Sisterhood Theme Week – Page 2

‘Our Little Sister’: Making Enough Room for the Half-Sister

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘Our Little Sister’ is a mature and subtle exploration of the place of the half-sister within family life; how she fits in and how she transforms what we think the family means. … The camera lingers on Suzu’s face in a moment of indecision: will she go on as before, having no feelings for what are essentially strangers anyway, or will she take a leap of faith that will mean her identity will be forever tangled with theirs?

This guest post written by Katherine Parker-Hay appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.

Ideas of the family seem to come interwoven with requirements of unconditional love. Whether we really like our siblings, whether we would have picked them out of a crowd, is beyond the point. The task is to love them as unthinkingly and uncritically as we can manage. But, with such black and white ideologies attached to what family means, the half-sister is surely always on precarious ground; her role seems like an oxymoron by nature. After all, when we think of sisters we tend to think less in halves and more in terms of too much: too much frustration, too much jealousy, too much love. From my experience at least, sisterhood is not something we do in half-measures. So when the half-sister encroaches on the space of the traditional family unit, what do we do with her? How do we make room for her? How does she transform us, if we let her?

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister is a mature and subtle exploration of the place of the half-sister within family life; how she fits in and how she transforms what we think the family means. The story follows three adult sisters: Sachi (Haruka Ayase), who works in a hospital and is struggling because of an affair with a married man; light-hearted Chika (Kaho), who works in a sports shop; and Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa), who works in a bank and has an insatiable appetite for beer and dating. The three live comfortably together in a house left to them by their grandmother. Though not openly discussed, it is apparent that their parents had a difficult breakup, with their father having an affair and their mother disappearing. The siblings now live harmoniously together; however, this balance is disrupted when they are called to their father’s funeral, where they meet their long-estranged half-sister.

On meeting agnate-sibling Suzu (Suzu Hirose), the close-knit trio are forced to question whether a stranger could ever approximate the bond formed through having grown up together. Could this officious girl of a different generation meaningfully be a sister to them? With her nearing proximity, the girls are forced to consider the nature of relationships that seemed entirely natural and obvious. With so few shared points of reference, it would be easy for the sisters to turn away. However, something stops them. Saying a stilted goodbye at the station, the sisters on one side of the glass and the half-sister on the other, Sachi blurts out, “Come and live with us.” The camera lingers on Suzu’s face in a moment of indecision: will she go on as before, having no feelings for what are essentially strangers anyway, or will she take a leap of faith that will mean her identity will be forever tangled with theirs? As the doors close, she calls out, “I will.” Watching this as a child of a broken home left me near to tears. Suzu’s situation, as she considers whether to take the chance, seemed to encapsulate to me the position that a breakup can so often leave a child in: suddenly having to choose over what their family will look like and where its emotional and psychic boundaries will fall. Vulnerable and confused, we witness Suzu in the moment where she has to decide on what she can find enough room for within herself.

The film ambles subtly, Suzu having thrown in her lot with Sachi, Chika, and Yoshi, as it documents the small acts of the sisters making one another feel at home. This is not a simple task when all share such uneasy structural relationships with one another. Suzu starts off feeling awkward, inauthentic – a guest at the house belonging to the “real sisters.” To a friend, she confesses the precarious place that her family history has left her in: her “existence is the reason for other people’s pain.” However, as we watch the three girls in everyday activities like cooking, bathing, and lounging on the floor, we come to see that so much of what matters about being a sister is not the structural relation, the label imposed on the relationship from the outside, but the daily routines. It is the running to the bus together, the annual traditions like making plum wine.

As Suzu gradually becomes more comfortable, they even come to realize that there might be something very special about bringing a half-sister fully into their lives. They have chosen the relationship, chosen each other in the way that one might choose a partner or a best friend. Though not quite that. It is a choice far more willful, because they choose her against the weight of family history and against all the reasons that could have made it so easy to turn away.

Of course, the adult sisters find themselves in a situation that few children of divorced parents could dream of: on fleeing, the mother leaves the family home solely in their hands, to do as they wish. This situation could not be more different than when parents, siblings, half-siblings, and step-siblings, wounds still raw, are all brought together to cohabit under one roof. In such volatile living situations, the bloodlines seem almost fluorescent and, with just the slightest friction, can so quickly demarcate who belongs to whom. In contrast, Our Little Sister hands the protagonists a blank slate in the form of this expansive house that is all their own. They have the chance to establish relationships at a remove from the identity of their mothers and fathers. The empty house, with its excess of uninhabited rooms, becomes symbolic of a new kinship model. It is an elastic space, where they can encounter each other beyond the psychic confines of the Oedipal.

For the sisters, the house becomes a means of shutting out the wider world that would delegitimize their budding yet fragile relationship. The value of the neutral, insulating space of the house is made clear with a surprise visit from the three girl’s mother. During the visit, she casually relates that she is selling the house. She had been unhappy there and does not stop to imagine that her girls could relate any differently to the space. This is a failure of imagination – a failure to allow the children of divorce to move beyond the pain that their parent’s have left them as an inheritance. Similarly, their aunt warns the girls that they should be on their guard against the half-sister, after all, she reminds them, Suzu is “the reason for the breakdown of the parents.” For the aunt, the emphasis falls almost entirely on the half in half-sister, where it is synonymous with tainted and impure. Sachi has to remind her aunt that the affair had been well underway before Suzu was even born. Sachi refuses to reject her half-sister based on a sense of loyalty to her parent’s past, and so refuses the idea that she and her sisters must spend their lives forever reproducing the narrative of their parents’ pain.

Our Little Sister is a gentle probing of how much psychic room we have to create kinships that are more flexible and generous. This is a question often forced upon children of divorced families but, tragically, tends to come at a time when they are too young and too vulnerable for generosity. On the other hand, as adults these sisters have the distance and emotional availability to make space for their half-sister. The idea of this, making enough room for the half-sister, is beautifully illustrated in one of the film’s final scenes. The girls look at their heights at different ages, penciled onto a door frame. This remains an iconic image of family, where each penciled mark seems to boast so much: “my identity is here,” “I belong here, in the family home,” “I was here all along.” How can the half-sister find a place for herself when face-to-face with this? Here is an archive of proof that she came too late and has missed out on too much. Suzu gazes at this height-chart with deference, a late observer of the years already past. But then her sister nudges her and, in a moment that seems to willfully bend time, places a pencil line that definitely marks Suzu’s presence on the frame, in tandem with the others.

Katherine Parker-Hay has a BA in English from Goldsmiths University of London and an MA in Women’s Studies from University of Oxford. She writes on queer theory, women’s cultural output, temporality, and comic serials.

