonists that I could think of are in fantasy franchises. Are real female characters really that difficult to come up with? Real female characters are often created with good intentions but tend not to work on a larger scale.

Six Lessons Lisa Simpson Taught Me by Lady T

…Lisa takes a stand against the sexism spouting from the mouth of the new talking Malibu Stacy doll. Frustrated with the doll’s collection of sexist catchphrases that include “Let’s bake some cookies for the boys,” “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles,” and “My name’s Stacy, but you can call me *wolf whistle*,” Lisa collaborates with the creator of Malibu Stacy to create their own talking doll, Lisa Lionheart. When Malibu Stacy outsells Lisa Lionheart, our creator feels temporarily dejected, until she hears her own voice speaking behind her: “Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything.” She turns to see a girl her age hold a Lisa Lionheart doll in her hand and smile.

Delightful Tina. Shy, painfully weird, butt-obsessed, quietly dorky, intensely daydreamy Tina. Tina is a little bit like all of us (and–cough–a lot like some of us) at that most graceless, transitional, intrinsically unhappy stage of life that is early adolescence. She is also a wonderfully rich and well-developed character, both in her interactions with her family and in her own right, and she’s arguably the emotional core of the whole show.

It’s common wisdom that maintaining relationships requires constant work, but there’s often an assumption (in TV, movies, and real life) that this only applies to romantic relationships. Platonic relationships are rarely the focus of a story, and when a storyline deals with issues in these relationships, they’re often easily dealt with, and the friendship goes back to being simple. Exceptions to this are problems that are caused by romantic relationships. Veronica Mars is an exception to this; for its first two seasons, it depicts many platonic relationships, and explores the many issues involved in navigating them (some of these problems are related to romance, but many are not, showing platonic relationships have their own complexities, separate from romance).


My Sister’s Keeper is a story about growing up, identify, family, death, and life (how can we truly tell any story about life when death isn’t the costar?), but its uniqueness is that it is told primarily through two young girls.

So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”

Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.

The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.

 


My main issue with the film is that it is speckled with meaningless platitudes and clichés about girl empowerment when the film simply isn’t empowering. The women in the film are portrayed as oversexualized, helpless, damaged goods. Though there are metaphors at work that symbolize abuse or objectification of women, nowhere does the film stress an injustice or seek to dismantle its source. It is just like any other formulaic action movie complete with boobs, guns, and explosions, but it has a shiny, artificial veneer of girl empowerment. The false veneer is the aspect of the film that truly infuriates me, along with the side of artsy pretentious bullshit.

On Milk-Bones, Toothed Vaginas, and Adolescence: Teeth As Cautionary Tale by Colleen Clemens

Early in the film, Dawn is a nymph-like virgin committed to “saving herself” until marriage. She is the poster child for the “good” girl: a loving daughter who obeys the doctrines of the church and spends her time spreading the gospel of virginity. Everything Dawn knows about the world and herself changes when her falsely pious boyfriend Tobey takes her to a far off swimming hole and tries to rape her. A confused and terrified Dawn reacts by screaming and then—much to everyone’s surprise—cutting off his penis to interrupt the rape. Little does Dawn know that her lessons about Darwin in her biology classes are taking hold in her own body.


The Horror of Female Sexual Awakening: Black Swan by Rebecca Willoughby

What disappointed me most, I think, was that Black Swan could easily have been a progressive film with a positive, young woman-centered journey out of repression at its center. It could have recouped that gender-centric childhood ballerina dream of so many little girls into a message about determination, hard work, personal strength, and emotional growth. Instead, Darren Aronofsy has produced an Oscar-winning horror film. That’s right: I said HORROR. While that might seem like a stretch, it seems clear to me that the horror I refer to is the possibility of changing an age-old story. The horror of Black Swan is the absolutely terrifying idea that a young woman might make it through the difficult process of maturation, develop a healthy, multi-faceted sexuality, and be successful at her chosen career at the same time.

While most teen movies revolve around coming-of-age stories, gang movies reveal the extreme side to adolescence—the misfit, criminal, and violent side. Gang movies are rather simple, either focusing on episodes of gang debauchery, or revolving around rivalry and jealousy. Usually the viewpoint is that of the ring leader, or the “new girl,” who is initiated into the gang but is still an outsider. Yet, among the plethora of girl gang movies, every decade has produced stories involving specific issues and specific types of teenage girls.


Kiki’s Delivery Service carefully constructs a world where a girl’s agency is expected, accepted and supported, while Disney movies typically present a girl’s agency as unusual, forbidden, and denied. The difference between these two messages is that Kiki’s world anticipates and encourages her independence, while the women of Disney are typically punished for this.

