Tag: Nicole Kidman

Pleading for the Female Gaze Through Its Absence in ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’

The female gaze, such as it exists in a world that denies its existence, is an insular one that exists between Adele and Emma as opposed to how the film itself is shot. The film presents the case for the female gaze by examining what happens when it’s withheld.

blue-is-the-warmest-color

This guest post by Emma Houxbois appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

“You guys know about vampires?” author Junot Diaz once asked an audience of college students. “You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, ‘Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?'”

This is the starting point of Blue is the Warmest Color, which contends, and grapples with, the fact that depictions of female pleasure by female artists do not exist in art. This condition, this lack of understanding and representation, is what dogs its protagonist, Adele, as she struggles and ultimately fails to achieve a sense of comfort with her queerness. Female pleasure abounds in the film from the explicit sex between Adele and Emma, whose romance the film charts the rise and fall of, to eating, and the particular pleasure of observing and being observed. Adele is sometimes the subject, as she pursues Emma or when they take in an art exhibit, her gaze on the nude female figures constructed by men the focus of the scene, and sometimes she is the object as she poses for Emma’s paintings, the first representational work of her lover’s career.

The English title of the film, the same as the graphic novel it was adapted from, implies an inversion of the normal way of seeing. We’re used to seeing blue as cool, cold, and distant, but the film challenges us to see it as a vibrant and passionate colour the way that it challenges us to reconceptualize the power and passion of queer love. The French title, La Vie D’Adele: Chapitres I & II are heavy with film and literary allusions. To The Story of Adele H, the loose account of how Victor Hugo’s daughter pursued an unrequited love across continents and La Vie de Marianne, a novel left unfinished, suggesting both tragedy and an unfinished quality, which both come into fruition. Adele remains restless and unfulfilled throughout the film as Truffaut’s depiction of Adele Hugo is, but the irony of the reference is that Blue’s Adele is an inversion. Instead of warping the world around her to believe that an unrequited love is genuine, Adele is dogged by the invisible weight of heteronormativity that propels her to hide her relationship and live in a private shame. The female gaze, such as it exists in a world that denies its existence, is an insular one that exists between Adele and Emma as opposed to how the film itself is shot. The film presents the case for the female gaze by examining what happens when it’s withheld.

Blue-Is-The-Warmest-Color-2

The problem with the male gaze and trying to uplift or separate a female equivalent from it is that male gaze as a term and concept has shrunk in its application to a narrow didactic interpretation that borders on being universally pejorative. To wit, the simple unexamined usage of the term was thought to be all that was needed to condemn Blue is the Warmest Color by its skeptics, but the use of “male gaze” as a cudgel that immediately translates into prurience and exploitation does more harm than good to the conception of a female gaze not least because it immediately valorizes the alternative, as elaborated on by Edward Snow in his essay “Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems”:

“Nothing could better serve the paternal superego than to reduce masculine vision completely to the terms of power, violence, and control, to make disappear whatever in the male gaze remains outside the patriarchal, and pronounce outlawed, guilty, damaging, and illicitly possessive every male view of women. It is precisely on such grounds that the father’s law institutes and maintains itself in vision. A feminism not attuned to internal difference risks becoming the instrument rather than the abrogator of the law.

[…]

Under the aegis of demystifying and excoriating male vision, the critic systematically deprives images of women of their subjective or undecidable aspects- to say nothing of their power -and at the same time eliminates from the onlooking “male” ego whatever elements of identification with, sympathy for, or vulnerability to the feminine such images bespeak.”

Simply put, the male gaze is not a monolith, and despite the way that the term is used in criticism and conversation, no one actually views film from the position that the male gaze is monolithic or purely informed by patriarchal values. To actually adopt that stance would require the conflation of Kenneth Anger with Quentin Tarantino, among other laughable absurdities. Male-directed film has always found ways to appeal to women on terms other than internalized misogyny, and of course the male vision in film has been frequently mitigated, influenced, or redirected by the work of women in other roles. Tarantino, for instance, is famous for his collaboration with the late editor Sally Menke, whom he sought out specifically for a feminine influence, which is hardly a rare event. Much recent buzz was generated by another female editor, Margaret Sixel, who worked on Mad Max: Fury Road with longtime collaborator George Miller (she edited Happy Feet and Babe: Pig in the City for him). Her contribution has been argued as being integral to the strong female reception to the movie, which, again, runs the risk of valorizing women’s work as being inherently superior.

-1

The problem with strictly gendering the gaze is that it can improperly frame collaborations and essentialize the vision of female filmmakers. Mad Max: Fury Road, as a film, is more than the sum of a male director and a female editor, especially for a narrative so committed to dissecting toxic masculinity from within. So too ought Sally Menke’s work with Tarantino be seen more than just a mitigation, but a cornerstone of Tarantino’s desire to achieve more that what the limitations of his masculinity allow for, especially as the roles of women in his films evolved from non existent in Reservoir Dogs to the complete focus in Deathproof. Perhaps the most intriguing recent example of how a female collaborator transformed the work of a male director was in Gillian Flynn’s adaptation of her own novel Gone Girl for David Fincher, inverting the uncomfortable and frequently malicious male gaze that engenders his work, transferring the web of fear that his female protagonists like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander or Alien 3’s Ripley live in to the male protagonist and through him, the male audience. It’s a synthesis that cannot be easily essentialized into a single gendered gaze.

This is compounded by the fact that male nor female are fixed categories, nor are their desires. How are we, for instance, intended to properly frame the work of Lana Wachowski as a trans woman? How trans women engage with gender in our own lives and through our art cannot and should not be subsumed into a lens defined by the cisgender female experience. Which is only the beginning of how ruinous categorizations of gender in the gaze are on queer film and filmmakers. In comic book criticism especially, lenses of queer male masculinity are frequently co-opted and assimilated into constructions of the female gaze, which has the twin repercussions of narrowing queer male desire to a pinprick of feminized male figures and completely alienating queer female desire. If there are to be productive critical frameworks that utilize “male” and “female” gazes, they must be understood as needing a prism held up to them in order to properly understand the full spectrum of what informs a particular vision. There needs to be an understanding of intersectionality intrinsic to their uses.

fullwidth.5447548e

On that note, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux, the stars of Blue is the Warmest Color, are the only actors to have been awarded Cannes’ Palme D’Or alongside their director, Abdellatif Kechiche. It was done by a jury made up of Steven Spielberg, Bollywood actress Vidya Balan, Christoph Waltz, We Need To Talk About Kevin screenwriter Lynne Ramsay, Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu (whose Beyond the Hills and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days have tackled themes including queer femininity and access to abortion), Japanese writer-director Naomi Kawase, Nicole Kidman, and Ang Lee. Nicole Kidman, it must be recalled, co-starred in Stanley Kubrick’s erotically charged Eyes Wide Shut with then husband Tom Cruise. Ang Lee’s career as a director has been built almost entirely out of critically lauded portrayals of queerness and eroticism including The Ice Storm; Lust, Caution; Brokeback Mountain; and Taking Woodstock. The crowning of Kechiche, Exarchopoulos, and Seydoux by this jury, Lee and Kidman in particular, ought to have carried with it all the mythic importance of Quentin Tarantino, as head jurist, awarding Chan-Wook Park the Palme D’Or for Oldboy a decade earlier. Instead it’s treated as a footnote. Presumably because in this instance, that jury was more attuned to the nuances of the male gaze than the American critical establishment that presaged its arrival on US soil with cries of exploitation and misogyny.

The Cannes jury made it clear that they wanted to define the film as a collaboration, and I would extend that further to define it as a conversation. At its heart, Blue is the Warmest Color is a film about performances of identity and how the stresses of assimilation can erode and destroy fundamental parts of our being. One of the primary ways that we can perceive Kechiche’s self awareness that his masculinity limits his ability to conceive of and portray female queerness accurately is the insertion of a viewpoint character for him, an Arab actor Adele originally meets at a party thrown for Emma’s artist friends. He asks naive, well meaning questions about their relationship that queer women the world over hear, but understanding that he’s probed far enough or perhaps too far into her life and identity as an interloper, he opens up to her. He tells her about how he’s an actor and he’s just been to the United States, describing New York City in the same way that we dreamily describe Paris. “They love it when we say Allahu Akbar,” he says with a smile, telling her about how there’s always a hunger for Arab terrorists in Hollywood. Kechiche is, himself, Tunisian, and this is his exegesis.

8253061_orig

He’s approaching the queer experience from the perspective of the immigrant experience. This is the Adam’s Rib that he proffers up towards the goal of uncovering female pleasure in art. This is the part of himself that he bares in order to justify the depth with which he probes Adele and Emma’s relationship. The clearest way that we see his Arab identity in the film is in the act of cooking and eating, which easily transcends the specific cultural context he takes it from thanks to the intimacy and care with which it’s handled. Cooking is framed as emotional labor, seen most keenly as Adele frets over making Spaghetti Bolognese for Emma’s friends, fretting over it as she serves it. Eating is, except for Adele’s junk food stash, a communal act, the consumption of the emotional labour of cooking as much as the food itself. This merges with queerness as Adele tries oysters, possibly the most yonic food imaginable, at dinner with Emma’s family. Her hesitance and discomfiture with eating oysters despite the welcoming attitude of Emma’s family mirrors the overwhelming tension she’s experiencing in her performance of queer femininity, and the difficulty she’s experiencing in how accepting Emma’s family is of it.

The broader sense of how Kechiche attempts to conceive of queerness through the best available lens at his disposal is how he constructs France’s queer community as a diaspora. He portrays Adele’s budding queerness and her experience of the queer nightlife in much the same way as the child of immigrants might feel overwhelmed and illegitimate by their first exposure to their parents’ native culture. There are certainly parallels between Adele’s entry into the queer community while still in high school and A Prophet’s Malik’s early uncomfortable interactions with the Arab prisoners after having been forcibly assimilated into the ranks of the Corsicans.