The Scary Truth About Sisters in Horror Films

So what makes sisters such fascinating subject matter for horror films? What makes them both scary and powerful, yet the most vulnerable, both to outside forces as well as to each other when they are threatened? … Sisters can behave as a single entity and fight for the same things, but there are two bodies — two physical forces — to reckon with.

This guest post written by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood.

Female siblings have been a go-to in horror films since horror films themselves. Sisters have been used as minor characters to fill in a cast: Daisy and Violet, the conjoined twins, and Elvira and Jenny Lee, the “Pinhead” twins, in 1932’s Freaks; the Soska sisters playing twin body-modification gurus in their own film American Mary; as specters that haunt a protagonist (the murdered twins in The Shining); as a smaller pair within a larger community of women (Danielle and Laurie in Trick ‘r Treat); and as protagonists (the Crane sisters in Psycho, Su-mi and Su-yeon in A Tale of Two Sisters, Jay and Kelly Height in It Follows).

Sisters are bound by unconditional forces: love, blood, family. Yet unlike the mother-child story in horror movies (Carrie, The Exorcist, The Babadook), the story of sisters in horror has the potential to be more forceful, more frightening. Sisters can behave as a single entity and fight for the same things, but there are two bodies — two physical forces — to reckon with. Sisters share secrets that no one else is privy to, and those secrets bind them together and make them mysterious and sometimes deadly. And turning on your sister is the ultimate betrayal, scarier and more unexpected than an attack from an outsider, which is why it makes for such effective conflict in film, especially in horror.

Sisters represent a single strong force that is duplicated in another person. Sisters work together, act together, and yet even when forces are driving them apart, they are powerful. In fact, sisters frequently become even more powerful when they are reacting to those forces that are driving them apart: they become more cunning, braver, smarter, stronger, and usually more violent and dangerous. They become even more of the “other” than they are already, and this force can be either terrifying or heroic — and sometimes both.

This power dynamic is exhibited beautifully and thoroughly in the Canadian horror film Ginger Snaps, written by Karen Walton and directed by John Fawcett. The film’s sisters, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) begin the story as a powerful duo. As children, they made a blood oath because just being sisters wasn’t enough. In school as teenagers, they stick together, even as outcasts, collaborating on a morbid “Life in Bailey Downs” photo project, standing together as though they are a single brooding unit, protecting each other on the field hockey pitch, and wearing a similar uniform of thick, dark, oversized clothing. But when the girls are driven apart — by their biological differences, both natural (Ginger starts menstruating) and unnatural (Ginger becomes a werewolf) — the changes between them that follow only seem to increase each girl’s power.

While Ginger becomes increasingly powerful physically and sexually, taking on the role of male aggressor with Jason, and tackling and beating Trina when she attacks Brigitte in a game of field hockey, Brigitte becomes increasingly powerful physically and emotionally. She is required to problem solve time and time again, and the stakes get higher and higher. Brigitte pierces her sister’s belly button with a silver ring hoping it will curb Ginger’s werewolf traits; Brigitte reacts quickly to Trina’s accidental death in their household kitchen to make sure their parents don’t suspect what has happened (and then she chips away at Trina with a screwdriver, dislodging the girl’s stiff, dead fingers from her hand). And Brigitte problem solves, delegates, and acts with maturity to the ever-increasing drama and violence around her. When the sisters have to dig a grave to bury Trina, Brigitte makes Ginger do the physical labor while she watches. She takes charge to figure out a way to help Ginger by hiding it from their parents, locking her sister in the basement bathroom, and enlisting drug-dealer Sam’s help to cook up a cure. But Brigitte must also decide if trying the cure on Ginger is worth the possibility of killing her, of losing her sister for good. And then, ultimately, Brigitte must make the decision to live and to fight — to the death — the werewolf her sister has become.

And perhaps another relative would have taken this same trajectory to help a family member or loved one. But would they have gone far enough? We see that the girls’ mother, Pamela Fitzgerald (Mimi Rogers), is willing to make major sacrifices to protect her daughters: when she finds out the girls are responsible for Trina’s death, she plans to burn the house down and take them away to “start fresh.” She is protective and proactive rather than scared or angry; but is this mother-daughter relationship stronger than the sisters’ bond? No. It is Brigitte who soothes her mother and then gives her instructions (which Pamela doesn’t follow). It is Brigitte who reenacts the sisters’ blood oath by slicing her palm and pressing it against Ginger’s, knowing that this action likely infects her with the same virus her sister suffers from. It is Brigitte who is willing to try to become a part of Ginger’s “pack” and drinks Sam’s blood. Even though Brigitte ultimately can’t follow that through, she is willing to try, and this bond — this willingness to stand together — is what makes these sisters such a powerful force.

But what happens when one sister is not willing to sacrifice for another? As Brian De Palma shows us with his 1973 film Sisters, the results can be just as powerful and just as deadly.

In Sisters, Margot Kidder plays Danielle, a French-Canadian actress and model living on Staten Island. But Danielle has a sister — a twin sister, Dominique — who we believe is disturbed and violent, and responsible for the death of Danielle’s love interest, Phillip, at the start of the film. But as the story develops we learn that Dominique, who was not just Danielle’s twin sister, but her conjoined twin sister, died a year earlier during an operation to separate them. It is, in fact, Danielle who is the murderer; it is she who has been having violent episodes and “becoming” her dead sister to assuage the guilt at having been indirectly responsible for Dominique’s death. Danielle wasn’t willing to sacrifice her romantic relationship for her conjoined twin, and she asked Emile (her doctor and lover) to “make [Dominique] go away” so that she and Emile could make love. This desire started a deadly chain-reaction, resulting in Danielle getting pregnant, Dominique reacting violently, and stabbing her sister in the stomach to end the pregnancy, and the doctors needing to separate the twins in order to save Danielle’s life, knowing that the surgery would kill Dominique.

The removal of Dominique from Danielle — removing her from Danielle’s physical body, and removing her from Danielle’s life — had such a powerful impact on Danielle that it split her mind in two. The Dominique side of her lashes out at anyone trying to love Danielle; the Danielle side regrets what she has done and calls out for her sister to “come back,” yet cannot admit that she has hurt anyone (as she stands calmly over the body of the man she has just murdered). Danielle is the villain, the monster of the film, but she has become so because her sister was taken from her.

The sacrifice of a sister is approached differently in the 2013 Andrés Muschietti film Mama. Here the sisters are Victoria and Lilly Desange, who are orphaned as very small children after their father murders their mother and then is killed himself by a mysterious creature that the girls come to call “Mama.”

