Tag: Meta

‘In the House’: Promising Female Characters Disappoint

In the House movie poster
Written by Amanda Rodiguez
Spoiler Alert
Francois Ozon’s In the House (or Dans la Maison) is actually quite good. It’s an intelligent film with brilliantly portrayed, complex, interesting characters along with pathos and moments of poignant humor. The film is very aware of social class dynamics, showing the interplay of working class, middle class, and the intelligentsia. Germain is a jaded teacher who sees the writing talent in his student Claude, a smart, working class kid with a sadistic streak. As Germain nurtures Claude’s “gift,” both their lives spiral out of control. Using an engaging meta-narrative to show the story-within-the-story through its chapters and revisions as Claude integrates Germain’s instruction, Germain becomes obsessed with his student and the story he writes. We begin to wonder about the potential maliciousness of Claude’s manipulations, not only of the family “in the house,” but of Germain himself. Who is really the teacher and who is the pupil? Where is the line between fantasy and reality?
Though I enjoyed the smart plot and fine performances, I found myself on the fence about the female characterizations. First, there’s Esther (played by Emmanuelle Seigner), the matriarch of the Artole family. 
Esther sleeps while Claude voyeuristically writes about her feet. Women, he finds, are easier to admire when they’re asleep and can’t challenge him or make him feel inadequate.
Claude is sexually attracted to her, longs for her as a replacement for the mother who left him, and resents and envies her for her class status. Claude mocks her as stupid, painting her in his narrative as coarse and frivolous. Germain isn’t too concerned with the lack of sophistication Claude’s writing exhibits as it turns Esther into little more than an object of desire (albeit the desire itself is rendered as complex and multifaceted). Germain, instead, insists that the key to the story is the fleshing out of the young Rapha character.
Claude derides and inwardly sneers at Esther for her obsession with the house. She constantly flits through home magazines and goes on about the drapes and building a veranda. Esther’s identity is reduced to the house. Claude never really sees or appreciates her loneliness and the deep, abiding unhappiness in the objective correlative of the house.
Esther folding laundry, noticing Claude staring at her from a park bench.
Claude never realizes that the house is every bit as much a symbol for him as it is for her, though the permutation is different for each of them. For Claude, the house is an escape into another, better life with inhabitants who he’s free to toy with and manipulate to manifest his own desires. For Esther, it is a prison and a life preserver that she continues to beautify in the hopes that she won’t have to keep staring at the bars. Not only that, but Claude never recognizes that Esther is the keeper of this house that he desires so much; she is the one who lovingly cares for its physicality while internally sacrificing much to keep its inhabitants happy and together (even, in the end, giving up the house itself so that her husband can follow his dreams).
Then we have Jeanne (played by Kristin Scott Thomas), Gillam’s intelligent, insightful wife who operates an art gallery.
Jeanne sits in bed contemplating the tale Claude weaves as well as the nature of the weaver himself.
Germain shares young Claude’s chapters with Jeanne, and while Germain becomes engrossed in the boy’s story and writing talent, Jeanne constantly reminds us to think of the troubled boy crafting the tale. Jeanne also observes the way this obsession is affecting Germain, the only one outside the story enough to keep bringing reality back into play. She cites Germain’s loss of sexual appetite, postulating that he may be attracted to his student; Germain’s prioritizing Claude’s writing over the desperate situation at her art gallery where her job is in jeopardy; and Germain’s losing his moral compass as he helps Claude and Rapha cheat in order to keep Claude within the house and writing. She is the one who breaks the fourth wall by inviting the Artole’s to an art opening at her gallery.
Germain is horrified that Jeanne has invited the Artoles, as he’d prefer to imagine them as fictitious.
To Claude, Germain mocks the art Jeanne curates as pretentious. Germain is threatened by her intelligence and effortless insight into the human psyche as proven by her astute grasp of Claude and the characters he portrays. Claude ends up weaving Jeanne into his narrative, ending their encounter with sex, a scene that is dubious in its veracity. This non-consensual representation is a violation of her personhood. Her agency disappears with her as we never find out what becomes of her after Germain murderously chokes her after reading Claude’s rendering of his meeting with Jeanne. Germain’s vicious attack is borderline absurdist in its ferocity, and I was left wondering if the scene was intended to be humorous … I assure you, it was not. Germain’s assault seems more about the loss of another thing that belonged to him (his wife is to his job is to his reputation) due to Claude’s story as well as his own obsession.

Not only does Germain become completely unsympathetic to me in that moment, but the female characters are revealed to be little more than narrative devices. The ending of In the House makes it clear that the film was always and only about the relationship between Germain and Claude. As the two sit together on a bench bereft of everything but each other’s company and their stories, it becomes clear that the narrative was always about the power play between instructor and pupil. Other people were merely obstacles that stood between them to be maneuvered like chess pieces until these two men were on equal footing, a sort of stalemate with only the kings left standing on the board.

At first, I hoped the film was calling attention to the way that both Germain and Claude don’t really see the women in their lives, don’t allow them to be full human beings, but upon further analysis, it becomes apparent that the film itself only uses the female characters as convenient props to help elucidate the male narrative replete with its masculine struggles.

It’s Our 5-Year Blogiversary!

BF co-founders Steph and Amber at the 2010 Athena Film Festival

We can’t believe it, but today marks five years since we started Bitch Flicks.
In March 2008, we started a blog with the wink-and-a-nudge name, Bitch Flicks. In that first year, we wrote a whopping seventeen posts, eight of which were actual film reviews.
In 2012 we published 557 posts–and “we” consisted of a dozen people, not to mention numerous guest writers.
We want to thank our Editor and Staff Writer Megan Kearns.
We want to thank our staff writers: Erin Fenner, Robin Hitchcock, Leigh Kolb, Carrie Nelson, Rachel Redfern, Amanda Rodriguez, Lady T, Max Thornton, and Myrna Waldron.
We want to thank everyone who has ever contributed to Bitch Flicks, whether by writing a post, designing a logo, donating, commenting, or sharing a piece you read with someone else.
Everyone mentioned here has been a part of what has made this project continue. 
Finally, we want to thank every one of you reading this–and we hope you’ll stay with us in years to come. 
–Steph and Amber

Our 4-Year Blogiversary

Queen Latifah, Kimberly Elise, Vivica A. Fox, and Jada Pinkett Smith in Set It Off
Something happened last Wednesday, in the midst of our Women’s History Month series focusing on Biopics and Documentaries about Women: We missed our 4-year blogiversary. Our forgetting is either a very good sign or a very bad one, but we couldn’t be happier about four years of movies, television, media, and feminism.
A shout-out and big thank you to all our readers and guest writers. With your help, Bitch Flicks‘ influence and site traffic have grown substantially in the past year. We continue to be an ad-free website consisting of an all-volunteer staff of regular and guest writers.
No ads also means no revenue to pay for site hosting, upgrades, and the like. So we have some ways you can help:
  • Donate via PayPal. Notice the “Donate” tab at the top right of the page. If you’re a reader who supports what we do, consider donating. Any amount, however small, is a gesture of support and will help pay for our expenses.
  • Purchase items through our Amazon store. We have a widget in our sidebar called “Bitch Flicks‘ Picks.” If you go on to make purchases through our site, we earn a small percentage of the proceeds, and if it’s an awesome feminist film, TV show, or book, then we all win.
If you support what we do but can’t afford a monetary contribution, there are a number of things you can do to show your appreciation and help spread the word about Bitch Flicks.
Here’s to another great year!

Here’s the part where we ask for your help.

Running a blog is difficult and time-consuming work. It’s also often thankless: you don’t make any money, you have to fend off trolls and commenters only interested in personal attacks, and you worry that no one reads that post you spent hours writing. 
 
But it’s also very rewarding: you meet people online who share your interests and concerns, you explore ideas that other people help you more fully understand, and you have a venue for fighting back against systems that seem untouchable in everyday life. We’re grateful for all of you who read our pieces, comment on them, link to them and cross post them on your own sites. We’re especially grateful for those of you who have contributed pieces to our site, and expanded the discussion.
Bitch Flicks is free from obnoxious ads, which means there has been zero revenue to pay for site hosting, guest writers, upgrades, and the like. There are two ways you can help:
  1. Donate via PayPal. Notice the “Donate” tab at the top right of the page. If you’re a reader who supports what we do, consider donating to the cause. Any amount, however small, is a greatly appreciated gesture of support and will help pay for our expenses.  
  2. Purchase items through our Amazon store. We have a widget in our sidebar called “Bitch Flicks’ Picks.” If you go on to make purchases through our site, we earn a small percentage of the proceeds, and if it’s an awesome feminist film, TV show, or book–then we all win.

If you can’t afford a financial contribution, there are a number of things you can do to help.

–Amber & Stephanie

Our 3-Year Blogiversary!

Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda plot their revenge in 9 to 5
Three years of Bitch Flicks! How can it be? Have we done any good? Is the state of women in film any better than it was when we started, on March 28, 2008? Or are we just shouting into the abyss?
Our egos aren’t so big as to think this little ol’ blog would chip away at a machine as big and finely-tuned as Hollywood. However, we see ourselves as part of a growing reaction against conservative, patriarchal values in mainstream film and the lack of women–and especially of diverse women–starring in, directing, writing, producing, and critiquing movies, television, and media in general (check out our “Sites We Like” blogroll for a number of people doing excellent work). We’re (still) sick to death of misogynistic, exploitative, sexist, racist, homophobic, ageist, one-dimensional, etc. portrayals of women in film. We’re (still) sick to death of the reign of the adolescent-male demographic as the coveted Ones. We’re (still) sick to death of being the exception, the Other, the minority, the ignored, the simplistic chicks. 
In other words, we still need Bitch Flicks.
Running a blog is, as those of you who do it yourselves know, difficult and time-consuming work. It’s also often thankless: you don’t make any money, you have to fend off trolls and commenters only interested in personal attacks, and you worry that no one reads that post you spent hours writing. But it’s also very rewarding: you meet people online who share your interests and concerns, you explore ideas that other people help you more fully understand, and you have a venue for fighting back against systems that seem untouchable in everyday life. We’re grateful for all of you who read our pieces, comment on them, link to them and cross post them on your own sites. We’re especially grateful for those of you who have contributed pieces to our site, and expanded the discussion.
Here’s the part where we ask for your help.
We’ve tried to keep Bitch Flicks free from obnoxious, and often offensive, ads (yes, there’s that one Google ad in the sidebar, kept as a mere experiment, as we’ve earned nothing from it)–which means there has been zero revenue to pay for site hosting, guest writers, and upgrades. So we’ve added two ways you can help us pay for these things:
  1. Donate via PayPal. Notice the “Donate” tab at the top right of the page. If you’re a reader who supports what we do, consider donating to the cause. Any amount, however small, is a gesture of support and will help pay for our expenses.
  2. Purchase items through our Amazon store. We sometimes link to products on Amazon in our posts, and have a widget in our sidebar called “Bitch Flicks’ Picks.” If you go on to make purchases through our site, we earn a small percentage of the proceeds, and if it’s an awesome feminist film, TV show, or book–then we all win.

If you support what we do but can’t afford the financial contributions, there are a number of things you can do to show your appreciation and help spread the word about Bitch Flicks.

Finally, a big public thanks to the volunteer who created our new banner. We wanted to re-vamp the look of the site for our blogiversary, and that new banner is the biggest visual change. You might also notice the new pages (not all of which are complete yet!), new sidebar widgets, and new pictures on Twitter & Facebook. There are other new ideas we’ll be implementing in the coming months, so stay tuned, and, as always, thanks for reading!
–Amber & Stephanie

    Movie Review: Inception

    The plot of Inception is deceptively simple: a tale of corporate espionage sidetracked by a man’s obsession with his dead wife and complicated by groovy special effects and dream technology. As far as summer blockbusters and action/heist/corporate espionage movies go, it’s not bad. Once you get beyond the genuinely beautiful camera work and dizzying special effects, however, you’re not left with much.

    One thing that really bothers me about the film–aside from its dull, lifeless, stereotypical, and utterly useless female characters (which I’ll get to in a moment)–is that nothing is at stake. Dom Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) and his team take on a big new job: one seemingly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants an idea planted into the mind of another powerful businessman, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, Saito wants Fischer to believe that dear old dad’s dying wish was for him to break up the family business, so that, we assume, Saito wins the game of capitalism. Should the team go through with the profitable job? We aren’t supposed to care about the answer to this question or what is at stake in the plot.

    It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?

    SPOILER ALERT

    So, what makes Mal so bad? In life, she was his faithful wife (for all we know) and mother of his two children. In the film, she’s not even a real woman, but a figment of Cobb’s imagination, haunting him with her suicide. (Note: For a better version of this story, see Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or the crappy Soderbergh adaptation starring George Clooney.) Her constant appearances threaten Cobb’s inception task, and while we can imagine a suicide haunting this hard-working man, we learn the much uglier truth later: while developing his theory of “inception,” Cobb used Mal as his first test subject–planting the idea in her mind that reality was not what she believed it to be. Now we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife, driving her kill herself–yet she’s the evil one.

    What makes Ariadne so pure? It’s simple, really. We know she was a brilliant student of architecture, and…and…and…that’s it. The film needed an architectural dream space that wouldn’t be marred by trauma, or memory, or the like, so the natural choice would be for a computer program to design it, right? But a computer program couldn’t also counsel Cobb through the trauma of his wife’s suicide and, ultimately, coach him through killing her apparition. She is invested in getting through the job, as her life depends on it, but why does she give a damn about Cobb? Because she’s a woman architect, and women are nurturing creatures, right? So, we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife and threatens to kill his entire team through self-sabotage over guilt, but luckily he has one good woman to pull him through.

    Is it possible to look differently at these two characters? Even if you read the movie as an allegory of filmmaking/storytelling, we’re still left with women who are sidekicks, and who serve merely as plot devices. Maria of The Hathor Legacy writes

    Both Mal and Ariadne are symbols, not real characters, and I think this is reflected in the kinds of lines and characterization each is offered. In a movie where businessmen are dryly humorous, several million dollars are devoted to a man’s daddy-issues, and Dom’s nostalgic love for family is symbolized through a honey-heavy shot of golden light haloing his young moppets’ heads, the wooden-ness and flatness of the lines offered these characters is startlingly noticeable.

    In other words, even if you refute the realism of the film and its characters, you’re still left with some major gender trouble. Is Cobb a sympathetic character? No. Do we want his big inception job to work? Don’t care. What I care about, for the purposes of this review, is that we have–yet again–a successful mainstream movie that relies on tired tropes of female characters.

    Other interesting takes on Inception: