Susanne Bier’s Living, Breathing Body of Work

Women consistently make good films around the world, even if we have to look outside Hollywood to find them. Susanne Bier is one powerful example. Her vivid, probing explorations into family dynamics and tenuous relationships are fiercely suggestive marks of a female auteur that deserves recognition.

In a Better World

This guest post written by Sonia Lupher appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.


Susanne Bier’s camera yearns.

In her film After the Wedding, Bier’s handheld camera lingers on her main characters as shocking family secrets spill out into the open. Bier is interested in the micro-gestures that are revealed in close-ups on expressive body parts (an eye, a mouth, a hand), and her camera pulsates pensively with the tension unfolding onscreen. Rather than dominating the narrative, these shots are inserted in her films like punctuation. These intimate details bring her characters to life, revealing their interiority amid the situations unraveling around them.

In an interview with Mette Hjort, Bier speaks about the eroticism that drives her films. Even if they don’t involve sex, conflicts are fueled by an “underlying erotic drive or erotic frustration” fundamental in determining who they are and what matters to them. In films such as After the Wedding, this latent eroticism comes through in the electric energy between characters, mediated through Bier’s deliberate, but tender, ability to coax nuanced performances from her actors. Bier’s most powerful and critically acclaimed films (After the Wedding among them) are intimate, highly charged family dramas that hinge upon pivotal moments in their characters’ lives. Films such as After the Wedding, Open Hearts, Brothers, and In a Better World oscillate between tense, pensive moments of silence and uncontainable emotion expressed in explosive rage, grief, outrage, and despair.

Brothers

These are just a few pieces that make up Bier’s stunning oeuvre, which includes over a dozen features in English, Swedish, and her native Danish. Bier made her directorial debut in 1991 with the semi-autobiographical comedy-drama Freud Leaving Home, which follows a young Swedish-Jewish woman’s sexual awakening while her family is thrown into turmoil when her mother is diagnosed with cancer. An impressive first work, the film anticipates themes that recur in Bier’s later films: intricate or vulnerable family dynamics threatened by sickness (particularly cancer), adultery, divorce, unsatisfactory gender roles, and extra-familial obligations. Bier followed this up with more family-driven comedy-dramas such as Family Matters and Like It Never Was Before, the latter of which follows a dissatisfied father who must reconcile relationships with his wife and children when he discovers he is gay.

Brothers

Her career took off in the early 2000s with her film Open Hearts, starring Mads Mikkelsen (of James Bond films and Hannibal fame), the 28th contribution to Dogme 95, an art film movement helmed by Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg that solicited a raw, realist aesthetic from participating filmmakers. She carried several visual and narrative techniques from Open Hearts into her subsequent films, including the lingering closeness to her characters. She has also made two films in the United States: Things We Lost in the Fire and Serena – the latter starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. One of her films, Brothers, was remade in the U.S. Most recently, she directed The Night Manager, a miniseries adaptation of a John Le Carré novel starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie (it premieres in the U.S. on April 19!).

For Bier, expressing a person’s inner world is more important than plot; all of her formal techniques have some bearing on the formation of her characters. Sadness, joy, and humor often emerge simultaneously in Bier’s films, due to her talent for drawing complex performances from her actors. She boldly combines light and dark, reminding us that people and relationships are too complex to feel just one thing at a time. Her 2012 film Love Is All You Need (its Danish title is The Bald Hairdresser) is a romantic comedy about Ida, a hairdresser with breast cancer, who falls for her daughter’s father-in-law-to-be while they assemble for the wedding in Italy. Ida’s cancer, though important, doesn’t weigh down the film, and it certainly doesn’t keep her from interacting with her family or falling in love.

Love Is All You Need

Bier recognizes the importance of strong emotions in making a film that speaks to various audiences; she expresses disappointment in the “intellectual timidity” that keeps filmmakers from making emotionally powerful films. Yet her films are not corny or melodramatically overwhelming. As she said in a 2011 NPR interview, “I’ve always thought that setting out a set of rules before you start, and then being completely consistent with them, is the only way to make a really good film.” The combination of discipline and drama showcases Bier’s refined instinct for when to hold back and when to let go.

Like those of recognized (usually male) “auteurs,” Bier’s films carry her signature – it is almost as though each film continues where another left off, or follows a secondary character whose storyline failed to flourish elsewhere. But, despite the fact that she is among the most prolific and critically acclaimed contemporary female directors, Bier’s name remains relatively unheralded in the public eye. Film and television scholar Belinda Smaill has suggested that this is because Bier’s films waver between commercial and art film circuits, never quite satisfying the expectations of either audience. Her film’s melodramatic tendencies put her at odds with the art film crowd, but her careful attention to visual composition keeps her films out of the strictly commercial realm. Bier herself consistently expresses her intention to reach a wide audience, rather than constrain her efforts to please one or another. Her films are also overwhelmingly about men, which may complicate her reception among celebrants of women-driven and directed films. On the other hand, films such as In A Better World explore the fragility of a masculine “ideal” within domestic spaces, which may put her films at odds with male viewers as well.

These reasons may all contribute to Bier’s relative obscurity, but even so, Bier’s career illuminates the extent to which “auteur” status is still male-dominated. Kathryn Bigelow’s case is representative of this: she was the first woman to win a Best Director and a Best Picture Oscar in 2009, but, despite her lengthy and impressive career, she is still undervalued as an artist in her own right. Two years before Bigelow won the award, Bier’s After the Wedding was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar category. In 2011, she was nominated again and won the award for In a Better World. Bier was the third woman to win Best Foreign Language Film, following Marleen Gorris in 1995 for Antonia’s Line and Caroline Link in 2002 for Nowhere in Africa. A handful of films by women have been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film since 1959, including several by critically acclaimed directors including Lina Wertmuller, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, Claudia Llosa, María Luisa Bemberg, and Agnieszka Holland.

It is easy to overlook this Academy Awards category, and yet it is the most likely to recognize women for their directorial achievements. Unfortunately, the award’s announcement during the ceremony tends to ignore the director. If you watch Bier’s (too short) acceptance speech, you will notice that her win is presented as a win for Denmark, rather than for a woman director who happens to be Danish. But the fact that several films by women have been nominated for or won the Best Foreign Language Film award is a reminder that women consistently make good films around the world, even if we have to look outside Hollywood to find them. Susanne Bier is one powerful example. Her vivid, probing explorations into family dynamics and tenuous relationships are fiercely suggestive marks of a female auteur that deserves recognition.


See also at Bitch Flicks: In the Hardest of Moments, Susanne Bier Proves That ‘Love Is All You Need’


Sonia Lupher is originally from the Pacific Northwest, but moved east to pursue a doctoral degree in the Film Studies program at the University of Pittsburgh. She is fulfilling her lifelong dream of watching movies for a living, and especially loves horror movies directed by women. You can follow her on twitter @SoniaLupher.

Women with a Camera: How Women Directors Can Change the Cinematic Landscape

What I saw… was the problem women have faced for centuries: the popularity of woman as art subject, not as creator. What critics and award judges seem to love are not so much women’s stories, but women’s stories told by men. Stories in which women’s agency is strictly and safely in the hands of a male auteurs. … We need more women filmmakers — not as a way to fill quotas, but because women’s stories are different, unique, and need to be told.

Jeanne Dielman 2

This guest post written by Emanuela Betti appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.


The Oscars came and went, lacking (as usual) women nominees in the Best Director category. As a teenager I decided that I wanted to be “the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director.” Every year, as one man after the other won the coveted award, I also started questioning if my goal had any possibility of materializing. Then Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director in 2010, and (while I obviously had to modify my original plan of being the “first woman”), Bigelow’s victory gave me hope that it could be done — that young, aspiring girls could dream of being outstanding movie directors.

But then again, when I considered that Bigelow had won for The Hurt Locker, I also secretly dreaded that the only way for me to gain any recognition was to make what’s perceived as a “dude” movie: male-centric, revolving around masculine themes, and downplaying women and their personal perspective. “A female perspective will never win,” I thought, and unfortunately I’m still right. Throughout the history of the Academy Awards, only four women have been nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmüller in 1977, Jane Campion in 1993, Sofia Coppola in 2003, and Bigelow in 2010. The difference between the three women nominees and Bigelow is that their movies were about women. Not to downplay Bigelow’s victory, but as Melissa Silverstein points out:

“When [Bigelow] makes a movie about men at war she gets the win, but when she makes a movie about war with a central female character she gets snubbed.”

The Hurt Locker

Women get awarded for making movies about men, while movies about women — or featuring a female lead — typically receive an award or nominee if they’re directed by men. But this phenomenon (or I could say “tendency”) happens almost every year, and it’s not simply restricted to Hollywood.