Where they differ is that Malik is able to thrive within the group by shedding attachments to the structures that will never accept him while Adele folds under the pressure of maintaining both a queer identity and the public performance of a straight one, immolating her relationship with Emma and leaving her isolated. Similarly, the Arab character returns to the film as Adele visits Emma’s latest show after their reconciliation. He tells her that he’s left acting, that he got tired of that one narrow performance of identity that the film industry allowed him. He’s never been happier. Adele remains unable to shed that attachment to the normative world and leaves feeling more upset and isolated than ever before.

tumblr_n5mmegvxeC1s6bstqo1_500

The pressure of assimilation asserted by heteronormativity and white supremacy are distinct yet similarly functioning forces, which is one of the main achievements of the film. While it is by definition an uneasy attempt at capturing the queer female condition, Blue is the Warmest Color succeeds magnificently by providing a context and a shared struggle with which to build solidarity between marginalized groups in contemporary France. In the scene immediately following Adele’s break up with Emma, we see her leading her children in a celebration of African culture, with Adele wearing a cheaply thrown together pastiche of African fashion, adopting a clearly false and ill fitting identity. It’s a stark metaphor for how poorly Adele assimilates into heteronormativity.

Kechiche’s attempts to conceptualize of others’ struggles by finding commonality is by no means uncommon or uncelebrated in contemporary film. Jim Sheridan found common ground with 50 Cent when making Get Rich or Die Tryin’  by taking him to where he was born in Dublin and exploring their differing experiences of 1980s New York City. In an oddly similar way, Steve McQueen launched his feature film career by exploring the Northern Irish experience of otherness in his account of Bobby Sands’ imprisonment in Hunger.

In regard to the female gaze, Blue is the Warmest Color isn’t an exemplar, but a cautionary tale in how conflating the gendered gaze with the gender of the director can obscure and severely harm incredibly brave and vital filmmaking. Especially in the case of a film that strives to achieve a sense of understanding between distinct groups that suffer similar forms of oppression.

 

Emma Houxbois is a fiercely queer trans woman whose natural habitat is the Pacific Northwest. She is currently the Comics Editor for The Rainbow Hub and co-host of Fantheon, a weekly comics podcast.

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!

 

recommended-red-714x300-1

 

Jon Stewart, Jamelle Bouie, And Others Weigh In On The Charleston Massacre by Kinsey Clarke at NPR

How Feminist TV Became The New Normal by Zeba Blay at The Huffington Post

Orange Is the New Black Quietly Reinvents Itself by Losing the Villain Narrative by Margaret Lyons at Vulture

Angela Lansbury’s School of Feminist Witchcraft by Jessica Mason McFadden at Gender Focus

SIFF Review – ‘Tangerine’ Takes on Every Label: Black, Brown, Poor, Trans, Woman & Sex Worker by Jai Tiggett at Shadow and Act

In “3 1/2 Minutes,” We See a Life Cut Short by Nijla Mu’min at Bitch Media
An Open Letter to Jerry Seinfeld by Julia Robins at Ms. blog
Broadening a Transgender Tale That Has Only Just Begun by Erik Piepenburg at The New York Times
Want to understand what it means to be a woman? Look to robots. by Alyssa Rosenberg at The Washington Post
Get Ready for Wes Studi as Badass Native Antihero in ‘Ronnie BoDean’ by Wilhelm Murg at Indian Country Today Media Network
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

 

Suzanne Stone: Frankenstein of Fame

The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

Poster for To Die For
Poster for To Die For

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Spoilers galore.

You’ve got to give it to Nicole Kidman. For an archetype of Hollywood movie stardom, she has–for many years now–been quite unafraid of taking on edgy, unsympathetic roles. Her impressive turn in Gus Van Sant’s mockumentary black comedy, To Die For (1995), could, arguably, be considered Kidman’s first truly risky part. In it, she plays a murderously self-interested, fame-obsessed small-town TV personality with the perfectly fitting name of Suzanne Stone. “You’re not anybody in America unless you’re on TV,” Suzanne sermonizes at the start. “On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody’s watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person.” The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

Surfaces seduce and deceive in Van Sant’s satire on American ambition. Suzanne is a vision of beauty and purity for her future husband, Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), when he first encounters her, and the crimes she commits take place in an ordinary, pretty town in New Hampshire called Little Hope. It’s love at first sight when the laddish, none-too-bright Larry catches her eye while playing with his band at his father’s restaurant. Janice, Larry’s savvy, ice-skating sister (Illeana Douglas), immediately sees through Suzanne but he ignores the ice-maiden cracks and commits to the “the golden girl of my dreams.” The young man surprises everyone by ditching his drums and rock star ambitions for marriage and home-buying. Janice acerbically observes, “he went from Van Halen to Jimmy Vale overnight.” Larry is not only taken by Suzanne’s beauty; he’s also in awe of her go-getting personality. “She’s going places. She’s got goals,” he tells his father, Joe (Dan Hedaya). Larry, by the by, comes from a fiercely loving, old-fashioned Italian-American family; Suzanne’s parents are portraits of smug, airy WASPness.

At her mercy (Suzanne and Larry)
At her mercy (Suzanne and Larry)

 

Suzanne soon gets a job at the local cable TV station as a weather presenter. Her co-workers baptise her “Gangbusters” and she becomes a workaholic member of their tiny outfit. Fancying herself as a future Barbara Walters, she understands that she must start somewhere. Tensions, however, surface on the first anniversary of her marriage. Larry wants a child and more time together but this doesn’t figure in his wife’s plans. She explains to her puzzled mother-in-law, Angela (Maria Tucci), that a baby would prevent her from covering a revolution–or royal wedding. Feeling trapped by his expectations of her, Suzanne determines to bump Larry off. But she does not do the dirty deed herself. She befriends a trio of daft teenagers, subjects of a documentary she’s working on, to set it up and do her bidding. The ultimate plan, of course, is to pin the murder on them. They comprise vulgar Russell (Casey Affleck), impressionable, insecure Lydia (Alison Folland) and sensitive Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), who seems permanently stoned. Both Lydia and Jimmy adore Suzanne. She sexually targets Jimmy, all the while him telling tales of marital abuse, and promises Lydia that she will employ her as her secretary when she becomes famous. The besotted Jimmy soon becomes the designated shooter.

But things don’t go to plan for Suzanne when the three luckless teenagers are arrested. Lydia chooses to cooperate with the police, and wears a tape to record a confession by Suzanne but she is acquitted as the authorities took the entrapment route. When Suzanne publicly suggests Larry’s murder was drug-related–her husband, she says, was a coke addict–his family finally crack, and take matters into their own hands. Suzanne just can’t help herself when she is lured to a remote location by the promise of telling and selling her story. Lydia does not see jail and becomes a kind of celebrity but the boys get life.

Joaquin Phoenix as Jimmy
Joaquin Phoenix as Jimmy

 

There are other targets of Van Sant’s satire in To Die For. Suzanne’s family are characterized as unthinking, self-regarding snobs. Her father Earl (Kurtword Smith) thinks his daughter, a junior college graduate with a degree in electronic journalism, is too good for high school Larry. There is even an unsympathetic side to the loving Italian-American in-laws. Apart from arranging a hit on her at the end (!), it’s clear that they want Suzanne to conform to their traditional ideals of womanhood. Even Larry’s cool sister encourages him to “knock her up.” We only really empathize with the teenagers, particularly Jimmy and Lydia. They backgrounds are troubled, and both come from unprivileged homes, but Suzanne mercilessly exploits them. In fact, she not only violates Jimmy’s youth; she also destroys his future. It’s disquieting subject matter. Scripted by Buck Henry, To Die For is actually based on Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book of the same name, a novel inspired by the similar, real-life 1990 Pamela Smart case. Telling the dark, outlandish tabloid tale in blackly amusing faux-documentary style, however, Van Sant maintains a markedly satirical tone. The uniformly pitch-perfect performances serve his vision. Phoenix, incidentally, is superb as the tragic-comic teenager.

Suzanne Stone is a mediagenic monster in pastels. She’s both a perverse creature and a nightmarishly pure ideological product. Entirely indoctrinated by televisual ideals, she’s a kind of Frankenstein of fame. In a more general sense, she is also a wickedly amusing portrait of American ambition, a workaholic who will do anything to get ahead. Suzanne Stone is, what’s more, a thoroughly unoriginal person. Her ideas are pilfered from others as well as, of course, television. To Die For not only sends up the hollowness of fame; it also attacks the manufactured personality. Suzanne believes that the human mind can be fashioned and cultivated by self-motivation books, and, again, television.

Suzanne and Janice
Suzanne and Janice

 

There is also that charming personality. The world revolves around Suzanne and she’s entirely indifferent to the feelings of others. A psychopath really. This is amusingly demonstrated at her husband’s funeral when she stands by his grave and slams on “All By Myself” on a tape-recorder. There’s a socio-economic aspect to all of this too. Suzanne Stone is entitled and knows it. She’s, indeed, an extreme product of white, bourgeois privilege. She warns Lydia when threatened with exposure, “I’m a professional person, for Christ’s sake. I come from a good home. Who do you think a jury would believe?”

An obsession with looks is also integral to her ideological make-up. Some of her comments are quite memorable–such as her suggestion that Gorbachev’s political career would have been more successful if he had had his birthmark removed. To Die For targets television and tabloid culture’s role in stimulating and nourishing human narcissism. The movie takes place, of course, in the pre-internet era–TV’s one of many communication platforms now–but the fundamental message about human vanity endures. As everyone reading this knows, social media has proved to be an extremely indulgent parent of self-love. 