The creature Mama has been living with the sisters — raising them in a way that ensures their survival but turns them near-feral — in a cabin in the woods until they are found and sent to stay with their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Mama follows the girls and continues to play with them and protect them while getting more and more jealous of their uncle’s girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain). The older sister, Victoria (Megan Charpentier), recognizes Mama’s jealousy and knows just how volatile she is; so she tries to protect Annabel whenever she can, warning her to stay away from the places Mama is likely to be.

As Victoria and Annabel’s relationship strengthens, Victoria and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) drift apart. Victoria’s brow is constantly furrowed when she sees her sister acting contrary to their surroundings or continuing to cling to Mama. And Victoria literally turns her back on her sister when Lilly tries to get Victoria to leave their bedroom in the middle of the night to play with Mama: Lilly shakes her head in a warning when Victoria will not go, but Victoria, after telling her sister that she loves her, is steadfast in her refusal, and Lilly goes alone.

Ultimately, Mama steals the girls away to the cliff where she died decades before, and Annabel and Lucas must try to save them. Mama tries to take both sisters off the cliff with her, and Lilly goes willingly, feeling that her place is with Mama, the mother and playmate she has known all her life, rather than with the new guardians Annabel and Lucas. At first Victoria is willing to go, to sacrifice what she can see as a happy family life with Annabel and Lucas for her only sister. Victoria is older and wants to protect Lilly, and she feels that this is how she must do that.

But when Annabel grabs onto Victoria’s robe and doesn’t let go, Victoria reconsiders and decides to let Mama and Lilly go without her: “Goodbye, Mama,” she says. “I love you.” Lilly and Victoria, separated by air as Mama and Lilly hover over the cliff, make a mirror-image as they stretch their hands out towards each other. But Lilly accepts that Victoria is staying, clasps her hands over Mama’s, and the two go over the cliff.

Victoria’s action may seen antithetical to the sister relationship, but it is not. Victoria has seen how Lilly has acted with Annabel — closed off, angry, and unhappy — and this is the opposite of how Lilly behaves with Mama. Victoria can see the unhappiness in her sister’s future if she stays, while she knows that Lilly will be happy if she goes with Mama. Victoria’s sacrifice sits in the fact that she is willing to lose her sister and live without her, so that they may both be happy.

It is in these sacrifices where we can find the true power of sisters in horror films. These sacrifices may drive the sisters apart or pull them together; but whichever way sisters in horror are drawn, the fallout is so intense and potentially destructive that it is a natural pairing with the genre — a pairing that will hopefully continue on both sides of the camera.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Puberty and the Creation of a Monster: ‘Ginger Snaps’

Laura Power teaches English composition and creative writing at a two-year college in Illinois. You can read more of her work at Cinefilles and Lake Projects and follow her on Twitter @chicagocommuter.

The Repercussions of Repressing Teenage Girls in ‘The Virgin Suicides’ and ‘Mustang’

Both are critically acclaimed dramas directed by women documenting the coming-of-age of five teenage sisters under close scrutiny for their behavior — especially when it comes to their sexuality. And in both films, the girls’ response to this repression is to resort to desperate measures to regain control, resulting in tragedy that could have been averted if they were given the freedom for which they hungered.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of suicide]

Anyone who has ever been a teenage girl knows that the bridge between girlhood and womanhood is a rough passage, rife with drama. Two films that examine this deeply personal struggle are The Virgin Suicides, released in 1999, and Mustang, released in 2015. Both are critically acclaimed dramas directed by women documenting the coming-of-age of five teenage sisters under close scrutiny for their behavior — especially when it comes to their sexuality. And in both films, the girls’ response to this repression is to resort to desperate measures to regain control, resulting in tragedy that could have been averted if they were given the freedom for which they hungered. Yet while the basic elements may sound the same, The Virgin Suicides and Mustang stand apart thanks to the different styles of the women directors who made them.

Adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides marked the feature directorial debut of Sofia Coppola, whose elegant, elegiac style immediately marked her as a talented filmmaker who didn’t need to hide in her famous father’s shadow. The film chronicles how the brief lives and tragic deaths of the five Lisbon sisters rocked the residents of a 1970s Michigan suburb. All long blonde hair and sun-kissed limbs, these beautiful girls are kept under lock and key by their infamously strict parents, making them even more desirable to the neighborhood boys.

The story is narrated by one of the boys, now grown, as he reflects on the brief time they spent in the Lisbons’ orbit. “Cecilia was the first to go,” he tells us, and indeed, it is the youngest sister’s suicide that sets the story on its path. After sad, sensitive Cecilia (Hanna R. Hall) throws herself out of her bedroom window and onto a spiked fence, a neighbor scoffs, “That girl didn’t want to die. She just wanted out of that house.”

The Lisbons were always a mystery thanks to the tight reins their parents kept them on, but after Cecilia’s death, the four surviving sisters are elevated to mythical status. When Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst) is the only girl in school who doesn’t collapse at the feet of heartthrob Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), he makes it his goal to win her heart. He’s able to convince Mr. Lisbon (James Woods) to let him take Lux to homecoming, with one caveat: he’ll have to enlist boys to take her sisters, too. Like awestruck Cinderellas finally wiping the soot from their eyes, the girls — all clad in angelic, virginal white dresses — spend the night dancing, experimenting with alcohol, and canoodling under the bleachers. Lux and Trip celebrate being crowned homecoming king and queen by sneaking out onto the football field to have sex while the others go home without them. Yet the fiery adolescent hunger Trip had for Lux fades away upon consummation. Once he’s managed to win her over, she is no longer the object of his hazy, golden fantasies; when the mystery fades away, she’s just like every other girl. The spell broken, Trip abandons Lux on the football field to sleep through the night — and her curfew.

This is the moment when life as the Lisbon girls previously knew it ends. The sliver of freedom they were so briefly allowed is wrenched from their grasps as they’re taken out of school and kept cloistered within the house. Lux seizes freedom the only way that is within her power — with her body. She repeatedly sneaks onto the roof of the house to have sex with a variety of men; it seems to be the one thing she can do to feel alive. Eventually, the boys show up in a car to rescue the girls, but the scene they encounter in the Lisbon house is more horror show than heroic tableau. Like Cecilia before them, the remaining Lisbons have taken their own lives. The boys flee, left to spend the rest of their lives wondering what could have been if the sisters had found a different means of escape than the most permanent one of all.