When asked to name 5 female directors, Tom McCarthy (director of Spotlight) defended himself by saying, “I don’t want to play that game. There’s a gender gap everywhere … so to put it on the Academy or Hollywood is ridiculous.” McCarthy is right. The Oscars are not the problem; the industry is the problem. While rightly criticized for lack of diversity, the Oscars (or any award shows) are the end of the line, where all the discrimination and prejudice propagated by the industry puts on a gala, and gives itself a little golden statuette. The Academy Awards are simply the symptom of a much bigger cultural problem, in which women’s input or perspective is downplayed, stifled, or treated with lesser importance than its male counterpart. But more so than other art forms, cinema has a huge gender (and race) problem.

As Silverstein pointed out, movies about women directed by men seem to receive higher praise and recognition. Look at the praise surrounding Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour, or Christian Petzold’s Phoenix. These grand, critically-acclaimed art films, which give off airs of being “important” films about women’s stories and their inner lives, unfortunately left me empty and disappointed. What I saw was a discrepancy between the fabricated victories on screen, carefully crafted stories by men that pulled at our heart strings — stories of women rising from the ashes, or undergoing a sexual reawakening — victories that did not reflect what is happening off screen, where the voices of women directors are often downplayed, ignored, or told to calm down. It’s a hollow victory to celebrate a fictional character’s triumph on screen, while overlooking all the women directors who are relegated to the dusty file cabinets of cinema history. What I saw, when I watched Ida or Phoenix, was the problem women have faced for centuries: the popularity of woman as art subject, not as creator. What critics and award judges seem to love are not so much women’s stories, but women’s stories told by men. Stories in which women’s agency is strictly and safely in the hands of a male auteurs.

Meeks Cutoff

I’m not suggesting that men shouldn’t make movies about women, since some of my favorite women-centered films were directed by men, like Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977), or Stuart Heisler’s Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947). But what’s the deal here? If movies about women sell, and get rave reviews, why aren’t more women making them? If men are capable of giving us such nuanced and complex portraits of women’s lives, imagine what women directors (if they were given more opportunities) could contribute to the discussion. In cinema, revolutionary change does not begin on the screen, it starts with the people behind the camera — change stems from the creators, and when there are so few female creators, there is not much change either. Leigh Janiak, director of Honeymoon (2014), gave a succinct response to the lack of female directors:

“We are influencing culture, which is why it’s so dangerous, I think, not to have more women making movies.”

It’s not the movies, but the filmmakers, who have the power to chance the direction of our cultural narrative.

Selma movie 6

Producers don’t hire women directors because they assume they either can’t direct an action flick, or that they’ll cry on set. But why push for a woman to direct the next Superman or James Bond film? Why waste female talent on mindless formula movies that cater to teenage boys, when there are many more interesting stories to tell. But that’s one issue with the film industry, which is constantly comparing and trying to hold women up to men’s standards. So who cares if a woman didn’t direct Apocalypse Now or the next Superman. I don’t see any male director giving us Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman…, Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, Jane Campion’s The Piano, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ava DuVernay’s Selma, or Claire Denis’ Chocolat. A true victory in cinema would not entail women competing with men, or trying to gain membership to the “boy’s club,” but in being able to celebrate women’s stories — their strengths, and their uniqueness — on and off screen. We need more women filmmakers — not as a way to fill quotas, but because women’s stories are different, unique, and need to be told. The female perspective is capable of challenging the dominant point of view, and that’s why women’s contribution matters. No quota or female superhero will fix the gender issue if female agency is not given the focus and respect it deserves.

Girlhood film - 2015

The Oscars and all the glitzy film awards, then, are not the problem, and they may never matter. What’s more important: joining a club of mostly white dudes, or creating and experiencing art that changes the cultural landscape? Why conform, or downplay women’s creative force and imagination to match the dull guidelines of boring older white men? And most of all, why seek their approval. If we try to infiltrate the system, we run the risk of conforming to it; and when we seek the approval of the system, we become part of it. It may be a while before we see gender equality in the Academy, or even at Cannes. But 10 or 20 years from now, what influences minds and culture will be the artwork, not the awards, or even the critic’s praise. And the art that will be remembered is not chosen by the Academy, but by us.


See also at Bitch Flicks: #OscarsSoWhite: The Fight for Representation at the Oscars


Emanuela Betti has an M.A. in Cinema Studies. She’s a cinema aficionado, part-time astrologer, and occasional eccentric. You can follow her on Tumblr and Twitter @EmanuelaBetti.

Call For Writers: Women Directors

Our theme week for March 2016 will be Women Directors. The gender gap in the entertainment industry has risen to the level of popular consciousness, such that prominent public figures are frequently commenting on it and demanding change, but while awareness of the under-representation and misrepresentation of women in film and television has grown, is there much being done to combat it?

Call-for-Writers-e13859437405011

Our theme week for March 2016 will be Women Directors.

The gender gap in the entertainment industry has risen to the level of popular consciousness, such that prominent public figures are frequently commenting on it and demanding change, but while awareness of the under-representation and misrepresentation of women in film and television has grown, is there much being done to combat it?

Women directors face myriad obstacles: despite there being an abundance of talented female directors struggling to produce work, many companies refuse to give them projects (only 3.4% of all film directors are female and only 9% of the top 250 movies in 2015 were directed by women), they are not paid as much as their male counterparts, there’s an expectation that their work be stereotypically female (i.e. chick flicks), and their work is rarely appreciated with the same level of acclaim (only 4 women have ever been nominated for a Best Director Academy Award). Despite all these obstacles and hardships, there are a growing number of women making amazing work with wide range of genres and topics: romantic, thought-provoking, innovative, hilarious, or even terrifying. In 2009, Kathryn Bigelow broke barriers with The Hurt Locker, a film about soldiers and war, when she took home Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Director. She was the first woman ever to receive an Oscar for Best Director. In 2014, Ava DuVernay’s depiction of the civil rights movement Selma won an Academy Award for Best Song and garnered nominations for Best Picture. But DuVernay didn’t receive an Oscar nomination, an unfortunate snub as she would have been the first Black woman to ever receive a nomination for Best Director.

However, the Oscars are typically white and male-dominated and are increasingly being disregarded as an antiquated, patriarchal, elitist group who should no longer be regarded as the gatekeepers of important cinema, and women are increasingly working in the independent film scene. Despite the somewhat encouraging rise of women directors, white women tend to dominate the field, receiving accolades and projects with far greater frequency than women directors of color, which is a microcosm reflective of the stratification of the feminist movement itself.

The examples below are the names of women directors alongside an example of one of their most acclaimed works. Feel free to use those examples to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Saturday, March 26, 2016 by midnight Eastern Time.

Ava DuVernay (Selma)

Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation)

Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda)

Jane Campion (The Piano)

Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)

Amma Asante (Belle)

Lena Dunham (Girls)

Julie Delpy (2 Days in Paris)

Mary Harron (American Psycho)

Mary Lambert (Pet Sematary)

Meera Menon (Farah Goes Bang)

Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust)

Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle)

Penny Marshall (Big)

Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right)

Emily Ting (It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong)

Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone)

Dee Rees (Bessie)

Randa Haines (Children of a Lesser God)

Barbra Streisand (The Prince of Tides)

Jodie Foster (Orange is the New Black)

One Immigrant’s Thoughts on ‘Brooklyn’ and Western Privilege

From the thousands of immigrant stories that could have been told, that Hollywood chose a heterosexual love story between two white Westerners in the 1950s is telling — that critics and audiences have lauded and lavished it with praise is even more so.

Brooklyn movie

This guest post is written by Fernanda Cunha. | Spoilers ahead.

I watched Brooklyn in the same week my Facebook newsfeed flooded with reports of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country. In December, I had both heard and read of the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to raid and deport Central American families, at the same time, the John Crowley-directed film Brooklyn continued playing to rave reviews. As a first generation immigrant whose main self-identifier is native of Brazil / immigrant / foreigner, I deliberately and adamantly seek stories about the immigrant and diasporic experience, and I’m excited when they manage to permeate mainstream culture and media. In some ways, this was also true for Brooklyn — though my excitement was not the same as discovering Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah or Cristina Henríquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans, both contemporary novels about different immigrant experiences — as I looked forward to watching a young woman’s migrant journey. In retrospect, having now seen the film, I am not entirely sure how I ever thought I would relate to the film’s premise. In its desperate attempt to tell a universal story (which is unsurprisingly white and Western), the film only ends up feeling false, and ultimately falls short.

Released to select theaters in November 2015, the recently Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn (based on the novel by Colm Tóibín) stars Saoirse Ronan as Eilis Lacey, who migrates from Ireland to Brooklyn in the 1950s, the story begins with a hesitant, and nervous Eilis preparing for, and somewhat dreading, her journey to the United States, and ends with her triumphant Brooklyn “homecoming,” after returning to her original hometown of Enniscorthy and feeling trapped by her surroundings and her sister’s sudden death.

BrooklynCover

Visually, the film delivers — the cinematography looks pretty, and the production and costume design both succeed in building a believable 1950s visual story. It’s in Ronan, however, that the film finds its backbone. Her performance makes what could potentially be unrealistic and false scenes feel sincere and raw. The film’s idealistically brief moments of homesickness and grieving become the most touching scenes of the film through Ronan’s physical translation of a weak and lacking screenplay. And lacking it is. Eilis’s experiences as an immigrant take a backseat in her newfound love for an Italian-American man, and the immigrant’s story I was so looking forward to is lost in the film’s attempt at Western appeal and universality. From the thousands of immigrant stories that could have been told, that Hollywood chose a heterosexual love story between two white Westerners in the 1950s is telling — that critics and audiences have lauded and lavished it with praise is even more so.

Besides Eilis’s laughably brief moment of homesickness and her inability to be home for her sister’s burial, none of her experiences as an immigrant felt familiar to me. She does not get made fun of for her accent — she does not even have to struggle with learning English, and in turn does not have to spend most of the next two years in the United States in silence, embarrassed of the ways her tongue cannot seem to master the language. She relates to Americans easily, and there are no mentions of deportation. Despite a small disappointment at not seeing myself reflected on screen, I am okay with this unfamiliarity. I am sure hers looks like another immigrant’s story, and I understand that the immigrant experience is not monolithic and manifests differently for every individual.

Brooklyn movie 4

I struggle, however, with Hollywood’s choice to tell and so openly embrace this kind of immigrant’s story while the United States continues to deport Central American immigrants to mostly widespread silence. I worry about the continued invisibility of native Latin American peoples in the United States, especially undocumented ones, when their dehumanization persists through a proliferation of Latin American xenophobia and hate speeches of public figures like Donald Trump. Representation is meaningful and powerful, and the lack thereof is just as salient. I wonder what it means for others to not see these representations, to be so sheltered to stories of undocumented immigrants that society perceives their actions and existence as inherently and automatically criminal.

In today’s social and pop culture climate, it’s not difficult to wonder how differently critics and audiences would receive a film like this if told from a Latin American woman’s perspective. It probably would have never been made. In the miraculous chance that it had, I wonder if audiences would have viewed Eilis’s decision of accepting an opportunity in the United States as stealing, taking something that was not hers. I doubt Eilis’s actions of marrying an American before returning to her home country where she rekindles a friendship with another man and flirts with the idea of staying would have been well received. Audiences would have no sympathy for a woman like that. I can imagine the kinds of names she would have been called, and the implications others would discern in her actions.

Brooklyn movie

In some ways, I am glad this story doesn’t exist, not only because I found the film uninteresting and lazy, but because it would be a disservice to the kinds of stories I experienced and heard as an immigrant. Still, the disappointingly simplistic story Brooklyn tells beats the reality of not having our stories told at all. I would rather see a simple and two-dimensional love story between a Latina immigrant and an American man than watch another movie set in Latin America in which crimes and violence dominate, and all perpetuated by the Latin@ characters. Stories in which the American characters suffer tremendously in a ruthless foreign land — the creative voices behind those films receive praise endlessly for their bravery, and the Latin@ voices continue to be ignored and silenced.


Fernanda Cunha is a native of Brazil living in the U.S., a writer, and a student of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her writing focuses on the humanization of immigrants, often done through a feminist lens. Her writing has been featured in The Feminist Wire.

What Is ‘The Danish Girl’ About?

‘The Danish Girl’ and ‘Tangerine’ collide in their allusion to the notions of gender identity, gender expression and beauty in conversations about trans women. But ‘Tangerine’ takes that necessary next step by centering and humanizing the lives of trans women, which ‘The Danish Girl’ pointedly fails to do.

The Danish Girl

This guest post by Holly Thicknes is an edited version of an article that previously appeared at Girls On Film and is cross-posted with permission.

One of the most anticipated films of January and nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards, The Danish Girl is Tom Hooper’s biographical account of Lili Elbe, a transgender woman and one of the first people to ever undergo gender confirmation surgery in 1930. Taking the film firmly onto the awards stage by playing Lili is coy-smiling, softly spoken, thespian royalty Edward John David Redmayne and starring opposite as wife Gerda is the talented Alicia Vikander.

The Danish Girl is utterly gorgeous in every way except one: an ugly stain seeping through the bespoke dress fabric and luscious upholstery. As we stoke the cultural fires of 2016 on the embers of 2015’s action-packed year – the year of nationally legalized same-sex marriage in the U.S., the Black Lives Matter campaign, Jeremy Corbyn wearing socks and sandals and raising eyebrows at oncoming toff scoffs, extended Middle Eastern intervention and a mind-boggling refugee crisis in the U.K. – it becomes apparent that the latest wave of films about progress, in themselves, aren’t very progressive at all.

Let’s call it the Redmayne Phenomena. Has anyone noticed anything about Eddie? Namely that he must spend 80% of his working life in make-up. His last two critically-acclaimed roles, in The Danish Girl and The Theory of Everything, consisted of his appropriation of marginalized peoples that he is not one of in real life — an able-bodied cis man, Redmayne played a person with a disability and a trans woman. But all actors do that, don’t they? That’s what “acting” is. Yes, but it’s 2016: representation matters. Films can and should cast trans actors and trans actresses in trans roles. A cis man playing the role of a trans woman diminishes representation and can perpetuate the dangerous trope that trans women are “men in dresses,” rather than the reality that trans women are women. Is Eddie a good actor? Yes! Is Eddie the only actor? Yes – according to all major film awards bodies.

The Danish Girl

Exaggerations aside, the casting of Redmayne as this iconic trans woman in The Danish Girl spoke volumes about the kind of high-speed, edgy-but-mainstream lives that we endeavor to live nowadays (or that we are encouraged to seek out). A film like this is targeted at heteronormative audiences seeking ‘quirky cinema’ rather than LGBTQ audiences seeking authentic LGBTQ cinema, therefore it is not made for the community which it claims to represent and is a big Hollywood lie. Films such as The Danish Girl get packaged as LGBTQ cinema, allowing cis, hetero audiences who seek to be seen as alternative to the norm to watch the film and claim to be concerned with its themes. Many of us like the idea of watching LGBTQ films, but not the challenging reality of it. So we satisfy that high-brow itch by buying into this “groundbreaking” cinema stock in awards season that actually sidelines its supposedly central issue, played by acting aristocracy Redmayne who blatantly hasn’t got a clue so resorts to weeping. In the place of the pioneering heroine I expected to see, the film depicted instead a fragile chorus girl doing a terrified audition for the lead.

Released in the UK just a few months before The Danish Girl, Sean Baker’s Tangerine also claimed to centralize the stories of trans women. Unlike the former, Tangerine is a modern work of art, not because it was shot on an iPhone, as most of its surrounding press focused on. The dusty neon-orange air that rises in clouds from the Santa Monica streets is every bit as beautiful as the Wes Anderson-esque wide shots of Copenhagen in The Danish Girl, and not only because it is unashamedly devoid of aesthetic artifice and polish, but Tangerine is a masterpiece because – like the best and most memorable films – it creates its own ideology out of itself. Tangerine diverges from The Danish Girl by casting trans actresses (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor) in the roles of trans women characters. The two films collide in their allusion to the notions of gender identity, gender expression and beauty in conversations about trans women. But Tangerine takes that necessary next step by centering and humanizing the lives of trans women, which The Danish Girl pointedly fails to do. Tangerine was screened for the entire sex worker community in the area it was made and at various LGBTQ centres. It holds nothing back: a bold and brave fuck-off to a heteronormative, cisnormative, conservative world determined to diminish its voice. That is the kind of film worthy of awards.

Tangerine film

Redmayne, albeit his genuine go of it, could never have captured the same essence of struggle that trans women experience with transphobia and transmisogyny. The Danish Girl employs carefully constructed beauty to distract from this truth. And herein lies the main problem: if producers keep pumping money into generic scripts that get packaged as progressive, nothing will ever change in the film world, and many of us won’t notice. It is the same principle as dragging Meryl Streep into the first “big” film about the suffragette movement for 2 minutes to crank up its profile, instead of trying to rewrite standards in the same way that its, again, supposedly central, subject did.