For example, in The Little Mermaid Ariel wants to “live out of these waters,” but her father forbids her exploration of the human world and punishes this dream. Sea witch Ursula exploits Ariel’s desire to discover another world beyond her own as well. This is hardly an isolated incident.


The Book Thief: Stealing Hearts and Minds by Natalie Wilson

Liesel, unlike so many young heroines, resists romance—from her friend Rudy’s early problematic insistence and then throughout the remainder of the movie. Instead of being positioned in relationship to romantic partners, she has three male best friends—Rudy, Max and Hans (Papa)—as well as two females of great importance to her life, Rosa (Mama) and Ilsa Hermann (the mayor’s wife who, transgressively, supplyies Liesel with books). As for Liesel, like her futuristic counterpart, Katniss Everdeen, she is a life-saving heroine and inspirational rebel.


Terri sets out to explore the luxury of male privilege disguised as a young man. Just One of the Guys smacked us straight in the face with the unspoken universal knowledge that sexism was real, it existed and the film gave us tangible proof. Terri decides to use her parents’ trip out of town to switch things around for herself by getting another shot at the newspaper internship with another article, an expose of sorts. She switches high schools and uses her brain, and as much as she can, is herself.

Troop Beverly Hills: What A Thrill by Phaydra Babinchock

Initially the girls of Troop Beverly Hills are portrayed as clueless and privileged, but they are allowed to grow and transform themselves over the course of the movie. The film writers don’t do it unrealistically by turning them into tomboys overnight or at all. The girls retain their femininity, which they are made fun of for by the Red Feathers, throughout the film.

Immortality is not what makes a world better. Hope, friendship, and love do, and love is not limited by sex, gender, ethnicity, or race. Women like Homura and Kyoko can fall in love with other women like Madoka and Sayaka respectively. We have the responsibility to stand up with people like them. This series is part of the reason I try to do that and more. I hope that many others to do the same.

Is Wanda a girl/teenage female protagonist? Technically she is not “young” as she is 1,000 years old and seemingly immortal, but she is new to Earth so that makes her young in some sense. Also, why would the Souls even have genders that mirror that of humans or have genders at all? The Souls look like beams of light and they probably aren’t even a carbon based species and yet somehow Wanda is a female? So. Frustrating. Nonetheless she is controlling a person’s body who identifies as a teenage girl and is thus somewhat restricted to her occupied body’s feelings, emotions, and categorizations.

Ten questions between filmmaker Morgan Faust and 13-year-old actress Rachel Resheff.

Morgan: The truth is when I was growing up in the 1980s, the child actresses were often given pretty syrupy roles (with the exception of Journey of Natty Gann and Labyrinth). It was the boys who got to have the cool movies–Goonies, Stand by Me, even The NeverEnding Story and E.T., which did have girls, but the boys were the heroes. That is why I write the movies I do–adventures films for girls–because that’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid, go on adventures, be the hero. I still do want that. I mean, who doesn’t?


The Hunger Games, saturated as it is with political meaning (the author admits her inspiration for the trilogy came from flipping channels between reality TV and war footage), is a welcome change from another recent popular YA series, Twilight. As a further bonus, it has disproven the claim that series with female protagonists can’t have massive cross-gender appeal. With the unstoppable Katniss Everdeen at the helm (played in the films by the jaw-droppingly talented Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the series will be the start of a new trend: politically themed narratives with rebellious female protagonists who have their sights set on revolution more than love, on cultural change more than the latest sparkling hottie.


The CW: Expectations vs. Reality by Nicole Elwell

The CW is a rarity among the many networks of cable television. Its target demographic is women aged 18-34, and as a result has a majority of its original programming centered on the lives of young women. On paper, this sounds like a noteworthy achievement to be celebrated. However, the CW produces content devoid of any sense of the reality of its young audience, and as a result actually harms its most devoted viewers. The CW creates an unattainable archetype for what a teenager should look like and fails to maturely handle issues of murder and rape.


Defending Dawn Summers: From One Kid Sister to Another by Robin Hitchcock

OK, sure, my big sister didn’t have superpowers, and as far as I know she did not save the world even one time, much less “a lot.” But from my perspective as her bratty little sister, I felt like I could never escape her long and intimidating shadow. I could never be as smart as her, as special as her; I couldn’t hope to collect even a fraction the awards and accolades she racked up through high school. And she didn’t even properly counteract her super smarts with social awkwardness: she always had a tight group of friends and the romantic affections of cute boys. She was the pride and joy of my family, and I always felt like an also-ran. Trust me: this makes it very hard to not be at least a little bratty and whiny.