Telling such a female-centric film from the point of view of a group of young men is an odd choice — especially for a woman director. One would expect The Virgin Suicides to explore the inner lives of the Lisbons, but instead, the audience — like the boys — is held at arm’s length. Coppola sticks to the format of the novel and filters the Lisbons’ story through the male gaze; we only see them the way the boys see them, both in reality and in their dreams. Lux is frequently seen in hazy glimpses that wouldn’t be out of place on the cover of a paperback edition of Lolita — a flash of flaxen hair covering a twinkling blue eye, red lips curling into a mischievous a smile, long limbs leaping into the air with carefree abandon while a unicorn frolics nearby. Such an object of pure fantasy is Lux that her image is synonymous with that of a creature that only exists in fairy tales. Notebook doodles of hearts and names in cartoonish bubble letters illustrate the film, adding to the illusion that this is all a teenage dream.

Sixteen years after The Virgin Suicides, Deniz Gamze Ergüven made a big splash with Mustang, the emotional turmoil of the teenage years once again providing the inspiration for a talented woman director’s debut feature. Rather than tell their story from the point of view of an outsider, Mustang is narrated by the youngest sister, Lale (Güneş Şensoy), as she helplessly watches her older sisters fall victim one by one to what adults — particularly men — think a young woman should be. Because of this, Mustang feels more intimate, more immediate, and much more heartbreaking than Coppola’s film.

Mustang begins with the life-changing fallout from a seemingly harmless event: five orphaned sisters having chicken fights with the local boys on the beach. The image of these girls riding on the boys’ shoulders — rubbing their private parts on their necks, as their grandmother puts it — is a source of shame in the tiny, conservative village where they live. The elder girls are even subject to a virginity exam in the aftermath, with the ominous warning, “If there was the slightest doubt, you’d never be able to get married.”

The punishment for “teasing the boys” only escalates as the girls’ aggressively old-fashioned Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan) takes control over their lives; meanwhile, the boys involved are able to move on. The infuriating double standard that girls and boys are often held to is on display time and time again throughout Mustang — after all, none of the male characters are ever subject to the humiliation of a virginity test. The girls’ developing bodies are viewed as dangerous objects of temptation that must be subject to control, but one never suggests that the boys should be able to control themselves.

Like Lux sobbing as she is forced to burn her Kiss records in The Virgin Suicides, the girls of Mustang are forced to give up their computers, phones, and anything else that is deemed a perverting influence. The sisters are forbidden from returning to school; instead, they spend their days learning how to cook and clean while wearing “shapeless, shit-colored dresses” that Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner) would have admired. It is only a matter of time until families come calling to ask for the sisters’ hands in marriage on behalf of their sons. As Lale notes, “The house became a wife factory that we never came out of.”

While it was the actions of the youngest sister that set the story of The Virgin Suicides in motion, in Mustang, the youngest girl starts the story on the sidelines. Lale is too young to be immediately threatened by the prospect of becoming someone’s wife. Her older sisters’ growing sexuality is still a mystery to her, one that she tries to solve by stealing eldest sister Sonay’s (İlayda Akdoğan) bras and kissing pictures of men in magazines. Meanwhile, Sonay is shimmying down the drainpipe every night to meet with her lover, using her body as a means of rebellion in the same way Lux did.

Sonay refuses to marry unless it is to this man of her choice, and shockingly, she gets her way — better she be married off, after all, then not married at all. So, the man meant for Sonay gets passed down to the second sister, Selma (Tuğba Sunguroğlu), with no regard to how she may feel about him. On her wedding night, Selma is rushed to the hospital for yet another invasive examination after she fails to bleed upon having sex for the first time; she’s treated like a defective appliance being returned to the store by a frustrated customer. Her husband has no concern for her emotional well-being, only that of her hymen. Selma’s life as something that belongs to her alone is effectively over.

The middle sister, Ece (Elit İşcan), is next, and her story is the saddest of all the girls in Mustang. Abused by Uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan) and repeatedly denied the right to make her own choices, the only way Ece can prove to herself and others that she is still her own person is to choose to die. Her suicide is horrifying, a tragic act, particularly because it is also a form of liberation — the only one she had at her disposal. Ece rejects a life in a house that has become a prison, where nothing — not even her own body — is her own to do with as she pleases. As in The Virgin Suicides, taking one’s life is a desperate form of defiance, the only way to take control of oneself and one’s personhood. It should never, ever be that way, and yet the most painful thing about Ece’s death is knowing that there are other girls like her, and her sisters, in similar situations around the world.

After Ece’s suicide, second-youngest sister Nur (Doğa Zeynep Doğuşlu) is next in line for both marriage and Uncle Erol’s abuse; she’s also the only one left standing between Lale and this terrible fate. A passive observer of the events unfolding around her for much of the film, Lale grows increasingly active as she edges closer to the end of the wife assembly line. She convinces a friendly trucker to teach her to drive. On the night of Nur’s wedding, the two girls lock everyone out of the house so that they can prepare their escape. That’s right — the house that was for so long a prison is for a very brief moment a refuge, with Uncle Erol attempting to break down the door like a rabid animal. In the end, Nur and Lale make it to Istanbul, the bustling metropolis portrayed a symbol of freedom and modernity.

While The Virgin Suicides often has the aura of a dream thanks to its ethereal cinematography, swoon-worthy score by Air, and fantasy sequences, Mustang feels utterly grounded in the blood, sweat, and tears of reality — and because of that, it’s all the more painful and poignant to watch. A scene in which the sisters sneak out of the house to attend a soccer match was one of the most exhilarating moments I have ever seen on-screen, while Ece’s hauntingly calm exit from the kitchen table to take a gun and end her life nearly wrenched my heart in two. What is most heartbreaking about Mustang is the knowledge that communities like this exist throughout our world today (not to mention the sexism girls face in countries with supposed equality), continually repressing girls and telling that they are worth no more than their wombs. Their world is harsh and cruel, with flashes of beauty — the sparkling fireworks at the soccer match, the bright white sand of the beach shimmering beneath the clear blue sky — that are all too fleeting in the darkness.

Meanwhile, The Virgin Suicides seems to project glamour onto the lives and deaths of the Lisbons — likely because we are seeing them through the eyes of the boys, who always saw them as glamorous engimas. Unlike the sisters of Mustang, the Lisbon sisters don’t seem entirely real; there is an element of distance that prevents us from getting close enough to peer inside their heads and hearts. We don’t see them the way they seem themselves; we see them the way the boys do, which is less as fully-fledged human beings than as unattainable objects to lust after, like sparkling jewels kept locked away in a rusty casket that was then lost forever at sea. Because of this, one doesn’t feel the sucker punch of their deaths in the same way that one does Ece’s in Mustang. It doesn’t help that from the opening lines of The Virgin Suicides, we know that the story will end with all of the Lisbon sisters dead. This knowledge keeps us from being fully invested in their struggle for life, because we already know they won’t succeed. A story of the past recounted from the present with a languid tone of nostalgia and regret, The Virgin Suicides lacks the urgency of Mustang, which feels entirely of the here and now. Yet while these films might not emotionally connect with the audience in the same way, both still succeed in showing us the tragic consequences of confining teenage girls at a time in their lives when they most need to spread their wings.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Sofia Coppola and the Silent Woman; Director Spotlight: Sofia Coppola

Recommended Reading: An Interview with Deniz Gamze Ergüven on Her Feminist Fairytale ‘Mustang’ by Ren Jender via The Toast

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play and currently reviews television shows as a staff writer for TV Fanatic. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

“A Truth Universally Acknowledged”: The Importance of the Bennet Sisters Now

But more and more it seems you can judge the quality of modern adaptations on how the filmmakers view Lizzie in relation to her sisters. Even though the representation of women has greatly expanded since Austen’s time, a story that revolves mostly around sisterly relationships remains rare, which makes it even more vital. And while it is true that Austen’s romance has a timeless quality that makes it popular, the narrative of sisterly love remains transcendent.

This guest post written by Maddie Webb appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood.

The Bennet sisters are some of the most enduring characters in fiction and Pride and Prejudice remains a beloved story. Can the modern incarnations of Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, Kitty, and Mary explain why people keep falling in love with their story?

Pride and Prejudice, for most people in popular culture, is seen as an early example of the “rom-com” genre. Boy meets girl, boy and girl hate each other, but despite their clashing personalities, they grow, develop and eventually, inevitably, fall in love. But Pride and Prejudice is more than just a first in its genre; it’s also one of the most adapted, readapted, spun off, and reworked pieces of fiction. I think the reason for that isn’t about how hunky Darcy and Wickham are or even the comic stylings of Mrs Bennet; I think it’s because of the Bennet sisters.

Like most of Jane Austen’s work, there is so much more going on under the surface and it’s easy to miss how her plots or characters often subvert societal norms, which is part of the reason her stories endure. In the case of Pride and Prejudice, this subversion comes in the form of the Bennet sisters, who are at once relatable and thoroughly atypical female characters in Regency fiction. Even within the confines of the 19th century, the Bennet sisters, for better and worse, have agency and personality coming out their ears. Though I didn’t watch every single adaptation of Austen’s classic (you’ll have to forgive me but my spare time is not that abundant), the most successful ones choose to make Lizzie’s happiness as dependent on her relationship with her sisters as her relationship with Darcy.

Three modern versions of Pride and Prejudice I did watch recently are Bride and Prejudice, the web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — all of which I can recommend for different reasons, but all ground the heart of the narrative in the Bennet sisters’ bond. My personal favorite retelling of the Elizabeth Bennet story is The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, an Emmy-winning web series that reimagines Lizzie as a grad student who starts a video series while studying mass communication. Although only two of the sisters, Jane and Lydia, make the cut for this adaptation (there is a cousin Mary and a cat replaces Kitty), they are unquestionably more important to Lizzie than her love life, a good thing considering Darcy doesn’t even appear in person until episode 50. The vlogging format of the show gives the story enough room to fully flesh out both Jane and Lydia and shifts large amounts of Lizzie’s character development onto her relationships with her sisters. Lydia even gets her own spin-off series, which in her own words is “totes adorbs.”

I also enjoy Bride and Prejudice, the 2004 Bollywood film, mostly because of some killer musical numbers, but also because of the Bakshi sisters’ camaraderie. Our Elizabeth character, here called Lalita Bakshi, has three sisters, only losing Kitty in the translation (poor Kitty). Having the concept of arranged marriages still in place within the culture makes it a modernization that maintains more of the plot than The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. But again the alterations made to the story are largely to do with the sisters. The frame of the plot is largely the same, but the chemistry, affection, and bickering between the women feels honest and refreshing; it’s given more screen-time than the period adaptations. Bollywood and Regency fiction may not seem like a natural pairing, but keeping the family dynamic central is key to why this version is so charming.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies may be ridiculous but it’s both a period film and an action movie, making it my kind of ridiculous. Even though this is still technically a period piece it has much in common with the other modern spins on the story. The action in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is focused on the power of the sisters as a team and helps develop their characters. The opening fight scene — when the girls slaughter the zombie hoards — is a moment where an otherwise muddled film comes alive, while the training scenes are used to smuggle in some sister bonding time, over their love lives. Considering how easily this could have ended up as the period version of Sucker Punch, the Bennet sisters ensure that the film, while occasionally brainless, is never heartless.

Another key point of change in these versions is how the Wickham/Lydia plot is handled. I can only speak for myself, but in the book, Lydia’s behavior for me is just another annoying inconvenience in the path of Lizzie and Darcy’s happiness. In the original, the issue of Lydia running off isn’t about what will happen when Wickham abandons her, but more that it’ll ruin the family’s standing in society (read: Lizzie and Jane, the characters we actually care about). However, placed in a modern context, the Wickham/Lydia plot reads more like an abuse story. She is still young, naïve, and silly but crucially, not vilified because of it. As a result of this subtle but important distinction, Wickham is elevated from cad to full on monster. Hell, in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, he literally locks Lydia up and is unmasked as the cause of the zombie apocalypse. It’s another element of this version that is a bit ridiculous, but again, no one can accuse Pride and Prejudice and Zombies of being subtle.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries variation on Wickham, while more restrained, is equally as menacing and monstrous. Over the course of the series, a subplot of party girl Lydia becoming isolated from her family slowly unravels. Now career women, Jane and Lizzie are too busy for their little sister, with the latter dismissing her as a “stupid whorey slut” in the second episode. This leads her to be emotionally manipulated by Wickham, which we get to see painfully play out in her own spin-off series. The episode in which Lizzie confronts her and Lydia realizes Wickham’s true nature, is devastating. Not because it messes with Lizzie’s happiness, but because we truly care about Lydia. Creators Hank Green and Bernie Su have spoken at length about the importance of their alterations to Lydia’s story, resulting in a heartbreaking and insightful portrayal of abuse, within a light comedy series.

A similar situation unfolds in Bride and Prejudice, perhaps to a more satisfying conclusion since we get to see both Bakshi girls slap Wickham before walking out hand in hand. It’s only fitting that, in each of these adaptations Lydia is (sometimes literally) saved from Wickham and her crime of being an impressionable and impulsive teenage girl is no longer worth a life sentence. This area of the story has always left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to the otherwise completely serviceable 2005 Joe Wright film adaptation. Despite bringing a modern filmmaking sensibility to the rest of the narrative, Lydia is still just another silly, inconvenient hurdle on Lizzie’s path to happiness, a real wasted opportunity to show how crap it was being a woman in Regency England.

People love Pride and Prejudice for all sorts of reasons: for example, my mother is rather attached to Colin Firth’s Darcy. But more and more it seems you can judge the quality of modern adaptations on how the filmmakers view Lizzie in relation to her sisters. Even though the representation of women has greatly expanded since Austen’s time, a story that revolves mostly around sisterly relationships remains rare, which makes it even more vital. And while it is true that Austen’s romance has a timeless quality that makes it popular, the narrative of sisterly love remains transcendent.

Recommended Reading: Lizzie Bennett Diaries #2 by Hank Green (on the Lydia Bennet story)

Maddie Webb is a student currently studying Biology in London. If she doesn’t end up becoming a mad scientist, her goal is to write about science and the ladies kicking ass in STEM fields. In the meantime, you can find her on Twitter at @maddiefallsover.

Black Sisterhood in TV Sitcoms

While many Black sitcoms revolve around a family, it’s rare that specific interactions between sisters are depicted. While “sisterhood” here often refers to the strong bond between friends, biological sisterhood is sometimes forgotten. Sisters with strong relationships on television display some of the deepest and truest kinds of family love out there.

This guest post written by Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood.

Black sisterhood is an important staple in the lives of many Black women. From birthdays to breakups, it’s vital to have your girls with you in times of happiness and struggle. This relatable dynamic has been prevalent in pop culture for decades. From Living Single to Girlfriends, that deep, unshakable connection and trust between besties has been a common component in countless sitcoms. While many Black sitcoms revolve around a family, it’s rare that specific interactions between sisters are depicted. While “sisterhood” here often refers to the strong bond between friends, biological sisterhood is sometimes forgotten. Sisters with strong relationships on television display some of the deepest and truest kinds of family love out there.

Television shows that focus on a family can easily delve into the intricacies of how that family works; they may be at each other’s throats one episode and playing nice the next. The themes of family are made more complex when the relationship centers around siblings, and even more so between sisters. Between sharing secrets and stealing clothes, there’s just a special bond. Although they remain scarce, the examples of sisterhood in Black television are strong. Whether the sisters are distant or close-knit, the range in the relationships is broad.

In the pilot episode of Sister, Sister, when Tia (Tia Mowry) and Tamera (Tamera Mowry) first meet, both girls are dressed in the exact same clothes by happenstance; there was a sale at the mall and the twins unbeknownst to — and about — the other, grabs the same sweater and hat. When they first get to know each other, asking questions about the other, they discover they’re both in the 9th grade and that they both love The Twilight Zone, particularly the one with the monster on the airplane wing, and compare their situation to the show. Tamera asks if Tia also hates algebra too, but her twin says the opposite; she loves algebra and history.

Already we see the dichotomy of the twins here; although separated for 14 years, they still share distinct similarities, like the same taste in fashion and television series, but their differences are mainly academic, Tia being the “smart” twin while Tamera is the “fun” twin, a common TV trope regarding twins. They both love rollerblading and Beavis and Butthead (and have an affinity for saying the same thing at the same time). Tia has trouble talking to boys, while Tamera can’t seem to stop talking to them. They decide they’re probably not as alike as they first thought, then proceed to cross their legs at the same time and take a bite out of the lemon in their tea. The theme song says it clearly: they look alike, but they’re different.

While the first few seasons mainly focus on how two girls with the same face can be so different and so alike at the same time, the show always includes how much love they have for each other and their willingness to go to bat for the other. The season 1 episode, “The Pimple,” contains the classic twin switcharoo situation; Tia gets a pimple the day she has a date with a boy, so Tamera goes on the date instead, floundering through the entire thing since she and Tia don’t have many common interests. Earlier in the season, the girls make a pact not to go to the school dance if they both don’t have dates. When Tamera gets a date, she offers to make good on the pact since Tia will just be staying home.

If these examples seem juvenile, it’s because they are. Tia and Tamera were 14 years old at the beginning the series and their hijinks and adventures often include things typical of a young high school girl. Regardless of how silly their antics were, they showed each other a special kind of love that carried from their high school dating days to their more grown-up college days. TV shows that feature a family and don’t necessarily focus on sisters don’t often have many moments of strong sisterly bonding. The love is spread throughout the family, not centered around one particular relationship. However, when moments do spotlight the specific sisterly bond, it highlights a few key differences in how sisters interact with each other versus their other relatives.

In The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, sisters Hilary (Karyn Parsons) and Ashley Banks (Tatyana Ali) couldn’t be less alike. They are each other’s antithesis; Hilary is the spoiled, selfish, materialistic, oldest sister while Ashley is the more responsible, slightly rebellious, younger sister. They don’t have very many scenes or plots that revolve around the two of them specifically, but their relationship is still shown to be positive. They’re not the closest of siblings, but they still care deeply for one another and look out for each other.

However, in season 6 episode 7, “Not with My Cousin You Don’t,” Ashley is in need of some womanly advice about her boyfriend Derek and with her mother gone on a trip, she looks to Hilary. These sisters rarely ever have serious moments, but Hilary jokes about her “big sister radar” and the two sit to chat. Ashley tells Hilary she thinks she’s in love. While Hilary is happy for her sister, she tells her that she doesn’t think long-distance relationships always work out. The conversation continues onto Ashley’s hesitations about having sex. She says that she’s scared, and Hilary says that it’s normal, everyone feels that way. Her most important piece of advice to her little sister is that “only you know when you’re ready or not.” Hilary tells Ashley that she’s independent, responsible, and smart, and while she doesn’t delve into the details of sex, she lets her sister know that regardless of her decision, she will always be there for her.

The scene includes several of Hilary’s typical humorous air-headed comments, but is ultimately played seriously; this is clearly a big deal to Ashley and her sister understands and gives sound advice. It’s a rare moment for Hilary, to have a serious scene. Other more serious tones are shown for sadder events: when she drops out of school or she reminisces about her deceased fiance. So it’s important that one of Hilary’s fleeting insightful moments is a tender one where she plays the wise older sister.

Ashley is consistently shown to have a strong bond with Will (Will Smith), so it’s telling that she comes to her sister instead of her cousin in this instance. Will even points this out after he accidentally overhears Ashley discussing it with her friends. It’s significant that even though Will is clearly Ashley’s confidante in the family, she felt more comfortable expressing her concerns about sex to her flighty sister Hillary, even though she doesn’t share that same kind of relationship with her. While they may not be as close, the topic of sex was easier to discuss with her sister and ultimately led to a healthy and positive discussion.

In the finale of the show, Ashley and Hilary are both moving to New York City for school and work respectively and the two decide to live together, and they’re both excited about the prospect. Although they were never shown to be incredibly close, it’s definitely an extension of the kind of relationship they’ve always had, and could be an insight into the possibility of them growing closer as they embark on this new stage in life together.

The Cosby Show is often heralded as one of the best Black sitcoms ever. (Although it now has a “tainted legacy”.) With four sisters in the Cosby household, there were many different representations of sisterhood. Since Sondra, Denise, Vanessa, and Rudy varied so much in age, it also presented a distinctive look into how sisters of different ages act with each other.

The personalities of the girls also tied into how they reacted to each other. Sondra (Sabrina Le Beauf), the eldest and most distinguished of the Cosby children; Denise (Lisa Bonet), the free-spirited and carefree teenager; Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe), the nosy and oft rebellious sister; and Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam), the precocious and adorable youngest sibling. From shoving shoulders over stolen sweaters to completely wrecking the kitchen ceiling, their fights varied as much as they did. The girls were all very different from each other and while their personalities sometimes clashed, at the end of the day, the Cosby siblings were all on the same side.

Despite their constant bickering and clear evidence that they were nothing alike, Denise and Vanessa always had each other’s back. In fact, they were even likened to child versions of Cosby matriarch Clair (Phylicia Rashad) and her younger sister. In the episode “Clair’s Sister,” Sara comes to visit, announcing to Clair that she’s engaged. Denise and Vanessa talk about how they want their weddings to be. Vanessa wants hers to be old-fashioned and incredibly fancy, dressed in lace from head to toe with 12 bridesmaids carrying her 20-foot-long train. Denise, ever the feminist, believes traditional weddings are a bit sexist, what with the father “giving” the bride away and the bride’s family having to pay. In stark opposition to Vanessa’s exuberant dream wedding, she says hers will be a small, intimate gathering in the living room where she’ll wear a regular dress and they’ll invite only their closest family and friends and serve sandwiches after the ceremony. Denise and Vanessa tease each other about their dreams a bit before Denise drives Vanessa to a friend’s house. Sara remarks how similar the girls are to her and Clair, and Clair says she remembers it well, not wanting to cart her little sister around town because she was too cool.

Both elder sisters are seen as the cooler ones with more laid-back ideas of the world while the younger sisters are more outgoing and energetic, excited about extravagant things like fancy weddings. It’s a cute comparison that alludes to that idea of sisters with completely divergent personalities being close and supportive of one another despite their differences.

Black sisters aren’t exactly a huge demographic in television. But the shows and episodes that explore that kind of sisterly bond are powerful and exhibits Black sisterhood in myriad ways. These relationships are hugely positive displays of the love within a family. They can be silly or serious, complicated or simple, and a million other things to describe the vast mosaic of different kinds of sisterly love that exist. Regardless of what adjective is attached to them, they’re always marvelous to see.

Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman is a freelance entertainment writer and digital content manager who is obsessed with an absurd amount of television shows. She is an advocate for accessible entertainment and sometimes develops websites. You can find her at @heycheyennehey on Twitter or cheyennecheyenne.com.

Sisters in Catherine Breillat’s ‘Fat Girl’

The core of ‘Fat Girl’ is these two girls, who contrast each other in some very essential ways, but are inexorably bound together by shared experiences. Both are adolescents grappling with the early throes of sexuality, but their divergent appearances and ages leave them in different positions socially, affecting their worldviews.

This guest post written by Tessa Racked originally appeared at Consistent Panda Bear Shape and appears here as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. It is cross-posted with permission.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape]

Fat Girl is a coming-of-age story about two sisters on summer vacation with their family: chubby 13-year-old Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) and slender 15-year-old Elena (Roxane Mesquida). A scene in the middle of the film serves as a cypher for the central paradox of the sisters’ relationship. Elena and Anaïs stand cheek to cheek, regarding themselves in the mirror. “It’s funny. We really have nothing in common,” Elena says. “Look at you. You have small, hard eyes, while mine are hazy. But when I look deep into your eyes, it makes me feel like I belong, as if they were my eyes.” The core of Fat Girl is these two girls, who contrast each other in some very essential ways, but are inexorably bound together by shared experiences. Both are adolescents grappling with the early throes of sexuality, but their divergent appearances and ages leave them in different positions socially, affecting their worldviews. Their different experiences come up in the first conversation we hear between them: Anaïs claims that boys run from her sister once they see that she “[reeks] of loose morals,” while Elena counters that boys don’t come near Anaïs in the first place because she’s a “fat slob.”

The ways in which Anaïs and Elena deviate from cultural standards of conduct are notably different. The Criterion DVD of Fat Girl includes an interview with Breillat after the film’s debut at the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival, in which the director describes Anaïs’ fatness as her coping mechanism to deal with having her body and sexuality denied by those around her. It would be liberatory if Anaïs’ body could exist without rationalization, but by now, reader, I think you and I have become used to a fat body paying the admission of meaning in order to be present in a film. Anaïs is frequently shown eating in Fat Girl. When Elena meets her summer love Fernando (Libero de Rienzo) at a cafe, their flirtation and first kiss is paralleled with Anaïs ordering and eating a banana split, “[her] favorite.” The girls’ mother (Arsinée Khanjian) initially defends Anaïs when Elena criticizes her for eating “like a pig.” At the end of the film, however, fed up with her daughters’ adolescent shenanigans, Mother snaps at her for opening a snack after they have a meal. Anaïs’ transgression is explicitly evident on her body, making her an easy target of criticism by her family. Elena’s sexual activity, however, is also transgressively excessive by cultural standards, especially considering her age. She is waiting to have PiV sex with someone special, but has been sexually active with casual partners. Elena is able to have her metaphorical cake and eat it too, satisfying her desire for sex without the effects of those desires physically manifesting on her body that would open her up to criticism and judgment, the kind of which she lavishes on Anaïs. Breillat’s Berlin International Film Festival interview delves more directly into her philosophy of the two sisters:

“Since [Anaïs’] body makes her unlovable, since she isn’t looked at and desired, she’s more intelligent about the world. She can create herself and be herself, with a kind of rebellion, certainly, which is painful, but all the same, she exists. While her sister, to her internal devastation, isn’t able to exist.”

Her analysis reduces the characters to what they experience based on their looks, but it is certainly an applicable factor to understanding not only the girls of Fat Girl, but the majority of female film characters. Anaïs desires sex without romanticizing it, whereas Elena denies her desire for sex because she romanticizes it. Anaïs wants her own sexual debut to be with a casual partner who won’t have the ability to brag about deflowering her, whereas Elena seeks a partner whose love will validate her decision. Fernando is able to coax a reluctant Elena into sex acts through hollow declarations of love. Anaïs, on the other hand, playacts being a manipulative lover, pretending two ladders in their swimming pool are different sex partners of hers. She swims back and forth between each, whispering cliche lies and practicing kissing. “Women aren’t like bars of soap, you know,” she tells her pretend-partner, “they don’t wear away. On the contrary, each lover brings them more.”

Anaïs’ sexual frustration means she observes and contemplates the sex lives of others, namely Elena’s. Her observations are cynical, but more attuned to the film’s reality. The audience may be accustomed to thinking of shots of Anaïs eating as grotesque or pitiable, but would a similar reaction be expected to the very long scene during which Fernando hounds Elena until she consents to anal sex? Elena is too emotionally involved in the scene to see it for what it is, but Anaïs, who watches from across the room, is not. The sex scenes in the film are shot from far away, putting Elena and Fernando on a stage of sorts. We aren’t used to sex scenes looking like this; we usually see closeups of hands and faces – how Anaïs is shot as she tosses and turns in bed, awkwardly watching and trying to ignore the couple. The audience is invited to empathize with her over Elena and Fernando.

Despite all the talk between Anaïs and Elena about sex, the act causes a rift in their relationship. When Elena shows Anaïs the engagement ring that Fernando gave her as a proof of his love, Anais immediately smells a rat and begs Elena not to trust him. While Elena and Fernando “go all the way,” we see Anaïs in her bed in the foreground, quietly crying. Later, Fernando’s mother (Laura Betti) – a tacky woman who is the only other fat character – explains that Fernando stole her ring. The girls’ mother asks Anaïs where Elena is, to which the girl impertinently replies that she is “not her keeper.” Enraged, their mother ends the family vacation early. On the way home, Anaïs attempts to comfort her sister. “It’s sick that people think it’s their business. It’s sick, being a virgin,” she tells Elena, who is worried about their father’s reaction and can’t get over Fernando.

The film’s climax further parallels and separates the sisters. Asleep at a highway rest stop, a trucker murders Elena and their mother, chases Anaïs into the woods, and rapes her. Once again, the introduction of a male character demanding sex disrupts the relationships between the female characters. And, as with Elena’s experience with Fernando, the rape is a desecration of the sex that she wants to have. However, Anaïs’ reaction is to assert agency within the horrible situation. She puts her arms around her assailant. When the police find her in the morning, one tells another, “She says he didn’t rape her,” to which she defiantly adds, “Don’t believe me if you don’t want to.” It’s a troubling ending; what first sprang to my mind when I saw it was how fat rape survivors are often met with disbelief or derision. Breillat is a feminist, it would be difficult to believe that she would be dismissive of young girl being raped. The film doesn’t excuse the attacker’s actions, but it does disturb the notion of Anaïs as a passive victim. Elena’s experience was a subversion of her idealized notion of having sex (by her own definition) for the first time with someone she loved; once it became obvious that Fernando had duped her, she felt sadness and shame. But according to Anaïs, “the first time should be with nobody.” What happens to her at the end of the film should never happen to anyone, ever, but given that she refuses to describe it as a rape to the police, it seems she interpreted the trucker’s attack as a removal of the vulnerability she feared from a sexual debut with a future boyfriend. She certainly does not want to be seen as vulnerable by the uniformed men surrounding her and her dead mother and sister. Elena, whose appearance and ideas about sexuality conform to patriarchal values, has been destroyed by the events of the film. But the outsider, Anaïs, defiantly survives.

I do agree with Breillat that being an outsider allows a critical vantage point; my own adolescent experience of feeling ostracized due to my weight was a major catalyst of my journey to become the faux-academic, buzzword-dropping, far-left feminist you’ve all come to know and tolerate. On the other hand, Anaïs verges on being a didactic mouthpiece at times, and it’s undeniably problematic to suggest that her value system is so outside of the mainstream that she would be okay with being violently raped. Fat Girl provides an effective critique of patriarchal sexual values, but beyond that, only a bleak non-alternative.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Catherine Breillat’s Transfigurative Female Gaze

Recommended Reading: ‘Fat Girl’: About the Title by Catherine Breillat via Criterion

Tessa Racked blogs about fat characters in film at Consistent Panda Bear Shape. They have had “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life” stuck in their head for over a week now.

Call For Writers: Sisterhood

Despite what the multitude of Bechdel-test-failing media would have us believe, relationships among women can be complex and about much, much more than men. The sibling relationships of sisters, in fact, can be particularly rich, nuanced, and worth contemplation. Sibling rivalry, as it appears in ‘A League of Their Own’ and ‘Sixteen Candles,’ examines competition for recognition, birth order conflict, and self-doubt when faced with perceptions of sibling superiority.

Our theme week for August 2016 will be Sisterhood.

Despite what the multitude of Bechdel-test-failing media would have us believe, relationships among women can be complex and about much, much more than men. The sibling relationships of sisters, in fact, can be particularly rich, nuanced, and worth contemplation. Sibling rivalry, as it appears in A League of Their Own and Sixteen Candles, examines competition for recognition, birth order conflict, and self-doubt when faced with perceptions of sibling superiority.

Twinness is a fascinating trope that is often part of popular consciousness. Sister, Sister and The Parent Trap (along with all of its sequels and remake) explore the mirroring of twinness in a lighthearted, fun way. Orphan Black, on the other hand, delves into the dark, science fiction realm of the uncanny with questions surrounding cloning. All these examples ponder the nature versus nurture debate, dissecting the differences and similarities between twins.

Some stories highlight themes of sacrifice, like Frozen and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the love between sisters is depicted as something pure, righteous, and good. On the other hand, some stories focus on the mysterious unknowableness of the sister bond like in Beloved and The Virgin Suicides, where the bond seems to transcend this life and this reality.

What is so fascinating about the relationship between siblings? What are your favorite depictions of sisters? While there are fewer depictions of sibling women of color and even fewer depictions of trans sisterhood, are there examples that really stand out as excellent or problematic?

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so please get your proposals in early if you know which topic you would 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 Friday, August 26, 2016 by midnight Eastern Time.

Here are some possible topic ideas:

Frozen

Sisters

Beloved

Transparent

Sister, Sister

A League of Their Own

The Virgin Suicides

Bride and Prejudice

Ugly Betty

Sunshine Cleaning

Pariah

Rachel Getting Married

Sixteen Candles

The Secret Life of Bees

Orphan Black

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Cosby Show

Ginger Snaps

Mustang

Parent Trap

Little Women

The Color Purple

Sense and Sensibility

Jem & the Holograms

Practical Magic

My Neighbor Totoro

Middle of Nowhere

Charmed

Half & Half

Full House

Lilo and Stitch

Daughters of the Dust

Grey’s Anatomy