So what is The Danish Girl about? Superficially, the legendary Lili Elbe. Actually, the sorrowful friendship of a married couple at odds. Retrospectively, the familiar trumpeting of the noble God-given skills of an actor we know all too well, while appropriating the identities of trans women.

Just think what it would have meant to the trans community, and for trans representation in film, if it was Mya Taylor from Tangerine who had been nominated for an Oscar instead of Eddie.

Tangerine film


Holly Thicknes is a freelance film critic and editor of female-focused film blog Girls On Film. She lives and works in London, studies printmaking, and helps organise themed short film events for Shorts On Tap. She is particularly interested in the ways in which films help people carve out spaces for themselves in an increasingly lonely society. You can follow Girls On Film on Twitter at @girlsonfilmLDN.

‘Carol’ and the Ineffable Queerness of Being

The potency of ‘Carol’ struck me. I found myself hopelessly enraptured by the film’s meticulously flawless and at times excruciatingly realistic depiction of the ineffability that typifies so much of the queer experience. … The film pinpoints and satiates that pulsating, unspeakable longing that I (and I know countless others) have felt too many times.

CAROL

This is a guest post by Eva Phillips.

I harbored a tremendous amount of dubiousness for Todd Haynes’ Carol. A lavishly developed adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, the film — chronicling the deeply complicated and ferociously passionate romance between two women, Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) and Therese Belivett (Rooney Mara) — received such unfettered, rabid praise that I, ever the cranky-queer critic, was immediately suspect. Perhaps it was because I had so much personally riding on the film being a pillar of Sapphic excellence (cranky-queer and malignant narcissist — I’m a jack-of-all-trades). As an almost predictably sad, sexually discombobulated — and, importantly, sexually terrified — kid, I could only reconcile my ample feelings about my sexuality through film. My desires, my confusions, my deciphering whether it was okay to have no clue what I was feeling exactly, had no place in my social life, and, moreover, no place to be securely articulated. Media with glimmers of queer characters and themes provided that arena for articulation of the yearnings, the frustrations, and the utter fear I was often consumed by — films were my realm of liminality. So I became a scavenger of any remotely queer cinema, subjecting my computer to countless viruses covertly streaming Better Than Chocolate, ferreting away rented copies of But I’m a Cheerleader to consult after lacrosse practice, secretly stifling a lot of ire about how indulgent the problematic Loving Annabelle turned out to be.

Carol movie

There was an indisputable comfort and benefit to effectively hiding myself in this really, really, really queer canon. These films allowed me a sort of expression and understanding, and, frequently, blissfully demonstrated oh, this is the sex thing, yes, good, good to know. Yet, despite these films salubrious qualities, the sort of discursive shelter they provided, they often seemed too removed or lacking (of course, you could make the argument that “movies aren’t supposed to fix your emotional/developmental crises” and, you’d be right, I suppose, but terribly rude). They seemed to dwell in a sort of microcosmic queer utopia, or, conversely, despotically tragic queer dystopia (Kill the lesbians! Lock the queer gals up! Happy endings are heteronormative! Bisexuality is a myth!) that never quite addressed the comingled anguish and mirth I experienced in my emotionally tumultuous coming-of-age. I would frequently resort to media where I could engineer some kind of unspoken queer subtext — usually anything with Michelle Rodriguez being seductively cantankerous in the vicinity of Milla Jovovich or Jordana Brewster; or my probably unhealthy fascination with a Rizzoli & Isles ultimate partnership. The wordless, even chimerical quality of these attractions in otherwise “straight” cinema often was more rewarding for me, allowing a safeguard in their silence. There was immeasurable pleasure because my desires and their imagined attractions remained equally untellable.

But in a peculiar way, Carol was like my Queer-Film Baby (a baby that really needed an induced labor, since my town’s theatre was stymied by Star WarsThe Revenant fever) — I pined for it to be some prodigious, cinematic gift to Queer Dames (specifically me), something that would satiate and demonstrate the viscera of queer development and craving. But I cynically feared it would royally muck things up like some of its equally revered siblings (lookin’ at you and your emotional/sexual lechery, Blue Is the Warmest Color). Contrary to many depressingly mono-focused proclamations, I did not want Carol to be (or fail to be) the next Brokeback Mountain (though, had Anna Faris inexplicably made a cameo in the film, I would have been completely on board). I wanted the film to exist in its own right, to not be conflated with the masculine machinations of something else, and to not suffer the Brokeback-fate of hetero-appropriation to show “look how attuned I am to the gay folks struggle.” Like any fretful expecting parent, I did copious research on Carol before its release, and remained skeptical at the inundation of sea of mainstream accolades, fearing voyeuristic tokenism or perhaps somber applause at yet another tragic queer ending. Not even cherished and respected queer testimonials could sway me to believe that Carol was going to deliver, so to speak, and transcend the lineage of queer forerunners as well as triumph the beast of my nagging dubiousness.

Carol movie

It really wasn’t until a little less than a third of the way through the film, after several decadent scenes of Therese and Carol getting lost in delectably nervous dialogue and sumptuous gazes and exquisitely drab shots setting up Therese’s mundane, silently craven life, that the potency of Carol struck me. I found myself hopelessly enraptured by the film’s meticulously flawless and at times excruciatingly realistic depiction of the ineffability that typifies so much of the queer experience. As pivotal as it is understated, the moment comes in a brief utterance that is embedded in a scene riddled with delicate class dynamics and clumsy potential “first date” politics and thus is otherwise overlooked. The scene centers around Carol — played by Blanchett with such fastidiousness, exacting the balance between regality and utter petrification — taking the savagely wide-eyed Therese to lunch as an ostensible thanks for returning her abandoned gloves (a most likely intentional accident). Therese observes, acquiescing to the generational gender expectations, that Carol must have thought a man shipped the lost gloves to her home, apologizing that she was, in fact, the anonymous sender. Carol balks at the alternate possibility, delivering the line that so characterizes what I identify as the film’s superb construction of unspeakable desire: “I doubt very much I would’ve gone to lunch with him.”

There is something so simultaneously infinitesimal and yet infinitely meaningful in this moment. The quiet duality of Carol’s comment, her ecstatic implied reciprocation of Therese’s attraction, establishes a precedent for the outstandingly subdued power of the film. Crucially, though, this moment epitomizes what transforms the film from a complex portrayal of unremitting love into a cinematic portrait of the distinct ineffability of queer desire. Carol’s declaration that she would certainly not have gone to lunch with a male employee is not simply the quelling of “do they/don’t they” trepidations so common to most potential “first date” dynamics — it is an implicit affirmation that Therese’s unfettered and uncertain desire (marvelously and tacitly established in the shot-reverse-shots of the first department store interaction between Therese and Carol) is neither misplaced nor forbidden. Merely by saying, “I doubt very much…” the film pinpoints and satiates that pulsating, unspeakable longing that I (and I know countless others) have felt too many times. Does this individual understand (let alone share) my desire? Is this going to be another suppressed attraction? Is this even allowed (or have I jeopardized myself by exposing inklings of desire)? It is an instance which communicates a euphoria distinct and most poignant to a queer audience (particularly this queer, now four-time audience member) of not just having desire requited, but understanding that who you are, how your desire manifests is welcomed and safe.

Carol movie

Thus the lunch exchange socked me in the gut. The narrative and the characters’ machinations ecstatically eviscerated me, so I fully surrendered to the film (even the somewhat aberrant “oops, we forgot a thriller-centric author wrote this, let’s give Carol a pistol” bit). Every touch or grasp of the shoulder — a reoccurring technique brilliantly juxtaposed in the opening dinner scene, as the difference in emotional arousal is palpable when Carol touches Therese’s shoulder rather than the male friend — translates an empyreal, unutterable world. Every longing stare, every coded phrase (“Why not get the suite…if the rate is attractive?” being one of my nearly-cringe-worthy favorites) and even more coded physical symbols (the portentous abandoned gloves, the removed shoes that must hastily be thrown on when Carol’s husband interrupts her first domestic reverie with Therese) are indicative of a particular vernacular of queer longing borne from the uncertainty or inability to directly profess or announce one’s passions, one’s indelible feelings of love. Equally compelling, the non-romantic (or not in the film’s action, at least) female relationship between Carol and her best friend Abby (plucky-as-ever Sarah Paulson) functions as an extension of this inextricable union. Carol and Abby, while open about their past affair, talk to one another in a uniquely cultivated language that both evokes the complexities of their desire (past and current) and the indefatigable, indescribable bond to one another forged through their specific type of union (they share one of the more beautiful and symbolic forgotten moments: shot from behind, the two intertwine arms and support one another down the stairs).