Why Alex Russo Is My Favorite Fictional Female Wizard by Katherine Filaseta

The protagonist of Wizards is a girl who acts like girls really act: she has boyfriends and broken hearts, but isn’t overly boy-crazy or dependent on them; she’s curious and smart enough to ask questions when other people are telling her not to; and throughout the series she faces a lot of the struggles women really do face throughout their lives.


Ja’mie: Mean-Spirited Impression of a Private School Girl by Katherine Murray

Power dynamics mean something in comedy. Making fun of someone less powerful than you is sort of like beating up someone who’s small, or taking advantage of someone naive. It’s not very sporting, and it makes you look mean. The problem is that the same person can be powerful in some contexts and not in others. A rich, white 17-year-old girl, for example, might be very powerful in contexts where she’s bullying her classmates at school, but less powerful in contexts where she’s trying to meet the demands of a sexist culture. If you’re an adult man nearing 40, it’s hard to make fun of the way a teenage girl dresses, flirts, and moons over boys without starting to look kind of petty.

True Grit: Ambiguous Feminism by Andé Morgan

Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.

Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.

Granted, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) is an important character. Even so, it is a bit disconcerting when the IMDb blurb about this movie only mentions him, and almost none of the female characters who are equally, if not more, important to the story. Princess Mononoke (voiced by Claire Danes) is the title character, but is only mentioned toward the end of the blurb. This movie is so much more than yet another “save the princess” quest!


In Pretty In Pink, Andi is a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.

What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.

Temporary Tomboys: Coming of Age in My Girl and Now and Then by Elizabeth Kiy

However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12.


Basically, Brave isn’t really that brave of a film. It’s traipsing through a well-established trope that, though positive, is stagnant. Don’t get me wrong; I love all the prepubescent female power fantasy tales I’ve listed, and I’m grateful that they exist and that I could grow up with many of them. However, we can’t pretend that Brave is pushing any boundaries. It sends the message that little girls can be powerful as long as they remain little girls. The dearth of representations of postpubescent heroines who are not objectified, whose sexuality does not rule their interactions, and who are the heroes of their own stories is appalling.

Portrait of a Girl: Reflections on the Role of Flora in Jane Campion’s ‘The Piano’

What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.

The Piano (1993)
The Piano (1993)

 

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

It has been 20 years since its release, but The Piano has lost none of its unsettling power. An intense, provocative tale of an “imported” Scottish bride in 19th century colonial New Zealand, Jane Campion’s finest film still stimulates debate about the nature of female identity and sexuality in patriarchy. Both written and directed by the New Zealand filmmaker, The Piano won the Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes film festival and picked up three Academy awards at the 1994 ceremony. Holly Hunter won the Best Actress Oscar for her memorable performance as the bride, Ada McGrath, and Jane Campion was awarded Best Original Screenplay. There was another award that The Piano took home that night–that of Best Supporting Actress. Anna Paquin won the prize for her role as Ada’s young daughter, Flora McGrath. The award was seen as unexpected by many pundits. Paquin plays a child of 9 or 10 and she was only 11 when she won the Oscar. It should not, however, have been that surprising to anyone who had seen the film. Flora is a richly complex as well as hugely important character in the story. As for Paquin’s performance, it is, simply, exceptional. Roger Ebert rightly called it “one of the most extraordinary examples of a child’s acting in movie history.”

Let’s first take a closer look at the story and central characters of this original Victorian tale. From the very start, its heroine is portrayed as a remarkable, enigmatic soul. Ada McGrath is a mute widow whose identity is clearly bound up with her beloved piano. The most important person in her life is her spirited, headstrong daughter. Mother and child are exceptionally close. They are given no back-story. Their past remains a mystery. Although Flora expresses interest in learning about her father, she does not, it seems, even know his name. Neither does the audience. At the very beginning of The Piano, we see Ada married off by her father to Alistair Stuart (Sam Neil), a colonial frontiersman in New Zealand. It is manifest from the moment she arrives on the expansive shores of that beautiful land that Ada will never accept Stuart as her husband. When he refuses to transport her piano to his home, she protests spiritedly (Flora interprets Ada’s sign language) and continues to express her discontent. It is also obvious that Stuart, a staid Victorian gentleman with a severely limited imagination, will never understand Ada. Flora, for her part, declares that she will not accept him as her father.