The weather presenter
The weather presenter

 

To Die For does not solely savage celebrity culture; it also takes aim at culturally constructed American femininity. Suzanne Stone has been entirely radicalised by televisual ideals of cosmetic beauty. Although naturally beautiful, she is paranoid about her own appearance and shamelessly advises the attractive Janice to get plastic surgery. Physical descriptions of Suzanne point to a distinct lack of humanity. Janice calls her an unfeeling doll, Lydia considers her a “goddess” while Jimmy is in awe of how clean she is. Suzanne Stone is not a sensual woman. Her very sexuality, it is suggested, is inauthentic. Sex seems to be primarily an exhibitionist or strategic move bound up with the manipulation of others.

Ultimately, Suzanne Stone is not only a uniquely unlikeable protagonist. Representative of much that is wrong with her place and time- the self-interest, addiction to fame, lookism and classism–she is a skillfully drawn object of satire. Kidman cleverly captures her insane single-mindedness and narcissism. With her purple eyeshadow, short skirts, and little dog Walter–named, of course, after Walter Cronkite–her Suzanne Stone deserves a place in cinematic history’s gallery of dazzling grotesques.

Suzanne with beloved Walter
Suzanne with beloved Walter

 

 

 

Eight Trailers to Watch (and Love or Hate After)

However, in honor of some possible greatness, let us consider some more films that could also be equally amazing, or as roundly terrible. Enjoy.

Melissa McCarthy is going to be in Ghostbusters!
Melissa McCarthy is going to be in Ghostbusters!

Written by Rachel Redfern.

There’s a reboot of Ghostbusters coming, a la femme, and of course people are freaking out. It’s not new to have reboot that retools popular characters into another gender, Battlestar Galactica did it to amazing success with the character of Starbuck; in fact, after some of the death threats against her died down, she became a fan favorite and easily the most dynamic part of the series. Now, Ghostbusters is an epic classic of Dan Akroyd and Bill Murray and I will love it forever, and I can’t really think of any beloved film with such a complete makeover before, so whether or not this new Ghostbusters will be as amazing is yet to be decided.

However, in honor of some possible greatness, let us consider some more films that could also be equally amazing, or as roundly terrible. Enjoy.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bed87s9ORrk”]

Sisters

This is an easy one. Fan favorites and feminist/actress/producer/writer team extraordinaire Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are back together again as sisters. I imagine this is sort of how they are in real life? Anyway, we don’t know too much yet, just that they’re estranged sisters who really like the ’80s and are obviously back together for some embarrassing mischief and heartwarming family time.

What information does this offer us about women? Women are goddamned hilarious is what.

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

Ex Machina

I’m excited about this; so far the trailer is super ambiguous–who is manipulating whom? Is the female AI character evil? Consciously pulling the strings of the men of surrounding her? Or is she a victim? Abused, feared, and typecast by her obsessive creator? On an entertainment level I’m excited, on an intellectual level I’m intrigued.

From looking at the trailer it seems that either way we’ve got something interesting going on with sexuality, violence, creation and it’s telling, I think, that the AI figure is a woman Alicia Vikander (The Fifth Estate). Also starring Domnhall Gleeson (Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films, Black Mirror) and Oscar Isaac (A Most Violent Year, Inside Llewyn Davis).

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3IsUOSHlnU”]

Cake

Woman has bad marriage and/or gets a cancer, many things go wrong, has sassy girlfriend and/or sexy new lover, woman finally find self-discovery, lots of tears in between. This kind of Hollywood “chick flick” inevitably seems destined for Girls Night Out everywhere, but usually gets a lot of disdain from critics and male filmmakers. On the one hand, I get it, there’s usually not much difference in the plot and characters between the films, and they all seems fairly formulaic. However, there is something very necessary and realistic about the women’s stories that these films tell.

Female dissatisfaction is something that Betty Friedan recognized in The Feminine Mystique, and these films tap into it with their themes of anger and dissatisfaction coupled with reinvention or discovery being the resolution. It’s a simple, very human problem, and it’s interesting that it appears so often in films meant for women.

This film seems to fulfill much of that formula, with the addition of one unique detail: Anna Kendrick as the dead wife of Jennifer Aniston’s new flame/friend. Female friendship wrapped up in the darkness of suicide and chronic illness.

This one could be different.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62E4FJTwSuc”]

Terminator Genisys

The Terminator franchise feels like it’s been around forever, and regardless of its age, still manages to be a big moneymaker. And with the popularity of the Hollywood reboot in top form, Terminator is going to get one, again.

I bring up this trailer because it has Emilia Clarke in it (Danaerys Targaryen, mother of dragons, queen of everything she decides she wants, Winter is Coming ya’ll), so it should bring in that crowd. Also, Arnold is back, or at least a lot of CGI Arnold is back, proving that his original, fame-creating phrase, “I’ll be back” should actually be, “I’ll return incessantly.”

Anyway, minus the fact that Sarah Connor is a kick-ass rescuer instead of the rescuee, this new Terminator feels pretty stock and trade Hollywood action film reboot and I’m feeling pretty meh about it.

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

The Boy Next Door

I think the premise here is actually really interesting: dissatisfied woman has sexual relationship with high school boy, creating a destructive and obsessive situation that wrecks itself on their suburban life.

However, I think the dialogue here is struggling a bit, what with comments like “I love your mom’s cookies” and, as he takes her clothes off, “No judgments.”  The whole thing looks like it could go the way of shirtless cliché.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp20Kn2VbYE#t=48″]

Queen of The Desert

Back in college, while taking an excellent, now-seemingly pretentious sounding course, “The Desert Sublime,” I studied Getrude Bell, famous anthropologist and explorer. She was an amazing woman who we just don’t hear that much about today; however, Nicole Kidman is about to change all that.

Kidman plays the Victorian traveler in an intriguing new biopic (not to be confused with the Hugo Weaving film, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) from Werner Herzog. Bell’s story is pretty incredible and I can’t wait to see it on the silver screen, I’m a bit hesitant about her costars however: James Franco (Harry Osbourne!), Robert Pattinson (Edward!), Damian Lewis (Nicholas Brody!). I just struggle to see these actors outside of the 21st century, and maybe have some personal issues with a few of them.

Also, I can’t tell from the clip what exactly to expect from the rest of the film, but I’m going to hope for the best. Queen of the Desert premiers this month at the Berlin International Film Festival.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L-9rcEhGm4″]

Clouds of Sils Maria

How actresses are expected to age has cropped up in the news lately. Juliette Binoche’s new film, Clouds of Sils Maria is pretty obviously addressing that issue. But it looks like its also addressing a lot more–namely fame and female relationships.

In the trailer, Binoche’s opposite is Chloe Moretz, whose character seems like a pretty pretentious, bitchy actress, but I’m assuming that’s just the tip of the iceberg we’re seeing so far. Then there’s this complicated relationship she’s got going on with her much younger assistant, Kristen Stewart, a relationship that seems ambiguous; is Stewart using the Binoche for her fame? Is Binoche sexually attracted to her employee? Lustful? Jealous? Obsessive? We’re not really sure yet.

Either way, Binoche and Moretz are amazing actresses, and in an out-of-character move, Stewart looks great.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zc3KTQJvK4&spfreload=10″]

Spy

I really like Melissa McCarthy. I’ve liked her since Gilmore Girls, up through Bridesmaids, The Heat (not so much with Tammy and Identity Thief, but hey, Samuel L. Jackson has Snakes on a Plane, so ya know, equality), and now probably this. It’s a spy movie where over half of the top seven people on the bill are women: this is a big deal people! Allison Janney will also be there and she’s hilarious, British comedienne Miranda Hart (obviously funny), and Rose Byrne, who isn’t known for being funny, but was also in Bridesmaids, so it looks like she can definitely be funny.

The plot doesn’t seem particularly difficult to guess, I’m assuming that McCarthy will get her bad guy in the end, but not before making a mess of things and engaging in comedic gold. Also, that bit with Janney and Statham about the use of the “T” word was actually pretty brilliant. More, please.

 

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPyYEqYSo9A”]

 

_____________________________________________________

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection; however, she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

‘Stoker’: Love, Longing, Desire, and Acceptance

In addition to telling a great story, ‘Stoker’ also shows an open and often eerie portrayal of female sexual desire, longing, perception of love and acceptance of one’s self as an autonomous sexual being. The film doesn’t shy away from pure desire and want as justifiable means to actions.

'Stoker' poster
Stoker poster

This guest post by Shay Revolver appears as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

A good psychological thriller pulls its viewers in like a spider web. The director and cinematographer work together like a couple of spiders, the actors and their performance become the web. If all of these elements come together as they should, a trap is set and the viewer becomes a fly. There is a sense of magic in Chan-wook Park’s Stoker. The story is compelling, the stage wonderfully set , the camera work is intense and the actors are amazing. If you haven’t seen the film yet, I urge you to check it out for these reasons alone. I will warn you, however, that there is an attempted rape in the film, and some of the other scenes might be a bit disturbing to watch. The beauty of the film isn’t the only thing that makes this film amazing. In addition to telling a great story, Stoker also shows an open and often eerie portrayal of female sexual desire, longing, perception of love and acceptance of one’s self as an autonomous sexual being. The film doesn’t shy away from pure desire and want as justifiable means to actions. Seeing such an open portrayal on screen is refreshing.