Carol movie

Many details contribute to the dedicated presentation of this ineffability, this new language of necessity and yearning that distinguishes the queer experience in pleasure, euphoria and aching want. Carter Burwell’s lithe lilting score captures the more finite moments of piqued curiosity or plummeting despair that cannot adequately be articulated. The melodramatic mis-en-scène (maybe Haynes’ greatest nod to Douglas Sirk yet, despite Far From Heaven’s ambitions) augments the powerfully silent subversion that Therese and Carol undertake in their romance. But it’s mostly a testament to Blanchett (whose austerity has been woefully misconstrued by some as haughtiness) and Mara, and even Paulson. They do not allow their characters to succumb to over-the-top tropes, but instead manage to recreate those aspects of queer discovery that I had written off as inimitable in films — the stares that communicate every jumbled, blitzkrieg thought, wish, lust but are not over vamped; the gradual transition into comfort with physicality as each more intrepid, explorative touch conveys the longing that often cannot be spoken; the quiet resilience of women who are not damned by the transcendent nature of their love, but reclaim it, making it physically and emotionally more explosive than any other kind of love.

I have never been so lachrymal in a theatre (except for Toy Story 3 surrounded by small children and for wildly different reasons) than when Therese fumblingly tries to ask “things” of Carol, to which Carol pleads, “Ask me things, please.” I openly wept because I viscerally knew how it ached to have your love feel so inscrutable, desperate to be quenched yet caught in limbo. I wept, at times agonized from the pernicious self-refusal so brutally portrayed, and at times over-joyed, because I had never witnessed the ineffability I went through (and still continue and will always go through, to some extent) in the various stages of my queer acceptance and pursuits of love so accurately acted out before me. No word or line authoritatively delivered, no movement swift or lingering made is insignificant — these women act each second with the full weight of the balefulness, muted cravenness, and language I and a panoply of others adopted, have been all too intimate with. I had never seen so much of myself, my friends, my partners, laid so brilliantly bare on screen.

Carol movie

All of this is certainly not to say the film is unblemished: there’s that tricky, body politics moment during Carol and Therese’s New Years’ consummation in which Carol, transfixed by Therese mutters about her breasts, “Mine never looked like that;” disconcerting class and gender elements; the insufferable good-ole-boy-ness of Kyle Chandler’s character’s name (Hoage? Hart? Harf? Oh, HARGE. Sure. Whatever). But what is so fascinatingly and stupendously gratifying about Carol, particularly when assessed with other pitifully doomed or categorically wishy-washy queer dame narratives, is that the coded, incommunicable language actually pays off. The film captures that quality of subversion and unuttered, unbridled attraction, but then it allows (and it seems pathetic to have to say “allows”) the protagonists to consummate their love — Therese can rush to Carol’s dinner party and, in a spectacular narrative cycle, return the gaze of their first exchange, but this time to silently communicate the agreement to embark on a real relationship. Speaking of gazes, Carol is valorous in not only exclusively and unwaveringly committing itself to the Female Gaze — no one is (irrevocably) punished! Lady-orgasms aren’t devoured by omnipresent dude-licentiousness! — it renders the once believed indomitable Male Gaze utterly irrelevant and desecrated in the wake of female longing.

I share in the disheartenment that the Academy Awards denied Carol the recognition it so rightfully deserved (thankfully, though, Mara and Blanchett got their dues). However, there is, not at all ironically, a quiet valiance in the film’s success that makes it perhaps more profound than, say, Brokeback Mountain. Carol triumphs in electrifying homogeneous audiences, in gripping the audiences at Vanity Fair and Slate but it never compromises its irrefutable queerness to placate or entice heteronormative expectations. The women are empowered by their ineffable queerness and we are allowed a dialectic palisade in an elegant art-house romance; the film’s realities coexist harmoniously. It’s really all this cantankerous queer critic could ever ask for.


Eva Phillips is constantly surprised at how remarkably Southern she in fact is as she adjusts to social and climate life in The Steel City. Additionally, Eva thoroughly enjoys completing her Master’s Degree in English, though really wishes that more of her grades could be based on how well she researches Making a Murderer conspiracy theories whilst pile-driving salt-and-vinegar chips. You can follow her on Instagram at @menzingers2.

2016 Oscar Nominations Roundup

Check out all of the 2016 Academy Award nominations with links to our reviews and articles providing feminist commentary!

Best Picture Oscar Nominees 2016

Best Picture 

The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight

Best Director

Lenny Abrahamson, Room
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, The Revenant
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Adam McKay, The Big Short
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Best Animated Feature Film

Anomalisa
Boy and the World (‘O Menino e o Mundo’)

Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There

Best Cinematography

Carol — Ed Lachman
The Hateful Eight — Robert Richardson
Mad Max: Fury Road — John Seale
The Revenant — Emmanuel Lubezki
Sicario — Roger Deakins

Best Costume Design

Carol — Sandy Powell
Cinderella — Sandy Powell
The Danish Girl — Paco Delgado
Mad Max: Fury Road — Jenny Beavan
The Revenant — Jacqueline West

Best Documentary Feature

Amy 
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Best Documentary Short

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Body Team 12
Chau, Beyond the Lines
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
Last Day of Freedom

Best Film Editing

The Big Short — Hank Corwin
Mad Max: Fury Road — Margaret Sixel
The Revenant — Stephen Mirrione
Spotlight — Tom McArdle
Star Wars: The Force Awakens — Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey

Best Foreign Language Film

Embrace of the Serpent (Columbia)
Mustang (France)
Son of Saul (Hungary)
Theeb (Jordan)
A War (Denmark)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Mad Max: Fury Road — Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared — Love Larson and Eva von Bahr
The Revenant — Siân Grigg, Duncan Jarman and Robert Pandini

Best Music — Original Score

Bridge of Spies — Thomas Newman
Carol
— Carter Burwell
The Hateful Eight — Ennio Morricone
Sicario — Jóhann Jóhannsson
Star Wars: The Force Awakens — John Williams

Best Music — Original Song

“Earned It,” 50 Shades of Grey
“Till It Happens to You,” The Hunting Ground
“Manta Ray,” Racing Extinction
“Simple Song #3,” Youth
“Writing’s on the Wall,” Spectre

Best Production Design

Bridge of Spies — Adam Stockhausen (Production Design); Rena DeAngelo and Bernhard Henrich (Set Decoration)
The Danish Girl — Eve Stewart (Production Design); Michael Standish (Set Decoration)
Mad Max: Fury Road — Colin Gibson (Production Design); Lisa Thompson (Set Decoration)
The Martian — Arthur Max (Production Design); Celia Bobak (Set Decoration)
The Revenant — Jack Fisk (Production Design); Hamish Purdy (Set Decoration)

Best Short Film — Animated

Bear Story
Prologue
Sanjay’s Super Team
We Can’t Live without Cosmos
World of Tomorrow

Best Short Film — Live Action

Ave Maria
Day One
Everything Will Be Okay (‘Alles Wird Gut’)
Shok
Stutterer

Best Sound Editing

Mad Max: Fury Road — Mark Mangini and David White
The Martian — Oliver Tarney
The Revenant — Matthew Wood and David Acord
Sicario — Alan Robert Murray
Star Wars: The Force Awakens — Matthew Wood and David Acord

Best Sound Mixing

Bridge of Spies — Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom and Drew Kunin
Mad Max: Fury Road — Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff and Ben Osmo
The Martian — Paul Massey, Mark Taylor and Mac Ruth
The Revenant — Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, Randy Thom and Chris Duesterdiek
Star Wars: The Force Awakens — Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio and Stuart Wilson

Best Visual Effects

Ex Machina — Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington and Sara Bennett
Mad Max: Fury Road — Andrew Jackson, Tom Wood, Dan Oliver and Andy Williams
The Martian — Richard Stammers, Anders Langlands, Chris Lawrence and Steven Warner
The Revenant — Rich McBride, Matthew Shumway, Jason Smith and Cameron Waldbauer
Star Wars: The Force Awakens — Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould

Best Writing — Adapted Screenplay

The Big Short — Charles Randolph and Adam McKay
Brooklyn — Nick Hornby
Carol — Phyllis Nagy
The Martian — Drew Goddard
Room — Emma Donoghue

Best Writing — Original Screenplay

Bridge of Spies — Matt Charman and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
Ex Machina — Alex Garland
Inside Out — Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; original story by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen
Spotlight — Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer
Straight Outta Compton — Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff; story by S. Leigh Savidge & Alan Wenkus and Andrea Berloff

‘The Danish Girl’ and ‘Youth’: Why We Need To Stop Giving White Guys Oscars

Another way for a male actor to win an award is to put on a dress and play a trans woman (see Jared Leto and ‘Transparent’) which explains why we now have ‘The Danish Girl’ in theaters, directed by Hooper and starring Redmayne as trans pioneer Lili Elbe. At least one trans woman has already pointed out how this film, like ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ before it, has scenes that could have been lifted from porn (not the best place to find versimilitude) but also how the script forces Elbe into the “tragic degenerate” trope, just like queer characters invariably were in the bad old days.

danish-girlCover

Nearly five years ago, when Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech swept the Oscars I wasn’t displeased. Sure it was yet another film by men about men in which the women barely had speaking parts, but Colin Firth gave a great tortured performance in the lead and the screenplay–like the film itself–seemed to understand it wasn’t telling the “feel good” story many critics and audience members mistook Speech for: the screenwriter has said that when he told the Queen mother (the film depicts when she became Queen) that he was working on the script, she asked him to not make a film of it until after she was dead–because it would bring back too many bad memories.

I skipped Hooper’s next film: Les Misérables because it gave every sign of being the kind of gooey movie I would detest. It also had Eddie Redmayne in it and after sitting through the supposedly “based on a true story” nonsense of My Week With Marilyn in which Redmayne starred (opposite an underrated Michelle Williams playing Marilyn Monroe), I had had enough of him. Last year Redmayne won an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in the bio-pic The Theory of Everything proving that an able-bodied actor has a good chance of getting an Academy Award for playing a disabled person (and as long as the able-bodied keep winning, disabled people will never be cast to play these roles themselves).

Another way for a male actor to win an award is to put on a dress and play a trans woman (see Jared Leto and Transparent) which explains why we now have The Danish Girl in theaters, directed by Hooper and starring Redmayne as trans pioneer Lili Elbe. At least one trans woman has already pointed out how this film, like Blue Is the Warmest Color before it, has scenes that could have been lifted from porn (not the best place to find versimilitude) but also how the script forces Elbe into the “tragic degenerate” trope, just like queer characters invariably were in the bad old days.

ProfileDanishGirlGerdaLili

The whole film feels very dated (and not just because it takes place in the early 20th century) but also, in spite of it being “based on a true story”, false. Like a bad TV movie made ten or twenty years ago, this film posits that Lili (who starts out as Einar) had a wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander) who had no idea her husband was anything other than a regular guy, even though Lili was a longtime model for Gerda’s work as an illustrator and painter. When Lili wants to transition, Gerda is surprised and hurt saying, “But Lili doesn’t exist. We were playing a game.” and later cries, “I need my husband! I need to hug my husband,” just like the suburban wife of a trans woman might say on Maury.

The real-life Gerda Wegener was queer and, while the couple lived in Paris, did not keep secret her relationships with women, so the film misses the opportunity to show that the feminine qualities of Lili may have been what attracted Gerda in the first place, a possibility shows like Maury and movies like this one never consider. The film also gives short shrift to the gender politics of the time, never detailing the obstacles a woman artist like Gerda would face in that era and downplaying Lili’s decision when she transitions to stop painting–even though she had won acclaim as an artist when she was “Einar”.

This film fails on so many levels, it’s hard to pick any one aspect, but Eddie Redmayne deserves special mention. A man in a dress playing a trans women is always objectionable, but Redmayne is so woefully miscast in this role, I’ll go to any protest of the awards he will probably be nominated for. Lili Elbe was one of the first people to undergo gender affirming surgery and the toast of Paris, going to parties and modeling for Gerda in the latest, revealing fashions but Redmayne’s Lili is a whispery, skittish, drag queen full of shame (at least at first) who wears matronly dresses that come up to the neck and stretch down nearly to the ankle. Other trans woman pioneers (in the US, a generation after Elbe) were not shy, retiring or ashamed: think of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera: they, along with many femme gay men of the time became more open in their presentation as they became more outspoken in their advocacy: they developed pride in themselves to deflect the shame mainstream culture thought was their only option. In this way and many others, their mindset was much more in keeping with the rest of us in 2015 than that of anyone associated with The Danish Girl.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88APYIGkjk” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Nearly two years ago Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty won an Oscar for best foreign language film and again, even though it was a film made by men about men, I’d enjoyed it and was happy. I didn’t know then that award would give Sorrentino the momentum to make one of the worst films I’ve seen in a theater in a long time: Youth.

WeitzYouth

In a lot of ways Youth takes the indulgences I could ignore in The Great Beauty: the whining of pampered, older, male characters and the fascination with the grotesque (but of course never, ever combining the two to find the grotesque in pampered, main older male characters) and proceeds to make an entire movie out of them. And the whisper of misogyny in Beauty becomes a scream in Youth. Michael Caine is the lead, a retired composer, and his vocal intonations are so familiar from the acting he’s phoned in through the years that, even if he were giving a good performance, at this point we wouldn’t notice. Harvey Keitel is wasted (except very briefly in the reading of one of his last lines) as his best friend, a film director, as is Rachel Weisz as the composer’s grown daughter and Jane Fonda as an aging actress wearing too much makeup (I can’t believe people are talking about nominating Fonda for an award for this role. Her part isn’t a character, it’s an incoherent tempter tantrum). Like The Great Beauty, Youth has great cinematography (again by Luca Bigazzi) but when the results are this loathsome, I’m reminded of how much I would rather see a dimly lit, poorly shot film with a great script than another monstrosity with great stills. As other critics have pointed out, if this film is a leading contender for an Oscar we’re in trouble–or maybe it’s the Oscars, and their increasing irrelevance, which are.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T7CM4di_0c” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

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

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Diversity Sells — But Hollywood Remains Overwhelmingly White, Male at NPR

Feminism’s oppression obsession undermines women by Shikha Dalmia at The Week

The Latest: Black Women by Brianna Cox at For Harriet

Patricia Arquette’s Feminism: Only for White Women by Amanda Marcotte at Slate

Carnival of Souls: A Coming of Age Story for Queer Women? by Casey Quinlan at The Toast

Yes on Knope by Rachel Fields at Bitch Media

Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock Taught Us Acceptance Is Highly Logical by Eric Deggans at NPR

Leonard Nimoy’s Advice To A Biracial Girl In 1968 by Gene Demby at NPR

Black History & Women in Horror Month: Get To Know Marsha A. Hunt by Ashlee Blackwell at Graveyard Shift Sisters

Interview: The Activist Survivors of “The Hunting Ground” by Michele Kort at Ms. blog

What Happened When a Handsome, White Actor Shed a Tear Over ‘Glory’ by Kirsten West Savali at The Root

Pussy Riot’s “Don’t Cry Genocide” Featuring Le Tigre Members Appears on “House of Cards” by Evan Minsker at Pitchfork

A Toxic Stew: Risks To Women Of Public Feminism by Barbara King at NPR

 

 

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

Moments of Sincerity in Otherwise Endless Oscars

What stood out were what seemed like genuine heartfelt moments. John Legend and Common delivered a spirited performance of “Glory” from snubbed director Ava DuVernay’s ‘Selma,’ and an equally impassioned acceptance speech when they won, notable for its intersectionality. They brought up Hong Kong’s fight for democracy, Charlie Hebdo, and America’s shameful prison-industrial complex. “‘Selma’ is now” is a message many need to hear, including their liberal Hollywood audience.

oscar-nominations-2015


This is a guest post by Josh Ralske.


Here’s the sad, secret truth of every Oscars telecast: There are no winners. Ever. Especially not the audience.

This year’s show — at least, the prefabricated part of the show — peaked early. Neil Patrick Harris does a fairly charming opening musical number with the supremely talented Anna Kendrick, celebrating the movies (of all things), and gets hilariously interrupted by Jack Black (and seriously, thank goodness for Jack Black and his endless comic energy, his wholehearted commitment to whatever bit he’s doing — please let him host one year) who sings a funny, pointed rant calling out Hollywood these days as all about superhero movies and sequels and what the Chinese market will buy. Undeniable truths, and naturally he gets thrown off the stage. In any case, that is no longer the Hollywood that the Oscars celebrate. The blockbusters, for the most part, went home with nothing. Even the highly touted American Sniper, seen by many as a potential upset winner for Best Actor and Best Picture, only got one tech award. Which is a good thing, by my measure. The movie is an odious celebration of a man — if we judge him by his own words — completely unworthy of such.

Host Neil Patrick Harris
Host Neil Patrick Harris

 

In any case, the awards mostly celebrated smaller, more idiosyncratic independent films. Which is a good thing, generally, even if the near sweep for Birdman smacked of some intense navel gazing. As JB alluded to, Hollywood is currently fixated on blockbusters, and mid-ranged “cinema of quality”-type movies like The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything need the buzz of awards season to generate moviegoer interest and turn a profit. I didn’t love either of those films, but I think they both have their virtues, whether it’s Imitation‘s acknowledging Alan Turing’s persecution and highlighting the important role women like Joan Clarke played in WWII code-breaking, or Theory‘s sporadic directorial flourishes, which make one wish James Marsh had taken a less literal approach to the material. And of course, both films feature excellent performances, though Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar-winning perfect mimicry of Stephen Hawking has less dramatic impact than any other performance in the category.

It was an upset only because the pundits were wrong, seeing it as a battle between Michael Keaton and Bradley Cooper, when we all know that as far as the Oscars are concerned, the able-bodied actor playing a differently abled person, particularly a real person, always — ALWAYS — wins. That theory also held up with Julianne Moore beating out former Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, who gave the best performance of her career in the brilliant Two Days, One Night, because clearly by the Academy’s high standards, early onset Alzheimer’s is a “real” disability, while depression is not, and the quality of the movie that surrounds the performance is secondary. As someone who has suffered a loss to Alzheimer’s in his own family, and loved Sarah Polley’s Away From Her (for which Julie Christie was nominated for an Oscar, and lost to Cotillard), that melodramatic clip they showed on the telecast of Still Alice is all I need to see of it.

Winner Julianne Moore in Still Alice
Winner Julianne Moore in Still Alice

 

Despite a couple of minor surprises, the show was mostly even duller than usual. Actors, including some great actors, blandly read their introductions from the teleprompters. The one exception, Terrence Howard, was apparently the victim of a technical malfunction. Either that, or he was simply overcome with emotion introducing a clip from Whiplash, but frankly we hope it was the former. NPH’s jokes were mostly bad puns, but he also managed to insult former winner Octavia Spencer, embarrass the snubbed David Oyelowo, and worst of all, smear Edward Snowden with a stupid quip following Citizenfour‘s well-deserved win for Best Documentary Feature. This was especially galling as brilliant documentarian Laura Poitras was one of the few women nominated for anything in a non-gendered category. NPH’s jokey allusions to the unbearable whiteness of the proceedings did little to alleviate our feelings of sadness and disgust over said. Then there was his 11th hour (or at least it felt that way) reading of a long list of weak jokes about the telecast, which he’d spent all night setting up. Seriously, a long-ass way to go for that dumb list, and by that point most of us still watching just wanted to go the fuck to sleep.

Similarly, Lady Gaga’s straightforward rendering of a melody from The Sound of Music was nicely performed, but poorly timed. If the producers need to include such extraneous musical numbers, they really need to frontload them. Once the broadcast hits the three hour mark, no one wants to see anything but awards.

John Travolta being creepy
John Travolta being creepy

 

Then there was Best Picture presenter Sean Penn’s dumb joke asking who gave Birdman mastermind Alejandro González Iñárritu, who also won for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director, his green card. Iñárritu claims he found Penn’s joke hilarious, but seriously folks, who wants what is possibly the biggest moment of his career upstaged by such shenanigans? Penn also should have realized that there were many in the millions of viewers who would take his insult at face value. That’s the kind of joke you only make in private. And only if you’re an asshole.

There were other highlights — mostly provided by awardees who shared their personal stories and points-of-view — and other lowlights, mostly provided by John Travolta. Seriously, this was supposed to be Travolta’s chance to redeem himself after last year’s embarrassing “Adele Nazeem” gaffe. Instead, his awkwardly entitled touchy-feely behavior with Scarlett Johansson on the red carpet, and onstage with Idina Menzel, while jokingly apologizing to her for his slip, just highlighted what a bizarre public figure he’s become. Scientology doesn’t seem to be helping him much these days.

Common and John Legend performing Oscar-winning "Glory"
Common and John Legend performing Oscar-winning “Glory”

 

Beyond that, what stood out seemed like genuine heartfelt moments. John Legend and Common delivered a spirited performance of “Glory” from snubbed director Ava DuVernay’s Selma, and an equally impassioned acceptance speech, notable for its intersectionality, when they won. They brought up Hong Kong’s fight for democracy, Charlie Hebdo, and America’s shameful prison-industrial complex. “Selma is now” is a message many need to hear, obviously including their white liberal Hollywood audience.

Megan Kearns makes some excellent observations about that, about Imitation Game screenwriter Graham Moore’s affecting acceptance speech, and about Oscar winner Patricia Arquette’s controversial remarks backstage. Arquette made a public stand on an undeniably important issue, and seemingly spoke off the cuff, so while I empathize with those who were offended, I’m inclined to be more forgiving of the tone deafness of her remarks. Beyond that, those moments of what appeared to be genuine sincerity helped get me through the slog of that endless telecast.

Winner Patricia Arquette
Winner Patricia Arquette

 


Josh Ralske is a freelance film writer based in New York. He has written for MovieMaker Magazine and All Movie Guide.

 

Feminist Highlights and Fails at the 2015 Oscars

This year’s Oscars lacked racial diversity with all 20 acting nominees being white. The overwhelming whiteness of the Oscars, which hasn’t been this egregious in nominating people of color since 1998, spurred a Twitter boycott and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite created by April Reign. In addition to racial diversity, once again the Oscars lacked gender diversity. No women were nominated for director, screenplay (adapted or original), original score or cinematography. The snub of Ava DuVernay especially stung.

J.K. SIMMONS, PATRICIA ARQUETTE, JULIANNE MOORE, EDDIE REDMAYNE

I usually eagerly anticipate the Oscars. As a huge cinephile, I love seeing films, actors, and filmmakers celebrated. But this year, I dreaded them.

This year’s Oscars lacked racial diversity with all 20 acting nominees being white. The overwhelming whiteness of the Oscars, which hasn’t been this egregious in nominating people of color since 1998, spurred a Twitter boycott and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite created by April Reign. In addition to racial diversity, once again the Oscars lacked gender diversity. No women were nominated for director, screenplay (adapted or original), original score or cinematography. The snub of Ava DuVernay especially stung.

The Oscars may be the most visible celebration of filmmaking in the U.S. and possibly the world. This is why they matter. Whether we agree or not, they signify what films are collectively deemed important in our society.

The Oscars often overlook female filmmakers — only four women (no women of color) have ever been nominated for Best Director, only one has won (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker) — and women-centric films. It was disappointing to see that all eight of the Best Picture nominees were written and directed by men, except for Selma, which was directed and co-written by Ava DuVernay, a woman of color. Each of the films revolves around men as the protagonists. However, Selma is a notable exception for spotlighting not only Martin Luther King Jr. but the vigilance and dedication of Black women and Black men in the fight for equality.

Lack of diversity amongst the nominations disappointed, and racism and sexism often tainted the evening. Yet powerful moments emerged during the awards ceremony.

PATRICIA ARQUETTE

 

Labeled as “the most feminist moment” of the night by many writers and those on Twitter, Patricia Arquette advocated for equal pay and women’s rights during her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood:

“To every woman who give birth to a taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s rights. It’s our time to have wage equality, once and for all. And equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

Yes, yes, a thousand times YES. Patricia Arquette’s speech was a powerful feminist declaration condemning the gender pay gap and the need for wage equality. Women earn 78 percent less than men for the same job. But women of color earn far less. Black women earn 64 percent less, Indigenous women earn 59 percent less and Latina women earn 54 percent less than white men. Hearing the words “wage equality” and “women’s rights” uttered on a national broadcast delights me. Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez excitedly cheering in the audience was the icing on the cake.

Arquette elaborated backstage, mentioning the ageism comingled with sexism that women actors face: “The truth of it is the older an actress gets, the less money she makes.” She is absolutely right. Male actors earn more than women. After the age of 34, women actors earn far less than their male colleagues. But unfortunately, here’s where Arquette’s speech unravels:

“It’s time for all the women in America and all the men who love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve fought for, to fight for us now.”

Sigh. Why couldn’t she have just stopped? My initial excitement faded to disappointment, irritation, and anger.

Her statement implies that LGBT people and people of color have achieved equality. They haven’t. LGBT justice and racial justice still have far to go. It blatantly ignores coalition building that has happened across movements. Arquette excludes women of color and queer women with her statement. Women have multiple, intersecting identities. To ignore that fact erases many women’s existence. When feminists talk about women’s rights, we should not be claiming, either overtly or covertly, “women” equals straight, white, cis women. We white women need to do a much better job to make feminism an intersectional, inclusive movement.

Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne won Best Actress and Best Actor for playing people with disabilities. Each actor mention ALS and Alzheimer’s in their acceptance speeches. Moore said: “I’m thrilled we were able to shine a light on this disease. … “Movies make us feel seen and not alone.” However, The Theory of Everything has been accused of being guilty of “inspiration porn” and using a person with a disability as “Oscar bait.”

Julianne Moore was absolutely outstanding in Still Alice. A chameleon, she melted into the complex, nuanced role. It was also great to see a woman win for a film revolving around a female protagonist. Considering the ageism of Hollywood and the Oscars, I appreciated seeing a woman over the age of 50 win. We need more roles for women in general but particularly women of color, queer women, older women, and women with disabilities.

JULIANNE MOORE

 

Suicide was discussed in two acceptance speeches. Dana Perry, the co-director of Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 which won for Best Documentary Short, shared the tragedy about her son who committed suicide:“We should talk about suicide out loud.”  Best Screenplay winner Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) revealed his own suicide attempt:

“When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird, and I felt different, and I felt like I did not belong. … So I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels she’s weird, or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do. Stay weird, stay different.”

Not only did these two heartbreaking speeches illuminate suicide, but they ultimately gave a positive message, that for people suffering, you are not alone.

Selma may not have been honored with all the awards it deserved. But a tribute to the film and to racial justice was depicted in Common and John Legend’s powerful performance of “Glory” from Selma. Accompanying the uplifting yet searing lyrics, they visually recreated the march in Selma onstage. In their passionate acceptance speech for Best Song, Common spoke about the historic bridge in Selma where the civil rights march took place.

“This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation. But now it’s a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, social status. … This bridge was built on hope, welded with compassion, and elevated by love for all human beings.” 

John Legend highlighted institutional racism, incarceration of Black men and the prison industrial complex.

 Nina Simone said it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live. … Selma is now because the struggle for justice is right now. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more Black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850.”

Selma may be a biopic of an iconic civil rights leader. Yet as legend says, it remains extremely relevant, a reflection of the racism and white supremacy happening currently with the harrowing murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the activism in Ferguson and with #BlackLivesMatter. It was crucial to hear Legend discuss the pernicious racism of our criminal justice system. Sadly, the lack of applause for his statements by an audience often deemed liberal was extremely disconcerting.

COMMON, JOHN LEGEND

 

But perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised at the audience’s reaction, especially as many in Hollywood look the other way when it comes to racism and abuse of women. I cannot fully express my disgust at seeing Sean Penn, an abuser of women, as a presenter onstage. He made a racist joke when announcing Birdman, directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, as the Best Picture winner: “Who gave this son of a bitch his green card?” How lovely to see racism and xenophobia at the end of the Oscars. Sigh. Unfortunately the racism didn’t stop there.

Within the first few minutes of the show, Neil Patrick Harris said, “Tonight we celebrate tonight’s best and whitest, oh I mean brightest.” Here’s the thing: I love when a celebrity shines a light on inequality or injustice. But the “joke” felt more like a way to acknowledge the Academy’s glaring racism rather than actually calling them out and holding them accountable. It lets Hollywood off the hook for not taking measures to increase diversity. Harris also tokenized accents, did a “joke” where Black actor David Oyelowo read a denouncement of the Annie remake starring Quvenzhané Wallis and had Octavia Spencer “watch” his ballot predictions box as if she was his servant.

Thankfully, Iñárritu took the opportunity in his acceptance speech to counter Penn’s racism advocating for immigrant justice. He dedicated his Oscar for Best Picture to his “fellow Mexicans” and Mexican immigrants. He is the second Latino to win Best Director and the first Latino to win as producer for Best Picture. Iñárritu spoke of the need to build a new government in Mexico and for the need for rights for immigrants:

…I just pray they can be treated with the same dignity and respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.”

What this disjointed awards show accentuated to me is the need for an intersectional lens in everything we do: our daily lives, activism, making media and consuming media. We can’t truly claim a milestone a victory if it only benefits wealthy, white, straight, cis, able-bodied women. We can’t call truly call ourselves feminists if we ignore the plight of those more marginalized or oppressed than ourselves.

Equal pay for women (along with highlighting the need for intersectional feminism), racial justice, mass incarceration, suicide, rights for people with disabilities and immigrant rights – all of these took center stage. Now if only the Academy had been so radical and the Oscar nominees had reflected such diversity.


Megan Kearns is Bitch Flicks’ Social Media Director and a Staff Writer, a freelance writer and a feminist vegan blogger. She tweets at @OpinionessWorld.

Am I The Only Person Incredibly Bored with This Awards Season?

Only one of the Best Actress nominations is from one of the Best Picture nominees, whereas four of the five Best Actor nominations are for Best Picture-nominated films. As I wrote in 2013, this trend suggests that movies with significant roles for women aren’t considered as great or important by the Academy. This year, it is even worse: four of the five Best Actresses were in movies not nominated outside of the acting categories.

White hands holding Oscar statuettes.
White hands holding Oscar statuettes.

 

Nominations for the 87th Academy Awards came out today, and I should have been on the edge of my seat. I normally completely buy into all the Oscars hype. But this awards season just hasn’t been doing it for me, and now that the Oscar noms are out the stage is set for the Boringest Academy Awards In History (or at least since that year Lord of the Rings won everything).

Honestly, the most exciting nomination to me is “Everything is Awesome” getting a nod for Best Original Song. But everything is not awesome on this nominees list:

  • Eight out of the nine Best Picture nominees are primarily about white dudes. Two of them are historical dramas about real life white dude geniuses.
  • Selma, the only Best Picture nominee about people of color, was shut out in all the other major categories (its director Ava DuVernay would have been the first Black woman nominated in the category).
Snubbed 'Selma' director Ava DuVernay
Snubbed Selma director Ava DuVernay

 

  • All of the acting nominees are white.
Nominees include Whitest Man Alive Benedict Cumberbatch
Nominees include Whitest Man Alive Benedict Cumberbatch

 

  • There are no women nominated for best director or in either screenplay category.
  • Only one of the Best Actress nominations is from one of the Best Picture nominees, whereas four of the five Best Actor nominations are for Best Picture-nominated films. As I wrote in 2013, this trend suggests that movies with significant roles for women aren’t considered as great or important by the Academy. This year, it is even worse: four of the five Best Actresses were in movies not nominated outside of the acting categories.
'Still Alice' shut out aside from Julianne Moore's nomination for Best Actress
Still Alice shut out aside from Julianne Moore’s nomination for Best Actress

 

  • Note that the one Best Actress nominee from a Best Picture nominee is Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything, as the love interest to White Dude Genius #2.

 

And aside from my disappointment at the total lack of representation in the slate of nominees, I’m also just BORED by these movies. The Grand Budapest Hotel tied with Birdman for total number of nominations. The Grand Budapest Hotel was released all the way back in February, before last year’s Oscars even aired, and I had no idea it was even in contention. And I still have no idea why. I fell asleep trying to watch that movie no less than three times. I thought Boyhood was mediocre (although I’m glad Patricia Arquette was nominated). Birdman was great, but I’d rather be rooting for it as an offbeat dark horse instead of a front runner in an incredibly weak field.

The Grand Budapest Ambien
The Grand Budapest Ambien

 

The past few years I’ve mounted my own attempts at what Sarah D. Bunting calls the “Oscars Death Race” by trying to see every nominated film. I’ve never even come close to succeeding (it is hard to do in any circumstance, but basically impossible in South Africa), but through the effort I’ve seen a lot of great movies I would have otherwise missed. (I also subjected myself to The Wolf of Wall Street, but it has still been a net positive.)

I’m not sure I’m going to even bother this year. I mean, maybe one or both of the White Dude Genius Period Piece movies will actually turn out to be lovely. Maybe American Sniper will be this year’s Captain Phillips, a “dad movie” that is actually an incredibly well-crafted piece of cinema. Maybe Whiplash, which I honestly had not even heard of before today, will be my favorite movie of the year.

For all I know, 'Whiplash' could be the greatest film of all time.
For all I know, Whiplash could be the greatest film of all time.

 

But I’m not optimistic. My love of Awards Season pomp and circumstance is waning in the face of my growing cynicism about Hollywood. Do I really want to throw more money at movies about white dudes just because the white dudes in the Academy voted for them? Maybe I should save my Oscars Death Race bib for next year.

How do you feel about the Oscar nominations? What would you have rather seen get recognition this year?