Mother and child
Mother and child

 

Another man enters Ada’s life, a neighbor and overseer called George Baines (Harvey Keitel). Illiterate, earthy and sexual, he is characterized as the very opposite of the conservative, repressed Stuart. Baines offers Stuart an exchange: some of his land for the piano. He says that he wants to learn to play the instrument. Stuart’s wife is to teach him. Baines is, however, only interested in Ada. Their association is initially exploitative: Ada is coerced into giving Baines sexual favors in exchange for earning back the piano. Their relationship changes dramatically when they fall in love. Motivated by a belief that her mother is committing a wrong as well as, no doubt, by a fear that she is no longer the most important person in her life, Flora effectively exposes their affair and gives Stuart (whom she now calls “Papa”) proof of Ada’s enduring love for Baines. What follows changes all of their lives.

The Piano is a film of arresting visual beauty. It is, however, a rose with thorns. Strange, unsettling, powerful and problematic, it can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It does invite feminist readings. Its heroine is a sensual, romantic rebel who does not conform to culturally sanctioned norms of feminine behavior. As much as men try and control her, it is clear that her body and soul can never really be owned. It also acknowledges sexual coercion and patriarchal violence as an historical reality for women. The Piano, can also, however, be interpreted as dangerously regressive in its understanding and representation of female sexuality. At the end of the day, there’s no getting around the fact that Ada falls in love with a man who has exploited her. Baines himself is transformed into a romantic hero. Then again, we may ask if Campion is perhaps trying to underscore that Ada’s psycho-sexual state is the lot of female identity and sexuality in patriarchy? Her portrait of Ada is, ultimately, extremely complex. She portrays her heroine as a victim, sexual subject, self-directed woman, and survivor.

On the shores of New Zealand
On the shores of New Zealand

 

What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century.  Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.

Flora McGrath is an extremely smart, perceptive, imaginative and articulate child. She likes to get involved, to meddle even, and loves to tell stories. ‘”My real father was a German composer,” she tells fascinated colonial women at one point. Perhaps because she has been fatherless, Flora has not been shackled by patriarchal norms of femininity. She is lively and headstrong, the very antithesis of the archetypal meek Victorian girl-child. As Ada is, also, not an authoritarian mother, her childhood has been blessed by a great deal of love and freedom. In an early scene in The Piano, we see her tearing through her grandfather’s home on roller-skates.

Mirroring each other
Mirroring each other

 

Flora is also not afraid of speaking to adults, even paternal figures. She shares her mother’s innate, autonomous spirit and rightly perceives that her new father is a threat to their special bond. Amusingly, the closeness of the bond is even recognized by the dull Stuart. He is always tentative when he approaches Ada and her child. At the beginning of the story, Flora tells her mother that she does not want another father. She declares, “I’m not going to call him Papa. I’m not going to call him anything. I’m not even going to look at him.” Although she wants to hear stories about her own father, Flora is conceived, at least at first, as an anti-patriarchal child. The love between Ada and Flora embodies a utopian, gynocentric ideal and, as Flora is aligned with Ada, she too represents the feminine state.

From the very start of the film, Ada and Flora are shot together. Campion’s camera recurrently emphasizes their similarities–their brown eyes, extreme pallor, and sober style and color of dress–and makes them mirrors of each other. We see them tilt their head in the same way and when someone unfamiliar crosses their path, they alternate in standing behind each other. Mother and child are in the same portrait, and the same story.

The personification of freedom
The personification of freedom

 

Flora serves a concrete as well as symbolic role in the story. She is, literally, Ada’s voice. Although she may sometimes fancifully embroider her mother’s unvoiced words, she interprets her signing for others. If the piano is Ada’s non-verbal means of expression, Flora is her only human instrument of communication. The child also represents Ada’s freedom and female freedom in general. This is beautifully illustrated in a scene where we see Ada joyfully play the piano on the white sands while Flora dances with supreme self-confidence for her mother.

Flora is, however, not only her mother’s helper and beloved child.  She is also her adversary. It is Flora who effectively reveals her mother’s transgressions to Stuart. “I know why Mr. Baines can’t play the piano,” she tells her stepfather. Although her view was limited and she did not, of course, fully understand what she saw, she was once a witness to the adults’ curious activity. She does, however, sense that her mother and Baines were doing something her stepfather would not like. Stuart soon learns the truth and attempts to rape Ada when he discovers her making her way to Baines’ home.