Virginal India Before the Sexual Awakening
Virginal India Before the Sexual Awakening

 

Stoker tells the story of the newly 18 India Stoker, played by a very stoic and introspective Mia Wasikowska. India is coming to terms with the recent death of her father, Richard. He died in a tragic car accident on her birthday, leaving her alone to enter young adulthood with her cold and often irrational mother, Evelyn, played by Nicole Kidman. As if all of these feelings and emotions weren’t enough on their own, the funeral brings India’s uncle, Charlie, into the mix. The women have never met him because he has spent his life traveling the world and he offers, and by offers, I mean tells them that he is going to stick around and help out.

This is the point in the film where female desire starts taking shape and bringing itself to the forefront as a real theme of Stoker. Evelyn is a woman with needs and desires. With her husband now gone she finds herself in need of someone to connect with, someone to take care of her and make her feel wanted, desired, and loved. Her husband devoted himself to their daughter India, which gave India a sense of under-the-surface confidence and stripped away Evelyn’s “value” as a sexual, desirable woman. Because of this shift in the marriage you get the sense from the very beginning of the film that Evelyn has been alone in a sense for a very long time. With her husband now out of the picture, she finds herself alone with her daughter to lean on. However, India has just turned 18 and is trying to figure out who she is as a woman and what she wants. This leaves Evelyn vulnerable and hurt. This desire for a connection and to be needed that exists inside of her makes her easy prey for Charlie’s charm. She welcomes him into the home and her life to fill the hole inside of her.

Evelyn and Charlie
Evelyn and Charlie

 

India, on the other hand, is far more skeptical of her uncle and his motives. While she is mourning the loss of her father, she is not in such a rush to have another male figure come in and take his place. Having recently turned 18 and trying to figure out her place in the world, she’s already begun separating herself from her mother and her father’s death, while hurting her deeply, gave her an added sense of freedom. She also finds herself drawn to her uncle in an odd way. Having never met him she finds his gaze strange and his seduction of her mother even stranger. She watches him with equal parts curiosity and annoyance.

Charlie continues his seduction of Evelyn, which delights Evelyn because she has wanted to be desired for so long. However, the closer that the two of them become the further India pushes both of them away. Soon India’s great aunt arrives to visit and check up on India and Evelyn. This visit and subsequent conversations with her great aunt solidify India’s distrust of her uncle and his motives. Evelyn, on the other hand, believes that great aunt Gwendolyn is just continuing her pattern of being judgmental towards her and ignores her subtle warnings. Evelyn is finally feeling like a woman again, and she refuses to have this feeling ruined.

Evelyn and India mourning
Evelyn and India mourning

 

One of the interesting things about Stoker is that while it doesn’t shy away from female desires or awakenings, it doesn’t exploit them either. It treats them as part of the story. Both female leads are experiencing a sexual awakening of sorts but from different ends of the spectrum. Evelyn is finding a second life through her intimate interactions with Charlie. She’s starting to feel alive again, wanted. Her needs are being met. India is experiencing an awakening as well. She’s exploring her sexuality and figuring out what excites her. After a rather violent day at school where she stabs a bully in the hand with a pencil, she returns home to witness Evelyn and Charlie exploring each other. This drives her from the home and into fellow classmate Whip. Wanting to explore her own sexual feelings she goes with him into the woods, they make out for a while and she begins to discover where her desires lead. As the make-out session gets more exploratory she bites Whip. Not in the playful coy way–in a violent way. A way reminiscent of the stabbing of the bully at school so much so that a correlation can be seen between the penetration of the male bully by the less-than-helpless India as the catalyst to her sexual awakening. This awakening is confirmed by her interaction with Whip.

This interaction with Whip starts to take a turn for the worse and Whip attempts to rape India; this interaction ends with Whip being buried in India’s garden. Her Uncle Charlie shows up at the last minute and breaks Whip’s neck with his belt buckle. This tragic experience doesn’t mortify India like such an horrifying back-to-back interactions would mortify most young women; instead, it excites her. So much so that her awakening comes to a head while she masturbates in the shower and climaxes to the memory of Uncle Charlie breaking the neck of her would-be rapist.

India Stoker masturbates in the shower
India masturbates in the shower

 

By this point in Stoker, Evelyn has begun to feel alive again and like a vital wanted woman and India has realized that her uncle is a murderer. While going through her dead father’s office, she finds letters from her uncle and realizes that her suspicions were founded–he’s crazy and she shouldn’t trust him. She confronts her uncle and you discover that not only is he delusional and probably in love with her, but he also killed her father. She covers her anger well and plays along nicely when Charlie steps in to save her again by giving her an alibi when the sheriff comes around to find out what happened to Whip, whom he believes has disappeared. As a thank you, India uses her new-found sexuality and seduction techniques on her eager uncle just in time for her mother to catch them before things go too far. Evelyn is hurt. Her need to be desired and to feel like a woman and sexual being seems to be on the verge of yet again being taken away by India. Evelyn begins to verbally attack India in a very cold way before confronting Charlie with the truth–something she plans to use to keep Charlie around as her lover and separate him from her daughter.

Evelyn and India have a mother-daughter talk
Evelyn and India have a mother-daughter talk

 

Her plan goes awry, and after an intense seduction by Charlie, he attempts to do what he does best and kill her. His plan doesn’t quite go as planned because the very capable India shows up and kills Charlie before he can kill her mother. She buries her uncle in the backyard and decides to follow her original plan and move to New York to start a new life.

As India drives off into to sunset in her/Charlie’s car, you can tell something is different about her. No longer the same unsure little girl she was at the beginning of the film , India had evolved into something altogether new. She experienced her awakening; she discovered the art of seduction. She knew what turned her on, what excited her, and you get the sense that she was going forth to find it. One of the great things about this film is that there is no judgment. Charlie’s character, while prominent, is more of a supporting role than a lead. His sole purpose in the film is to facilitate the awakening of Evelyn and India. His violent actions open the gateway for India to explore her masochistic , violent and dominating desires and his charm facilitate Evelyn’s return to being a sexual being after what the viewer can assume has been an 18-year void.

India breaks free
India breaks free

The film doesn’t ever fully punish the women as they go through their sexual transformations or subject them to a gratuitous male gaze-focused sex scenes like most films would have done. It treats their desires, needs, and curiosities as matter of fact and a part of life. It acknowledges that all women are, at their core sexual, beings just as much as men are, and they have needs and wants. Stoker never once shies away from these needs and desires. It even shows how these desires and awakenings can come on slowly over a period of time, like India’s, or can be latent and come on quick and all at once like Evelyn’s. It gave an actual unapologetic portrayal of women coming alive and actually wanting to be sexually and physically satisfied without condemnation or shame placed upon the act or their desire for it. And that makes Stoker not only an amazing psychological thriller with a gripping story, but also a representation of being a woman: discovering what turns you on and what you need from other people and from yourself, going for it, and being unapologetic for what you want.

Shay Revolver is a vegan, feminist, cinephile, insomniac, recovering NYU student and former roller derby player currently working as a New York-based microcinema filmmaker, web series creator and writer. She’s obsessed with most books, especially the Pop Culture and Philosophy series and loves movies and TV shows from low brow to high class. As long as the image is moving she’s all in and believes that everything is worth a watch. She still believes that movies make the best bedtime stories because books are a daytime activity to rev up your engine and once you flip that first page, you have to keep going until you finish it and that is beautiful in its own right. She enjoys talking about the feminist perspective in comic book and gaming culture and the lack of gender equality in mainstream cinema and television productions. Twitter: @socialslumber13.

The Global Feminist: Acknowledging Nicole Kidman’s UN Role

Nicole Kidman is one of the most accomplished actors working today and one of Hollywood’s most fashionable stars. Since 2006, she has also been a Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women. Formerly known as UNIFEM (the United Nations Development Fund for Women), UN Women promotes gender equality and female self-empowerment around the world. It advocates both economic and political advancement and works to end violence against women.

Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman
Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman

 

Written by Rachael Johnson

Nicole Kidman is one of the most accomplished actors working today and one of Hollywood’s most fashionable stars. Since 2006, she has also been a Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women. Formerly known as UNIFEM (the United Nations Development Fund for Women), UN Women promotes gender equality and female self-empowerment around the world. It advocates both economic and political advancement and works to end violence against women. Kidman has also been involved in the United Nations’ anti-violence initiative as the spokesperson for Say NO- UNiTE to End Violence Against Women. The statistics cited by Say NO are deplorable: a staggering one in three of the world’s women and girls is a victim of violence. We are, in fact, currently in the middle of Say NO’s Orange campaign, a social media initiative that aims to increase awareness of VAW. From November 25 to December 10, individuals and communities around the world are encouraged to wear orange, the color of consciousness, organize actions and draw attention to positive initiatives that are presently tackling the issue. Check out the site and spread the word!

Nicole Kidman with Bon Ki Moon
Nicole Kidman with Bon Ki Moon

 

The widespread, systematic rape of women in war zones is another issue that UN Women addresses and challenges. This appalling phenomenon has, historically speaking, only recently begun being addressed. It is astonishing to note that rape was only recognized as a crime against humanity in 2001 (Rape: A Crime Against Humanity, BBC, 22nd Feb, 2001). Kidman has visited Kosovo, a land scarred by sexual violence, on behalf of UN Women. There she heard testimony from rape survivors and highlighted its physical and psycho-social wounds. The actor has also underlined that “rape in conflict zones must be punished as a war crime.”

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iapSSL0w1KE”]

Kidman’s UN role should perhaps be more widely known and acknowledged but in October of this year, Variety magazine paid tribute to her commitment to women’s rights. In her acceptance speech at Variety’s 5th Power of Women lunch, she remarked, “No matter how long I devote my time to this, I will never be able to comprehend and I will never accept that one in three women and girls will be raped, beaten or abused in their lifetime.” Kidman does not, of course, have a radical political persona but her words here express a certain passion. Violence against women is, for the actor, ‘the greatest injustice and outrage of all.’ We actually need nothing less than rage from women in the public eye about gender-based violence but Kidman’s words should, nevertheless, be appreciated. We should also, perhaps, remind ourselves that the job of a Goodwill Ambassador is to draw attention to UN initiatives. It is an essentially ‘diplomatic’ role and this, no doubt, is reflected in the discourse of its celebrity advocates.

Role model Kidman at Variety Awards, 2013
Role model Kidman at Variety Awards, 2013

 

Kidman’s commitment to women’s rights was fostered in childhood. Her mother, Janelle Ann Kidman- a former nursing instructor- was a primary model of influence. Kidman honored her mother in her Variety acceptance speech: “I became involved because I was raised by a feminist mother who planted the seed early in me to speak out against the fact that women are so often treated  differently than men. She was very clear with me: she said stand tall, do not settle for less than what is fair.” As she further explained in an interview with Variety, it was, in fact, Janelle Kidman who told her about the work of UN Women (then UNIFEM). Kidman explained how she was inspired by a story her mother related about trafficked women in Cambodia who benefited from UNIFEM-sponsored training and education. When Kidman won her Best Actress Oscar for her role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002), she celebrated both her mother and daughter in her acceptance speech: ‘I am standing here in front of my mother and my daughter, and my whole life, I’ve wanted to make my mother proud and now I want to make my daughter proud.’ This is, actually, no small thing. Specifically embracing your matrilineal line is still quite uncommon in mainstream public life.

Say NO Orange Your World Campaign
Say NO Orange Your World Campaign

 

We should, of course, maintain a generous degree of skepticism regarding the public roles of Western celebrities. Their presence often reinforces patronizing- even culturally imperialist- attitudes towards non-Western societies and poorer nations. Gender inequality is, however, a global fact, and gender-based violence is a reality for women from Lagos to Los Angeles. Supporting an international entity dedicated to eliminating discrimination against women is a positive, essential endeavor. Nicole Kidman is a household name around the world and her support is all the more meaningful when you consider the irrational- or frankly spineless- refusal of certain female role models to identify as feminists. Cultivating an internationalist feminist consciousness is equally vital.  As Virginia Woolf herself once wrote: “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” We should always try to embody those words.

Say NO numbers
Say NO numbers

 

‘Stoker’ and the Feminist Female Serial Killer

Move poster for Stoker
Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Spoiler Alert

The first time you watch Stoker, it’s something of a perplexing experience because the narrative is such a genre-bender. I spent at least half the movie wondering what kind of movie I was watching. Not to toot my own horn overly much, but I’ve got a bit of an eye for formulas and am pretty good at spotting them. A film that can keep me on my toes like Stoker did is a rare, commendable animal. The direction Stoker did end up taking was also surprising, unique, and oddly feminist.
Ultimately, Stoker is the coming-of-age tale of a blossoming female serial killer. A “true” female serial killer is not only rare in cinema, but in real life as well. You’re probably thinking, “What the hell is she talking about? There are a slew of female serial killer movies and real-life figures I can think of off the top of my head.” In truth, women serial murderers kill for reasons different from their male counterparts. Typically, women kill for money or revenge, targeting people they know or to whom they’re related. Whereas male serial killers tend to predominantly kill strangers with the motivation being sexual in natural. To clarify, male serial killer motivation surrounds power and usually displays itself in sexualized killings or in the sexual response the killer has to his murders. Not only that, but some of the world’s most famous female serial killers work in partnership with a male serial killer, thus simulating that psychosexuality inherent in their murders. 
India Stoker (portrayed by the amazingly talented Mia Wasikowska) meets her creepy serial killer uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), and the more strangely he behaves and the more evidence India has of his murderousness, the more attracted she is to him. 
Finds housekeeper’s dead body in the basement freezer. Starts hanging out with Charlie more.
Their unsettling, incestuous flirtation culminates in their joint murder of India’s classmate, Whip. The boy and India make out in the woods, and when she decides she’s had enough of him, the boy tries to rape her. Charlie swoops in to rescue her, and, together, the two kill India’s assailant. The movie makes it clear that Whip is an utter piece of shit and totally has it coming, so there’s little moral ambiguity in this kill, which differentiates it from Charlie’s prior murders (the housekeeper, an aunt, and, at this point, we suspect India’s father). India’s actions of self-defense and the shittiness of the victim leave the lingering possibility that India is not, in fact, serial killer material. 
The following scene is the classic post sexual assault shower scene with a twist. We see India hunched over and whimpering in the shower intercut with flashbacks to the assault and Whip’s death. It gradually dawns on the audience that India isn’t weeping, she’s masturbating. This scene is pivotal and is, in fact, one of the major climaxes of the film, which makes the structure of the film itself more feminist. Feminists have noted for many years that the typical story structure with the single climax near the end of the film followed by the denouement more closely resembles the pattern of male sexual pleasure. A more feminist structure would allow for multiple climactic scenes, which Stoker does. (There are more climactic moments nearer the end of the film, which I’ll get into shortly.) Not only is the film’s first climax a scene that ends with a woman actually orgasming, it is a masturbation scene wherein India is pleasuring herself.
That’s a boat-load of female agency right there.
India comes to realize in yet another climactic, pivotal scene that Charlie is mentally ill (perhaps even more than she is herself), that he wants to take her away with him, and that he has always wanted to be with her. Not only that, but the film reveals to the audience what India strongly suspects: Charlie murdered India’s father in order to be with her.
India goes through the stack of Charlie’s letters addressed to her over the years. She realizes that though Charlie claims to send them from around the world, in fact, they’re all sent from a mental institution.
Despite her realization that Charlie is insane, India agrees to leave with him because his presence and guidance have triggered her coming-of-age and shown her that she isn’t alone in her proclivities. It turns out, though, that a prerequisite for running away with Charlie is allowing him to kill off her mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). Because India and Evelyn have a difficult relationship in which they don’t relate to one another with no love lost between them, Charlie supposes this is an easy enough task to get out of the way before spiriting his beloved India away. While he brutally strangles Evelyn with his belt, India calmly puts her rifle together, aims her sights (at who? Evelyn or Charlie?), and fires.
Let’s take a quick second to examine Charlie and India’s choice of weaponry. Charlie favors a belt, stolen from his brother/India’s father, with which he strangles his victims to death. India, we learn, favors her hunting rifle. Not choosing the tool of her mentor differentiates her from him, allowing her an identity unique to him despite their overwhelming similarities. Not only that, but you could get all psychoanalytic on this shit and view their weapon choices as a form of gender role reversal. Charlie’s belt, which encircles and constricts could be viewed as vaginal, while India’s gun with its shape and its firing of bullets is a common phallic symbol. Within our world that views masculinity and masculine symbols as superior, India’s weapon of choice subtly establishes her dominance over Charlie, a fact that is further reinforced when she kills him.
In spite of the sexual connection India has with Charlie, in spite of their shared interests and secrets, in spite of the estranged relationship she has with her mother, India chooses to save Evelyn and nonchalantly shoots and kills her uncle. I admit I was worried for a minute because it’s not a very strong feminist statement when a young girl must essentially murder her mother in order to come into adulthood and into her sexual identity, even if we’re talking about a budding serial killer. India, unlike her mother, does not choose a man fresh on the scene over the woman with whom she’s been sharing a home and life for 18 years. Neither, though, does India stick around to live out the rest of her life trapped in a mother-daughter dynamic wherein neither one of them is capable of loving the other. Instead, she takes off in her new black pumps wearing her father/Charlie’s belt with her rifle and her uncle’s flashy convertible. If it’s unclear which path she’s chosen, we have a final climactic moment in which India shoots the sheriff (har, har) who pulls her over for speeding. 
India with the rifle
The more I think about this movie, the more I like it, and the more feminist tropes I see in it. The Freudian parallels, genre subversion, and feminist subtext (or just regular text?) didn’t happen by accident; director Chan-wook Park is meticulously deliberate about his imagery, symbolism, and delivery of dialogue. The strict, generally accepted, masculine definition I gave above for what constitutes a serial killer is, in itself, a gender-biased, sexist definition that gives legitimacy and near rockstar status to men who murder multiple people (predominantly women) in order to feel a sexualized rush of power. By this definition, serial killers are an elite boys club of He-Man Woman Haters who don’t allow female participation. Trying to make a woman fit into this masculine mold is a dubious honor, but I can’t help but appreciate the deft skill with which Park makes this a believable possibility. Not only is India a multifaceted character, but she is strong, smart, independent, and finds her own path while creating her own moral code outside the patriarchal strictures that Charlie attempts to impose upon her. India may transition from heroine to anti-heroine throughout the course of Stoker, and she may be a scary-ass serial killer, but she is, nonetheless, a powerful, feminist figure.  

The Hours: Worth the Feminist Hype?

Movie poster for The Hours
Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Disclaimer: I must admit to being somewhat at a disadvantage because I haven’t read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which The Hours plays heavily upon, or Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours upon which the film is based. In a way, however, my lack of exposure to these background materials makes me a keener reader of the actual “text” of the film. I will not be imposing insights, scene developments, or character interactions that do not occur in or are not derived from the film itself.
There’s no denying that The Hours is a powerful and richly complex film, meditating on mental illness, inter-generational connections, sexuality, and the inner lives of women. Because the film is, indeed, so subtle and intelligent, I won’t insult its nuances with a black-and-white, definitive reading. Instead, I will examine the three heroines and draw conclusions in order to tease out what lies beneath all the layers to what I believe is the heart of the film: women’s inability to be truly happy. 
Firstly, there is Virginia Woolf portrayed by the prosthetic nosed Nicole Kidman. 

Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours
She is a brilliant, troubled writer suffering from mental illness (symptoms: hearing voices, depression, mood swings, multiple suicide attempts, etc.). Her husband, Leonard, is a good, kind, patient, and devoted man whom Virginia loves very much; she even says of their relationship, “I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.” He has made every concession for her happiness, recovery, and wellness. On her doctors’ orders, Leonard relocates the household to the countryside and starts up a printing press in order to give Virginia the space needed to heal and to write, as it becomes clear that writing is her greatest passion. However, nothing Leonard can ever do will make Virginia happy. No sacrifice, no indulgence, no gesture of his has the power to unravel her complexity and give her the internal peace that she so desperately craves. This fact is proven when Leonard agrees to move the household back to London because Virginia claims she is suffocating and will die in the suburban hell of Richmond, but she still ends up killing herself. She says to him, “I wrestle alone…in the dark, in the deep dark and…only I can know…only I can understand my own condition.” This is the crux of the film, positing that women are such complex, unknowable creatures that men cannot hope to understand them, make them happy, or meet their needs.

Virginia even has an incestuous, lesbian relationship with her sister Vanessa (Nessie).

Virginia Woolf and her sister Nessie

At the end of her sister’s visit, Virginia and Nessie kiss passionately, and it is clear that this sexual familiarity is not new between them. This behavior has two possible implications: 1) that a man can’t make Virginia happy because she is a lesbian and much of her misery and mental distress is due to her societal oppression as a woman and her inability to engage in an openly romantic relationship with another woman, or 2) that Virginia’s needs and desires are incomprehensible and without boundaries, transgressing homosexuality taboos of the time as well as sibling relational bond boundaries. As we examine the next two female characters, it becomes obvious that the film is implying the latter, asserting that the female internal landscape is too vast and incomprehensible to accommodate happiness.

Next up is Julianne Moore’s Laura Brown, the quietly trapped pregnant 1950’s housewife who turns out to be Richard’s mother who abandoned him as a child.

Julianne Moore as Laura Brown in The Hours

The soft-spoken Laura feels trapped by the domesticity of her suburban life. Though she loves her son, Laura (much like Virginia) does not want the life that she finds herself living. She doesn’t want to be a housewife in suburbia, a homemaker, a mother, or a caregiver. This inability to conform or to adapt to this picturesque 50’s lifestyle is encapsulated in Laura’s struggles to bake a birthday cake for her husband, Dan (she ruins the frosting, agonizes over the measurements, and literally sweats while she’s preparing it). Not realizing that Laura almost committed suicide that day and has planned to leave him and their two children, Dan says about his love for his wife and their life together, “I used to think about this girl. I used to think about bringing her to a house, to a life pretty much like this. And it was the thought of the happiness, the thought of this woman, the thought of this life, that’s what kept me going. I had an idea of our happiness.” In his simplicity, he has no comprehension of the depth of the woman he’s married and that this simple life cannot ever make her happy.

Similar to Virginia, Laura shares a lesbian kiss with her distraught neighbor, Kitty.

Laura Brown kissing her neighbor, Kitty, in The Hours

Like Virginia’s kiss, the scene takes place in front of a small child to emphasize the inappropriateness of the act. The passion of this kiss is contrasted with the quiet despair of the rest of Laura’s life, gesturing at repressed homosexuality as the cause of Laura’s misery. Kitty pretending that the mutually enjoyed kiss didn’t happen could easily be interpreted as the catalyst for Laura’s near suicide attempt and ultimate rejection of her life, replete with her deciding that very day to abandon her family.

However, at the end of the film when Laura visits Clarissa, we find that we know little of the life from which Laura runs away other than that she works in a library and is still not happy.

Julianne Moore as an older Laura Brown in The Hours

Laura says to Clarissa of her decision to leave her family, “What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It’s what you can bear. There it is. No one is going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.” There is no talk of happiness or fulfillment here, only guilt, regret, and a finding a life one “can bear.” Not only that, but she does not confess to Clarissa, a woman in a lesbian relationship, that she, too, is a lesbian or that she found peace when she found a female lover because, as far as we know, that is not the case. Laura’s youthful searching sexuality becomes just another facet of her more encompassing yearning for happiness along with her inability to embrace it. 

Finally, we have Meryl Streep’s Clarissa, an intelligent woman who’s lived a full, bohemian life.

Meryl Streep as Clarissa in The Hours

Clarissa is a book editor who is financially self-sufficient, has been in a lesbian relationship for a decade, and chose to be a mother despite not having a partner at the time of her artificial insemination or her daughter’s birth. Not only that, but Clarissa plans and throws famously beautiful, wonderful parties, and yet she is still unhappy. (Incidentally, her party organizing inclinations are trivialized by the film, devaluing her community-building qualities.) Clarissa’s dilemma proves that sexuality is not the true problem; it is not the root of all three women’s female-centric unhappiness because she has been in an openly homosexual relationship for ten years. Like both Laura and Virginia, Clarissa wants that which she does not have; in her case, this is the love, affection, and approval of her dear friend and ex-lover, Richard, who is dying, presumably of AIDS. Like the other two women, she clings to an unattainable, intangible idea of happiness, specifically for Clarissa: the past. 

Clarissa having a breakdown after visiting with Richard and deciding her life isn’t worth anything

She says of her relationship with Richard, “When I am with him, I feel, yes, I am living, and when I am not with him, yes, everything does seem sort of…silly.” The only thing that Clarissa identifies as truly making her happy is a condescending invalid who is on the verge of death; he is a symbol of her lost youth, which she can never regain. When speaking of her job, her parties, her partner, and her entire life, Clarissa refers to them all as “false comfort.” This perspective begs the question: If her love life, social life, and professional life can’t give her fulfillment and happiness, then what will? After speaking with Laura, who is Richard’s mother, and hearing Laura’s perspective on finding a life that one can “bear,” Clarissa and Sally, her partner, embrace and kiss passionately in their bedroom. We are left with the questions: In the end, does losing Richard and meeting with his mother make Clarissa appreciate her loving partner, Sally, their home and their life together more? Or does she simply turn to Sally for comfort as she’s always done? Is her story one about settling down or just plain settling?

Clarissa and Sally kissing in The Hours

The Hours leaves me with the distinct impression that this is a story written, told, and interpreted by a man. Though the film pays homage to the beauty and complexity of women, it gets bogged down in the mystery of their desires. The male characters (Virginia’s husband, Leonard, Laura’s husband, Dan, and even Richard and Lewis, Clarissa’s ex-lovers) are at a loss as to how to make the female characters happy, but the men are drawn to them and willing to sacrifice for the hope of that happiness. The underlying sense of female bottomlessness is ever present, as if women are always trying to fill an unfulfillable emptiness inside them (cue Freudian jokes here). This is also a function of race and class, as all three of our heroines are fairly well-educated, financially stable white women whose problems do not center around basic human needs, personal safety, traumatic events/childhoods, etc. That lack of diversity among our heroines also proves to be a limitation of the film itself because it is a limited exploration of the female experience.

Though The Hours is masterfully layered, exuding a remarkably visceral sensation of being trapped, the pervasive notion that women are unknowable not only to their lovers, but to themselves does not truly advance a feminist agenda. The lesbian kisses between Laura and Kitty and especially between Virginia and Nessie become sensationalist and borderline exploitative. The way that Clarissa pines for her male ex-lover despite having a loving female partner also undercuts the potential progressiveness of the film’s sexual politics. Is the film saying that the world is not ready to give women all the agency and happiness of which they are intellectually and emotional capable? Perhaps. Does the way the film is saying it feel like a male indictment of the incomprehensibility of women? It does to me. What do you think?

‘Stoker’: The Creepiest Coming-of-Age Tale I’ve Ever Seen

Stoker movie poster
Written by Stephanie Rogers.
If I were asked to describe my reaction to Stoker using an acronym, I’d go with “WTF,” although I definitely experienced some “OMG” and “STFU” moments here and there. By the end, I could hear myself mentally reviewing the film and toying with the idea of titling this piece merely, “OFFS.” That’s the overall reaction, distilled, I had to Stoker from the first five minutes of watching the film all the way to the final credits. I mean, I’m not saying I didn’t like it. Or even love it. Or possibly want to find all existing film reels (and whatever digital incarnations exist) and set them on fire. I just won’t be able to tell for a few months or so. It’s one of those movies. 
Uncomfortable mother-daughter interaction
In a lot of ways—okay, like, two—it reminded me of Silver Linings Playbook. Its genre-mixing, unpredictability, and innovative storytelling, particularly with how it illustrates the hereditary aspect of mental illness, works incredibly well. Of course, while Silver Linings Playbook can make a person joy-cry at the end, Stoker’s ending (and beginning and middle) should come with a Serious Trigger Warning for depictions of violence, sexual assault, and incest. I plan to address those things in this review as well, and I’ll also add a Spoiler Alert, if only to avoid writing a horrible paragraph like this ever in my life:
It’s hard to avoid spoilers at this point, but let’s leave it at this: India discovers that her parents have been concealing something very important regarding her uncle—and, given her emotionally close relationship with him, something very important about herself, about character traits that are a part of her own blood. When the truth comes out, her world is overturned, her monsters are unleashed, and she finds herself without the solid footing of character, self-knowledge, and moral clarity to fight them.

(It’s probably not nice to make fun of Richard Brody of The New Yorker, but since Vida’s Count recently showed us in its annual illustration of literary journals that unapologetically refuse to publish women writers or review the work of women writers, The New Yorker can go fuck itself. Also: “her monsters are unleashed” … No.) 
Evie (Nicole Kidman) and India (Mia Wasikowska)
Seriously though, what the hell did I just watch? One could categorize Stoker as any of the following: a coming-of-age tale, a crime thriller, a sexual assault revenge fantasy, a love story, a murder mystery, a slasher film, a romantic comedy (I’m hilarious), or even an allegory about the dangers of bullying, parental neglect, or keeping family secrets. Throw a recurring spider in there, some shoes, a bunch of random objects shaped like balls, along with a hint of incest, some on-screen masturbation, imagined orgasmic piano duets, and a handful of scenes that rip off Hitchcock so hard that Hitchcock could’ve directed it (see Shadow of a Doubt), and you’ll have yourself a nice little freakshow! 
Seriously though, shoes and balls are really important in this movie. 
Saddle Shoe (girlhood!) and High Heel (womanhood!)
Unlike this review, Stoker starts off straightforwardly enough. Mia Wasikowska (our favorite) plays India Stoker, a comically quiet teenager reminiscent of Wednesday Addams, at least until she evolves into a full-blown psychopath, who hates to be touched, gets bullied by boys at school—they call her “Stroker”—and mourns her father (Dermot Mulroney) after his suspicious death in a car accident on her 18th birthday. Nicole Kidman plays Evie, India’s mother, in typical Kidman as Insufferable Ice Princess casting, and there’s pretty much nothing redeeming about her. She gloms onto her dead husband’s estranged brother Charlie at the funeral (played by Matthew Goode), whom she’s never met and never once questions the presence of, and when Mrs. McGarrick, her housekeeper of a million years mysteriously vanishes, she says things like, “Oh no, what will we do for dinner now!” with earnest incredulity. 
Evie loses her shit on India (finally!)
I realize Evie isn’t supposed to be likeable, that we’re meant to roll our eyes at her upper-class privilege and displays of affection toward her husband’s mysterious younger brother, that maybe we’re even supposed to feel a tiny bit sorry for her. But I despise one-dimensional women characters onscreen, and Evie is just that, a collection of simplistic tropes used to move the narrative forward: a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad boss (like, aren’t you even going to look for your missing housekeeper?), and a bad niece-in-law (Aunt Gin needs to talk to you alone for a reason, you idiot.) Her obliviousness to everything happening around her doesn’t read as the dissociated or even unstable response of a wife in mourning; it reads as the selfish and feigned cluelessness of a generally awful person. 
Goodbye, Auntie Gin
Evie—hats off to Nicole Kidman—eventually delivers one of the scariest monologues I’ve ever seen on film. It’s the first time she utters anything longer than a few sentences at once (which are usually about the importance of polite behavior and playing the piano), but this monologue, I mean, chills. It’s also the only time Evie exhibits just as much overt “crazy” as the other characters, and I found myself savoring that moment. Isn’t it funny how a character can become interesting once she’s allowed to do things other than comment on etiquette and pass out drunk?
I wish we got to see that less passive side of Evie earlier in the film because, the thing is, we don’t need to dislike Evie in order to feel sympathy for her daughter. It’s certainly possible to make characters bad and villainous while also making them complex and even charming. The makers of this film know that, too. You know how I know that? Because Charlie Stoker exists. 
Evie and Charlie (Matthew Goode)
This fuckin’ guy. He rolls onto the family estate during his brother’s funeral like he’s been there all along, and somehow, “I’ve been travelling the world for 20 years” seems like a reasonable excuse for his lifelong absence. Naturally, he decides to move in with Evie and India because why not, I’m sure everyone will be totally fine with that, nice to meet you! And they are. Except for Aunt Gin and Housekeeper McGarrick, who genuinely—rightfully—fear this bro, even with all his charisma and sexy-sheepish smiles. They know some shit. India mistrusts him at first, too, but the more she learns about him, and the creepier (and more murderous) he becomes, the more India identifies with him. Queue The New Yorker’s Richard Brody: her monsters are unleashed.
Accompanied by a few feminist themes. 
India imitating a yard statue, accompanied by saddle shoes
For one, I don’t think it’s possible to not read Stoker as a coming-of-age tale, mainly because it puts so much emphasis on India’s burgeoning womanhood. We see her in flashbacks as a young girl, a semi-tomboy who hunted birds with her dad, who wore the same pair of black-and-white saddle shoes all her life—she received a bigger size every year on her birthday (remember, shoes and balls are really important in this movie)—who never identified with her beautiful, quintessentially feminine mother, and whose experiences with boys include stabbing one in the hand with a sharpened pencil (loved that) when he and a group of friends sexually harass her behind their high school. 
These fucking shoes!
That foreshadows India’s upcoming attempted rape … because what would an onscreen coming-of-age tale of burgeoning womanhood be without an attempted rape scene? (I’m only half-joking here; considering one in three women lives through a sexual assault in her lifetime, and most films seek to reveal some Truth About Humanity, I’m surprised the issue of sexual assault and rape isn’t addressed more often—and accurately—onscreen. Oh wait, I forgot we’re talking about women’s stories here: UNIMPORTANT.) Um.
In my mind, the film exists in two parts: everything that happens before the attempted rape and everything that happens after it. 
I’m sure this is a 100% acceptable uncle-niece interaction
Stoker addresses India’s sexual feelings early on; she clearly feels an attraction toward her uncle, and she seeks out a boy from school immediately after she catches her mother and uncle kissing. The juxtaposition of these scenes—India watching two people engage in sexual activity and her subsequent desire to do so herself—touches on a couple of familiar adolescent emotions. One could read India’s reaction to discovering her mom and uncle’s indiscretion as a big Fuck You to both of them. One could also read India’s reaction to discovering her mom and uncle’s indiscretion as an attempt to behave like an adult, to emulate what she sees (remember: coming of age!). Both of those responses ring true to me, and Stoker effectively captures the confusion inherent in leaving the familiarity of girlhood and entering a not-yet-entirely-defined womanhood.
But India decides during her make out session in the woods with the rapist that she doesn’t want to do anything more than kiss, at which point she tells him she wants to go home. He ignores her, physically assaults her, and attempts to rape her. And that’s when her monsters are unleashed. (I can’t stop saying it.) 
India as Hunter
I won’t reveal what happens during this scene because—damn—but believe me, it changes everything for India, for everyone. From here until the end of the film, Stoker explores India’s equating of death and violence with sexual awakening, and it looks at the relationship between power, innocence, and what it means for a young woman to lose both. It also asks a question about choice, about how much power we really have over ourselves, our actions, over who we become.
The film opens with a voiceover (that bookends the film) of India telling us, “Just as a flower does not choose its color, we are not responsible for what we have come to be. Only once you realize this do you become free.” This, contrasted with what the film reveals about Charlie’s past and India’s present—and the similarities of both—raise an important, albeit subtle point regarding mental health and the genetic predisposition of mental illness. Stoker takes it even further though, with a welcomed feminist slant; because, while India seems to make difficult choices to protect her mother and herself from violence at the hands of men, we’re ultimately left wondering just how much of a choice—like many women in relationships with abusive men—she really has.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Guilty Pleasures: Practical Magic (1998)

This cross-post by Didion originally appeared at Feminéma.
Okay, you know me: I have the whole snarky thing down. I’ve never even seen Forrest Gump or Titanic. I can barely bring myself to watch a trailer for a film starring poor Katherine Heigl. I’d rather re-watch that 2-hour, grueling, and explicit film about illegal abortion in Romania — it was excellent – than submit myself to 30 minutes of the Julia Roberts feature, My Best Friend’s Wedding. So what’s the deal with my weakness for Practical Magic, which gets only a 20% approval rate on RottenTomatoes.com?
Confession: I’ve probably seen it 10 times.
Sandra Bullock as Sally Owens in Practical Magic
I’ll grant you the obvious: this is not quality filmmaking or screenwriting. The list of goofs and continuity errors is long. The background music is annoyingly cheery and sentimental, even during scenes when it shouldn’t be. It claims to be set in a Salem, Massachusetts-type place but is obviously filmed using the dramatic coast and sunsets of the Pacific Northwest. The film keeps cycling back to themes of love and loss and longing, like any Katherine Heigl film. The resolution to the characters’ problems — an ancient curse on this family of witches — is completely inexplicable. I know. But it always gets past my radar, and I seem to keep coming back. 
My latest viewing of it prompted me to wonder about guilty pleasure films.
Why should I feel so embarrassed and apologetic about liking this film? What is it about liking this unabashed chick flick that makes me feel sheepish to confess it? Why does liking this film make me wonder whether I might have some kind of tumor growing smack on my frontal lobe?
(Spoiler alert: at some point below I’m going to talk about That Great House. Also: if you’re eager to know my two favorite insights, get down to the last half of this post.)
Now, there are lots of reasons to like this film. First: the cast. Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as the kooky old witch-aunts who raise the orphaned sisters Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gilly (Nicole Kidman). Oh, to have aunts like Channing and Wiest!
Stockard Channing as Aunt Frances and Dianne Wiest as Aunt Bridget
Moving on, the men-folk are all superbly gorgeous and desirable: Aidan Quinn, Goran Visnjic (slurp!) as the bad boy, and the total mensch Mark Feuerstein as Sally’s short-lived husband. Even Sally’s little daughters (Evan Rachel Wood and Alexandra Artrip) manage to be believably appealing. 
Goran Visnjic as Jimmy Angelov (really) and Nicole Kidman as Gillian Owens
Also, no one should underestimate Sandra Bullock’s appeal. The critic David Thomson jokes that she’s been inducted into the Hall of Eternal Likeability. This induction occurred in 2009, Thomson quips, when Bullock won an Oscar for Best Actress (for The Blind Side) and a Golden Raspberry (aka “Razzie”) for Worst Actress (in All About Steve) — and she appeared at both ceremonies “with the same easygoing attitude that guesses she didn’t quite deserve either award but that knows her life has always been something of a gamble.”
I’ve always liked Bullock, and have a particular weakness for her skills in slight rom-coms (While You Were Sleeping; Miss Congeniality), again in spite of myself. How does someone possessed of such exceptional beauty seem to be someone I’d be friends with? How does she manage to seem convincingly the ugly duckling for even one second? How does she nevertheless seem to be at ease in her own skin?
Two things I always notice in Practical Magic: she goes bra-less in most of the scenes. And although she’s thin as a rail (of course), her body looks real — especially her big, strong legs. Who wouldn’t like a beautiful woman with healthy-looking thighs who skips the bra most of the time?
Okay, now that I say that out loud, I’m starting to see where some of my sheepishness comes from.
Bullock and Aidan Quinn
Just because I like all the actors is no guarantee I’ll like a film, however. Lots of good actors have appeared in terrible films. Remember my refusal to see Titanic despite the fact that it stars Kate Winslet, who’s in my Top 5 current favorite actors?
*****
In thinking about my perverse attachment to an ostensibly weak film led me to scour The Land of Blogs for insight, and here’s what I found: us ladies love that house. Love it.
This very fact makes me embarrassed … because I’ll admit I love that house too. Shouldn’t I feel like I’ve been manipulated?

That House!
Now, just because a girl confesses a propensity for nest-building and a weakness for a good kitchen should not make you presume she wants nothing but housework and a hubby who brings home the bacon. Virtually everyone I know has found themselves susceptible to the house porn shown to us on those real estate, cooking, and bedroom re-design shows on cable TV. And when I call this porn I fully admit to have had unholy desires for that one hunky handyman who seems to know his way around every power tool known to man. So yeah, I love this house — and I’m not the only one.
That kitchen!
Entire websites appear to be dedicated to screen capture shots of the kitchen and/or attached greenhouse. I get it. Who wouldn’t want all that great tile, lots of cupboards, big central kitchen table, and that awesome stove? 
There’s so much room here for those kinds of decorations you could never be bothered with because you’re a Busy And Important. Big wooden bowls of pears or round loaves of bread. Cunning little bottles of herbs and witches’ potions. Scattered potted plants that need to be kept alive somehow. This is not the kind of house I could manage (or clean) in real life.
But I think the reason why this kitchen/ greenhouse/ dining area has hit some kind of world-wide Lady G-Spot is because these rooms are the location for so much of the film’s drama. Just like in real life, except these settings are a lot more attractive than our cramped kitchens. Gilly and the little girls whip up a Go Away spell to put into the maple syrup; Gilly and Sally try to bring the terrifying Visnjic back to life (with a spray-can of whipped cream, I say as I shake my head woefully); Sally and the hunky Arizona investigator Aidan Quinn have a special moment in the sunroom/ greenhouse.

The greenhouse!
(Mental note: must procure sunroom/ greenhouse so I, too, can have special moments with Aidan Quinn.)
I’m joking, of course. Although some bloggers seem eager to transform their own homes into Practical Magic-style palaces, I say that sounds like too much work. In fact, this leads to my most important insight: no matter how appealing, that house doesn’t fill me with consumer desire — I like the idea of the house, and I like it for reasons other than the fact that it looks good. Another film might have used the same house and sunroom and still failed to capture people’s imaginations (i.e., mine).
*****
So here’s my big realization: this film gets me every time because it portrays such rich and important relationships among women, even when they’re flawed. The warmth of the house matters when Sally and Gilly lie under the covers together, healing one another’s wounds, or when they go to the kitchen to exorcise demons. Ultimately the reason I like the house is the fact that I am so impressed that the film takes for granted the intense connections amongst this group of women.
Sisters Sally (Bullock) and Gilly (Kidman)
The house feels so warm and comfortable because that’s where the film portrays the most important plot points, bringing together the warmest of relations between the characters. It’s those moments in the film that get me every time. Scenes that convey the close communal and familial relations that encompass a kind of closeness that isn’t reducible to something as simplistic as “love.”
There’s a hard edge to some of this as well. Women who are very close to one another also piss each other off, or they say things that hit nerves even if they have no intention of hurting anyone. One of my favorite random scenes in the film, in which they all blend up some Midnight Margaritas and dance around the house (who hasn’t been there?) is immediately followed by a scary scene at the dinner table, when no matter how good their mood, none of them can keep from spewing bile at one another — and it takes a while for them to realize the ugliness of this weird moment.
Ah, the scene of female bonding and mutual support … and pissing each other off. Was there ever a time when I didn’t imagine growing old, living in a big house (or neighborhood) with my sister and a bunch of my best old-lady friends, all cooking and gardening and exercising together? I remember being stunned to learn that every single one of my friends has the same fantasy. It’s not that we don’t like men — some of us are partnered up with them, after all. It just seems so natural to have tight, mutually-constitutive relationships with women, especially as you grow older.
The Aunts (Wiest and Channing)
All the more eerie to find that this film explicitly imagines that scenario for its characters, too. “We’re gonna grow old together!” Gilly says to Sally when they’re teenagers, on the night when Gilly is about to run off with some guy, and the unglamorous Sally stands there in her awful bathrobe, stringy hair, and gigantic glasses. “It’s gonna be you and me, living in a big old house, these two old biddies with all these cats! I mean, I bet we even die on the same day!” Tell me, isn’t that your secret dream, too?

For Sally it is. “Do you swear?” she asks her sister.

Sally

In the end I think it is that female closeness that gets me about this film and which makes me slightly embarrassed to admit it — because I suspect that by using some kind of dark magic, the filmmakers cooked up a heady brew of fine men-folk, house porn, and scenes like Midnight Margaritas explicitly to fly under my critical radar and keep bringing me back. I fear my uncritical affection for this film because it feels manipulative to me, not a genuine dedication to women’s relationships and good houses above & beyond women’s relationship to men. I feel embarrassed that what I had long believed was an unrealistic and slightly embarrassing fantasy — that my friends and I would all grow old together — has been packaged into a very pretty filmic production for me to watch. Shouldn’t I feel all the more guilty about this pleasure?

*****
But there’s one other reading that works even better for me, and I lift this directly from the great documentary The Celluloid Closet. This insight goes something like this: I watch and appreciate Practical Magic not for what it is but for all that I read into it, all that speaks to me beyond the surface. I don’t see Midnight Margaritas as a throwaway scene or as instrumental for forcing Sally and Gilly to deal with their mistakes. I read into it a world of intense female closeness that I rarely get to see onscreen. What gives me pleasure in this film is what I imagine in between the lines of its essential mediocrity.

Sally and her daughters
I remember so vividly Susie Bright, one of the commentators in The Celluloid Closet, describing how she spent her youth combing through old movies just to get to a single scene that seems a little bit queer. For LGBTQ persons who saw virtually no one who looked like them onscreen, “It’s amazing how, if you’re a gay audience and you’re accustomed to crumbs how you will watch an entire movie just to see a certain outfit that you think means that they’re a homosexual. The whole movie can be a dud, but you’re just sitting there waiting for Joan Crawford [in Johnny Guitar] to put on her black cowboy shirt again.”
Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar
This is ultimately the reading that allows me to feel pleasure in watching this film without much guilt. It’s discouraging to realize that on some level, what I get from Practical Magic is what I don’t get very often onscreen: happy, complex, and intense relationships among women that aren’t just about appearing sexy and finding a man. I very seldom get to see onscreen relationships that look like the ones I enjoy with my friends and family. Sure, the movie concludes with a happy kiss between Sandra Bullock and Aidan Quinn — not that there’s anything wrong with that — but I’m arguing that the whole package sparks a happy endorphin rush for far different reasons.
Yes, there is a romantic happy ending.
And finally, let’s also not forget that this movie is about a family of witches. Witch being such a stand-in for bitch, as well as conveying all manner of notions about women’s powers, both dark and light. This film probably flies under my radar in part because it’s about women who possess powers that they can choose to use (or not). The false cheeriness of the music and the generally lame spells might well downplay as much as possible any sense of real danger — and probably seek to undermine objections from crazed evangelicals who might see this film as the work of the devil. Nevertheless, I’d argue that the subject matter can’t help but speak about power.

I see it as metaphorical. This is about women’s power — and their power in numbers. I may be trying very hard here to stop feeling so guilty about my appreciation for this film, but this works for me:

  • terrific cast
  • eminently likeable lead
  • great range of attractive men-folk
  • fantastic house
  • rich portrayals of women’s relationships
  • the movie facilitates queer readings against and/or alongside its mainstream messages
  • it’s about women’s power, and their power in numbers

I welcome your thoughts, quibbles, and good-natured derision for my poor taste in film!


Feminéma is a blog about feminism, cinéma, and popular culture kept by Didion, a university professor in Texas, who celebrates those rare moments when movies display unstereotyped characters and feature female directors and screenwriters behind the scenes. Most of all she just loves film. Take a look at feminema.wordpress.com.

Oscar Acceptance Speeches, 2003

Leading up to the 2011 Oscars, we’ll showcase the past twenty years of Oscar Acceptance Speeches by Best Actress winners and Best Supporting Actress winners. (Note: In most cases, you’ll have to click through to YouTube in order to watch the speeches, as embedding has been disabled at the request of copyright owners.)


Best Actress Nominee: 2003

Salma Hayek, Frida
Nicole Kidman, The Hours
Diane Lane, Unfaithful
Julianne Moore, Far From Heaven
Renee Zellweger, Chicago


Best Supporting Actress Nominees: 2003

Kathy Bates, About Schmidt
Queen Latifah, Chicago
Julianne Moore, The Hours
Meryl Streep, Adaptation
Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago


**********

Nicole Kidman wins Best Actress for her role in The Hours.

 
Catherine Zeta-Jones wins Best Supporting Actress for her role in Chicago.

 **********

 See nominees and winners in previous years:  1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002