Flora
Flora

 

Flora is not an evil little girl. She loves her mother but simply does not understand the consequences of her words. Her betrayal should not, in fact, shock the viewer. Flora most likely feels like she has been betrayed. “I want to be in the photograph,” she says with a scowl when her mother’s wedding portrait is being taken. She fears that she will no longer be in her mother’s photographs. When Baines and Ada are together in the cabin, Flora plays alone outside. Hurt and angry, she fears that she has been replaced in her mother’s affections. Perhaps she even harbors feelings of hate towards her. That is why she starts calling Stuart “papa.” The fatherless child begins to side with convention and patriarchy. Interestingly, we hear Flora judge her mother like a fanatical Puritan. She calls her mother’s observation that people talk rubbish “unholy.” At one point, she screams that her mother is “going to hell.” When Stuart boards up their house to prevent Ada from visiting Baines, Flora gives him helpful directions. She betrays her mother a second–and last–time. Charged with giving a romantic message to Baines, she decides instead to give it directly to Stuart. Flora will, however, be traumatized by her stepfather’s brutal, life-changing punishment of her mother and will soon return to the fold. She becomes, once again, the loyal, ardent voice of Ada. Her mother’s lover, Baines, will be her new father.

Campion’s portrait of Flora is as fascinating and complicated as her portrait of Ada. Flora is a strong-willed, non-conformist girl-child allied with her mother in a land of male strangers. The close bond she shares with her is unique. Flora is Ada’s very likeness, as well as instrument and expression of freedom. Yet she reproduces the lines of preachers to condemn her mother and chooses–at least, for a time–to accept her austere stepfather’s ways. Flora’s disloyalty issues from feelings of abandonment and insecurity but it is also indicative of the insidious ideological power of patriarchy. Campion shows how girl-children may reproduce its values.

Holly Hunter, Jane Campion, and Anna Paquin at the Oscars
Holly Hunter, Jane Campion, and Anna Paquin at the Oscars

 

Campion’s take on childhood itself is unsentimental and truthful. Flora is a charming, expressive child but she is not Hollywood cute. Paquin’s performance is hugely charismatic. She perfectly captures her character’s individualistic, insubordinate ways. She also, however, embodies girlhood. Flora may be intelligent and imaginative but she is also a child. While she may have spent a great deal of time in the company of adults, witnessing adult anxieties and brutality, she does not yet fully understand the adult world. Like most children, she is self-centered and like most, she wants to monopolize her mother’s love and attention. Children can also, of course, be cruel as well as affectionate–almost in the same breath, on occasion. Flora is no exception. In one scene, we see the little girl torment then comfort a dog outside Baines’ cabin. With her mother, she can be both sweet and censorious in a darkly comic way.  When Stuart locks Ada in the house upon discovering her affair, Flora says to her mother, “You shouldn’t have gone up there, shouldn’t you? I don’t like it, and nor does Papa.” Almost immediately, she makes the pleasant suggestion, “We can play cards, if you like.” She scolds as well as mothers Ada, in the same way she scolds and mothers her dolly and the dog. In the final scenes of The Piano, we see Flora busily attend to her mother’s needs.

Campion not only makes Flora a real child; she is also drawn as an emotionally complex human being with her own needs and wants. Thanks to her inspired, multi-layered characterization and Paquin’s natural, fully realised performance, Flora is consistently credible and authentic. Campion’s portrait of Flora is also a political one. The writer-director is interested in her place in the world. Through Flora, she explores the distinctive nature of the mother-daughter relationship as well as the hold of fathers. Flora is an intelligent, resilient child. Like her mother, she is portrayed as a survivor and sovereign spirit. We last see her cart-wheeling in the garden of her new home. Ultimately, her fate is fascinating one to contemplate.

 

 

Not Peggy Olson: Rape Culture in ‘Top of the Lake’

Jacqueline Joe as Tui and Elisabeth Moss as Robin Griffin in Top of the Lake
This guest post by Lauren C. Byrd previously appeared at her blog Love Her, Love Her Shoes and is cross-posted with permission.
You know there’s a Maori legend about this lake… that there’s a demon’s heart at the bottom of it; the beats makes the lake rise and fall every five minutes.

A young girl bikes away from her home, heading through beautiful scenery until she reaches the edge of a large lake. She wades in up to her shoulders. Cut to two shirtless men, muscled and tattooed. Immediately, the feminine: the girl; water is compared to the masculine: men, muscles, tattoos.
These gender-based opening images of the Sundance Channel series, Top of the Lake, set the scene and the ongoing conflict for the New Zealand-based show. Jane Campion, a director known for her feminist take on period dramas (The Piano, Bright Star), injects a feminist element into a police drama, a genre known for viewing women as victims. With Campion at the helm, the series does not shy away from uncomfortable issues, such as the frustrations of living in a patriarchal rape culture.
In the first episode, Tui (Jacqueline Joe), the 12-year-old girl who waded deep into the lake, is discovered to be pregnant. Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) is called in by child services to participate in Tui’s case. Robin grew up in the small town of Laketop, New Zealand but fled the town at an early age and earned her stripes as a detective in a more metropolitan environment.
When Griffin arrives at the local police station to talk to Tui, a cadre of male officers stare at her dumbly while she gives them orders.
Later, Robin fields sexual innuendo and inappropriate questions from her superior, Sargent Detective Al Parker, but instead of objecting, she rolls with the punches, avoiding the questions or changing the subject back to the investigation. It’s a sad reality that she has no other option. She’s an outsider in the local police force, and even if she reported Sargent Detective Parker to someone higher up the food chain, it’s doubtful anything would happen other than word getting back to him. It’s pretty clear the Laketop police is an old boys’ club. Other than Robin, there’s only one female working there, Xena.
When Robin tries to brief the squad about Tui’s case, she is undermined by two of the men on the squad. When she pulls one out into the hall for talking out of turn, the others start to leave before the briefing is finished. Not only do they not respect Robin’s authority on the subject, they don’t care about Tui’s well being.
It’s clear there is a patriarchal order, not only at the police station, which is headed by Sargent Detective Al Parker (David Wenham), but also in the community of Laketop, where Tui’s dad, Matt Mitchum, and his sons, Mark and Luke, reign supreme. 
Top of the Lake‘s “Paradise”–a piece of land where a women’s commune lives
On a piece of land called Paradise, a half dozen women, led by GJ (Holly Hunter) a mother earth type with her long, wispy silver hair, sets up camp. The land is owned by Matt Mitchum, who doesn’t hide his temper from the women upon finding them there. “Who the hell are you?” he asks. Upon seeing GJ he asks, “Is she a she?” One of the women informs Matt she bought the property, but Matt isn’t used to taking no for an answer and throws a hissy fit. “Get out of here, you alpha ass,” another woman calls after him as he storms off the property.
Campion is known for symbolism in her films. Top of the Lake is no exception, starting with the women’s “commune” at Paradise. Paradise is a religious term for a higher place or the holiest place. Paradise also describes the world before it was tainted by evil. Laketop’s Paradise embodies the pastoral, its landscape being made up of large fields which look out over the water. Its leader, GJ, may look like a mother earth type, but her advice to the women is brutally honest. When Tui wanders onto the land, has lunch with the women, and shares her secret about the baby, GJ tells her she has a time bomb inside of her, and it’s going to go off. “Are you ready, kid?” GJ’s advice seems to be for these women to harden themselves emotionally, in a way making themselves more like men. 
Holly Hunter as GJ in Top of the Lake
Another form of symbolism, the lake, around and sometimes in which most of the action takes place, is a mysterious force of nature. The residents of the town often comment on how the water will kill or hurt them, and there’s the sense they don’t mean just the temperature. Maybe they believe it is possessed by the Maori legend (Maoris are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand) of the demon’s heart in it, which Johnno tells Robin:
There’s a Maori legend about this lake that says there’s a demon’s heart at the bottom of it. It beats; it makes the lake rise and fall every five minutes. There was a warrior that rescued a maiden from a giant demon called tipua. And he set fire to the demon’s body while it slept and burnt everything but his heart. And the fat melting from the body formed a trough. And the snow from the mountains ran down to fill it, to form this lake.

Although the legend surrounding the lake features a typical “damsel in distress” tale of a male rescuing a maiden, water is often considered a feminine element. If considered in this way, the patriarchal society of Laketop is surrounded by the feminine: the lake.
Campion may not shy away from a dark look at how patriarchal violence seeps into every corner of life, but the series also offers up hope and possibilities of resistance. As the series unfolds, Robin’s own rape at the age of 15 and subsequent pregnancy is divulged. Although she and Tui’s stories are different, both of them are strong women. Not only is Robin fighting for a resolution to Tui’s case, but she stands up against a group of sexist men in a bar who makes several jokes at her and Tui’s expense. “Are you a feminist?” they ask. “A lesbian? Nobody likes a feminist, except a lesbian.”
Yet another comment in the bar involves victim blaming as the butt of the joke. “Hey, what does it mean if a girl goes around town in tiny shorts? It means she’s hot.”
“Or a slut!” his friend cries out. Robin throws a dart into the shoulder of one of the men. In a later bar scene, one of her former rapists starts flirting with her without realizing who she is. Robin breaks a bottle and stabs him. “Do you remember me now?” she cries.
Upon running away from home, Tui embodies a familiar lone male figure, a cowboy, as she rides into Paradise on her horse, a gun slung over her shoulder. When she disappears from Paradise, Robin fears she has been kidnapped and murdered by whomever assaulted her, but Tui makes a home for herself in the bush and survives on her wits. 
Robin in Top of the Lake
Even among a patriarchal society, there are allies. In Top of the Lake‘s case, it’s men who choose not to be “alpha asses” like Matt Mitchum. Johnno, Robin’s high school sweetheart and Tui’s half-brother, still harbors guilt about the night Robin was attacked. He feels he failed by not standing up for her: “I should have helped you, but I didn’t. I was a coward.” Johnno later attacks one of Robin’s rapists, telling him to leave town. “She was 15!”
Johnno and Robin’s past is marred by painful events, but as Robin continues to work on Tui’s case, they begin to grow close again, and among all the sexual violence, Campion uses the pair to portray the pleasure of a consensual relationship.
Similarly, Tui has a male ally in her life. Her relationship with Jamie is in no way sexual, there are parallels between their relationship and Johnno and Robin’s. Jamie also feels guilt for what happened to Tui, and he literally beats himself up about it in a scene where he slams his head against the doors in his house, only stopping when his mother pulls him away. Jamie brings supplies to Tui while she’s hiding in the bush and plans to help her during the labor.
The series does not wrap up things in a tidy little bow. It may not offer solutions for eradicating sexual assault, but it does more than many previous television series and films: it exposes the truths of a rape culture and violent patriarchal society and how those who live in them choose to survive.

Lauren C. Byrd is a former post-production minion but prefers to spend her days analyzing television and film, rather than working in it. She studied film and television at Syracuse University and writes a blog, Love Her, Love Her Shoes, about under-appreciated women in film, television, and theater. She is currently writing a weekly series about feminism on this season of Mad Men

 

Director Spotlight: Jane Campion

Filmmaker Jane Campion
Jane Campion is one of only four women ever nominated for a Best Director Academy Award (other nominees have been Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, and Lina Wertmüller). In addition, Campion won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Piano–a film for which she also won two Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards, the Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival, an Independent Spirit Award, and a Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) Award, among others. Her latest film is 2009’s Bright Star. She has directed numerous films, shorts, and TV movies, and served as a writer and producer.
An exerpt from Campion’s bio, from IMDb:
Jane Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and now lives in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Having graduated with a BA in Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, and a BA, with a painting major, at Sydney College of the Arts in 1979, she began filmmaking in the early 1980s, attending the Australian School of Film and Television. Her first short film, Peel (1982) won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986.

Here are a selection of her films and critical responses to each.

Sweetie(1989)
Campion’s first feature-length film, Sweetie, is often lauded as a feminist classic, though Campion herself denies a feminist perspective on the film. Here is a brief plot summary, also from IMDb:
Explores sisters, in their twenties, their parents, and family dysfunctions. Kay is gangly and slightly askew, consulting a fortune teller and then falling in love with a man because of a mole on his face and a lock of hair; then, falling out of love when he plants a tree in their yard. Sweetie is plump, imperious, self-centered, and seriously mentally ill. The parents see none of the illness, seeing only their cute child. Kay mainly feels exasperation at her sister’s impositions. Slowly, the film exposes how the roots of Sweetie’s illness have choked Kay’s own development. Can she be released?

Though the above summary alludes to “the roots of Sweetie’s illness,” this–and many reviews–ignore that the root of the her illness and Kay’s stunted sexuality is their father’s sexual abuse of the mentally-challenged Sweetie since her childhood (and continuing in adulthood). The theme is addressed subtly, and smartly, and the constant presence of a vague yet dark past imbues the film with a sense of tension and foreboding. (Also, the women’s body types aren’t nearly as important as the summary oddly makes it seem.)
From Roger Ebert:
The first time I saw it, at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, I didn’t know what to make of it. I doubted if I “liked” it and yet it was certainly a work of talent. There was something there. I didn’t feel much from it, though; the experience seemed primarily cerebral. Then six months later I saw “Sweetie” a second time, and suddenly there it all was, laid out in blood and passion on the screen, the emotional turmoil of a family’s life.

 Watch the trailer:

The Piano (1993)

The Piano is likely Campion’s most famous, and certainly most lauded film to date. Both female lead and supporting actors won Oscars (you can watch their speeches here, including one from the adorable 11-year-old Anna Paquin). The IMDb plot summary doesn’t really do the film justice, but here it is:
A mute woman along with her young daughter, and her prized piano, are sent to 1850s New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner, and she’s soon lusted after by a local worker on the plantation.
Many reviewers, including Alan Stone, writing for the Boston Review, were quick to point out that The Piano is more than just “a feminist tract,” trying to gloss over the fact that it is, actually, a fantastic feminist fable–and that fact alone might make it worth your viewing time. Reviewer Vincent Canby was a little less interested in distancing the film–and himself–from feminism when he wrote:
Like “Sweetie,” Ms. Campion’s marvelous first feature, “The Piano” is never predictable, though it is seamless. It’s the work of a major writer and director. The film has the enchanted manner of a fairy tale. Even the setting suggests a fairy tale: the New Zealand bush, with its lush and rain-soaked vegetation, is as strange as the forest in which Flora says her mother was struck dumb.

Trips through this primeval forest are full of peril. When Ada goes off to her first assignation with Baines, she appears to be as innocent as Red Riding Hood. Yet this Red Riding Hood falls head over heels in love with the wolf, who turns out to be not a sheep in wolf’s clothing, but a recklessly romantic prince with dirty fingernails.

 Watch the trailer:

The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
With an official “rotten” rating from Rotten Tomatoes, this adaptation of Henry James’ novel of the same name (first published in 1881) may or may not have been the best follow up to a multi-Oscar winner. However, Campion’s acclaim allowed her a budget for this star-studded period literary adaptation. Frankly, I like this kind of movie–and even this version’s more experimental elements. It’s smart and has a feminist question at its heart. If you’re not familiar with the book, here’s a very brief plot synopsis:
Isabel Archer, an American heiress and free thinker, travels to Europe to find herself.
Instead of faithfully reiterating James’s novel, Ms. Campion chooses to reimagine it as a Freudian fever dream. Fantasies intrude; prison bars or doorways or mirrors offer tacit commentary; the story’s well-bred heroine abruptly sniffs her boot or tries to hide an undergarment hanging on a door. With startling intuitiveness, Ms. Campion traces the tension between polite, guarded characters and blunt visual symbols of their inner turmoil.
Watch the trailer:

In the Cut (2003)
Receiving worse reviews than Portrait, 2003’s In the Cut stars Meg Ryan playing against “America’s Sweetheart” type. Was this the reason for the harsh reviews–people unable to accept Ryan in a grittier role? I can’t say for sure, having not seen the movie, but it looks dark and creepy. The synopsis:
Following the gruesome murder of a young woman in her neighborhood, a self-determined woman living in New York City–as if to test the limits of her own safety–propels herself into an impossibly risky sexual liaison. Soon she grows increasingly wary about the motives of every man with whom she has contact–and about her own.

Ann Hornaday, writing for The Washington Post, says

These tricky sexual dynamics clearly interest Campion more than the thriller elements of “In the Cut,” in which Frannie has a tendency to walk into dark basements and get into strange men’s cars at a rate clearly disproportionate to her intelligence. The red herrings are trotted out almost by rote, with no finesse or subtlety, as are frequent outbursts of gratuitous gore. By the movie’s ludicrous conclusion, viewers will have abandoned all hope of getting the mature thriller they might have paid to see.

But if “In the Cut” fails as a thriller, it’s not such a write-off as a psychosexual portrait of a certain kind of single Manhattan woman at the turn of the new century. With its restless, jittery camera, the movie captures the jangly paranoia of a city that is often equally tantalizing and threatening; Frannie responds in kind, with her own contradictory sexual persona, which at certain times is defiantly autonomous and at others almost timidly girlish. A “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” for the post-9/11 age (the remnants of that tragedy form one of the movie’s many visual leitmotifs), “In the Cut” focuses on the darker face of the classic New York romance.

Watch the trailer:

Bright Star (2009)

Campion returned to critical acclaim with Bright Star, the story of poet John Keats’ first love and subject of his poem “Bright Star,” Fanny Brawne. The film is based on their 3-year romance.

Dana Stevens, writing for Slate, says of Bright Star

Keats proves as tough to demythologize as Marilyn Monroe: He died so young, his life was so tragic, and the small body of work he left behind is so incomparable, that any depiction of his short life is bound to be tinged with idealization. 

That’s why Campion was smart to make her film less about Keats than about Fanny Brawne, the fashionable, flirtatious young woman who captivated him in the spring of 1818 and lived next door to him in Hampstead for the last two years of his life. Fanny, as played by the up-and-coming Australian actress Abbie Cornish, is a curious heroine. 

Salon‘s Stephanie Zacharek says

Poetry gets a bad rap almost everywhere: In school, where many of us read it because we have to; in life, where most of us don’t read it at all; and in the movies, where it’s often quoted by the most pompous character or, worse yet, in a self-serious voice-over. Even people who like poetry well enough often fail to revisit poems they once connected with as young students.

If you’re in that last group, Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” just may be the film to reconnect you. And if you’re not, the film works on its own as an unfussy, passionate and gently erotic love story that never tips into sentimentality.

Watch the trailer: