I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched Fight Club. Every time I view it, I end up noticing something new. How did I miss that before? This time, Marla Singer (played by Helena Bonham Carter) captured my attention. What would the situations in the movie look like from her viewpoint?
This guest post by Jen Thorpe appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.
Marla smoking
Fight Club was released in 1999. It has some spectacular quotes, a great deal of violence, and an awesome cast. When people write about this movie, they tend to focus on the Narrator (played by Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) and the connection between the two.
I’m going to assume that everyone reading this has already seen the movie. For those who haven’t, be warned, there will be spoilers here.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched Fight Club. Every time I view it, I end up noticing something new. How did I miss that before? This time, Marla Singer (played by Helena Bonham Carter) captured my attention. What would the situations in the movie look like from her viewpoint?
Perhaps the easiest way to describe Marla would be to do it from a chronological viewpoint. There is a scene where Marla and Tyler have just finished having loud and vigorous sex. The two are lying on the bed, with satisfied looks on their faces, when Marla reveals something incredibly shocking about her past.
“My God, I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school.”
She says: “My God.I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school.” Let that sink in for a second. Grade school (or Elementary school) typically has students that are in kindergarten through fifth or sixth grade. That means that Marla could not have been more than eleven years old when she had a very active sexual experience of the type that she was now having with Tyler.
In the movie, nothing more is said about it. She would have been well below the legal age of consent. It is clear she was raped. Most people don’t go from being a complete virgin directly to having the type of sex that Tyler and Marla had in Fight Club. I worry that she was sexually abused when she was even younger than eleven, and that the abuse continued for years.
Marla shares what would be, for most people, an incredibly difficult and traumatic childhood experience, as if it were normal. She doesn’t seem to be trying to shock Tyler. There is no need for her to do so – she already had his full attention at the moment. Instead, it seems like she is trying to give Tyler an incredibly awkward compliment on his skills in bed.
As an adult, Marla spends every night attending self-help groups for diseases that she doesn’t have. She walks into a room filled with people who are dying from cancer while smoking a cigarette. Marla doesn’t just sit there; she actually participates in whatever therapeutic situation the group chooses to do. It is as though she is daring someone to confront her, to call her a liar, to notice her.
People who are emotionally healthy do not spend every night in the basement of a church in an attempt to cope with a disease that they do not actually have. But, Marla isn’t emotionally healthy. On some level, she realizes that she is damaged and needs help. Unfortunately, she has no idea how to reach out for the help she needs.
She had to have noticed that there was a guy who was also showing up at the same self-help groups that she was. She doesn’t know his name because these groups are anonymous. The two stare across the room at each other, but never speak.
One day, the guy walks up to Marla and begins a conversation with her. Finally, someone reached out to her! Someone wants to talk to her – maybe about why they both feel the need to go to all these self-help groups. The two accidentally end up as each other’s partner at the self-help group for testicular cancer.
Tyler and Marla at the testicular cancer group
Somehow, they actually share a moment together. This, despite the fact that this guy is trying to convince Marla to go away – to stop going to the groups. The testicular cancer group ends with two partners sharing their feelings, hugging each other, and crying.
How long had it been since somebody hugged Marla? She, and the guy whose name she doesn’t even know yet, actually share something meaningful about how they feel, deep down inside. For a few, brief, seconds, they speak from their hearts.
Narrator: When people think you’re dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just…
Marla Singer: instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.
I believe that brief conversation is what made Marla become interested in him. This, despite the fact that he follows her after the self-help group ends and reiterates that he never wants to see her again. This guy insists that they split up the self-help groups between the two of them so he won’t have to be in the same room with her. That must have really hurt Marla.
The first time I watched Fight Club, that scene amused me. Two people, both of whom are physically healthy, are fighting over diseases that they want to have. “No, I want cancer!” It’s preposterous.
Look a little closer, and there is so much more going on. Marla is angry at him. She fights with him about which self-help groups she gets, and which he gets, the entire conversation. It’s like she is trying to hold on to them because being there gives her something she is not finding in her life.
The two walk into a laundromat, yelling and screaming at each other. Everyone in the place had to have taken notice of them. They probably looked like a couple who was having the type of fight that ends with a breakup.
Marla walks directly over to the dryers, and pulls out more than one load of jeans. She bundles them up in her arms and leaves the laundromat, still yelling. At first glance, it looks like she must have put her laundry in the dryer before the self-help group, and was going back to pick up her clothes. No one else in the laundromat seems to think anything is amiss.
But then, she walks into a shop and sells all of the jeans. This shocks the guy (whose name she still doesn’t know), so he asks if she is selling her clothes. Meanwhile, the woman behind the counter is assessing the value of the jeans. Yes, Marla insists, I am selling my clothes.
Here’s the thing, though. Does Marla ever wear jeans? Those aren’t her clothes! She brazenly marched into the laundromat and stole them, with complete confidence that she would get away with it. I think this is how Marla makes money. She never once, in the entire movie, talks about having a job.
Yet, she does, somehow, have an apartment. The electricity works, and so does the phone. Perhaps Marla is an incredibly talented “fence.”
By the time Marla is done selling the jeans, she, and the guy whose name she doesn’t know, have sorted out who will be attending which self-help group. He obviously doesn’t want anything to do with her. Marla basically throws herself into traffic. She crosses a busy street, as vehicles honk, without slowing down. This is the first clue we get that Marla is suicidal.
She stops somewhere in the middle of the street, turns around, and asks the guy his name. He stayed on the curb (as most people would do). Viewers do not get to hear his answer, but we later discover he told Marla his name was Tyler Durden.
This is significant. You’ve seen the movie, so you are well aware that the narrator and Tyler Durden are the same person. Or, rather, Tyler is a second personality who is sharing the same body with the Narrator. Marla doesn’t have any way to realize this. To her – he was always Tyler Durden.
Eventually, Marla notices that Tyler stopped going to the self-help groups that he fought so hard for. Instead of just letting him go, Marla decides to reach out to him. She calls him on the phone, out of the blue, and tells him that she has “a stomachful of Xanax.” It is a desperate attempt to get his attention. It also isn’t fake; she really did take too many pills.
She wraps the phone cord around her throat as she talks to Tyler, wondering aloud if he would hear her death rattle from over the phone. At the same time, she insists this is not a real suicide attempt – it’s one of those “cries for help.”
Long story short, Tyler goes to Marla’s apartment and knocks on the door. She pulls him inside, and it is clear she truly has taken way too many Xanax. The two leave the apartment together shortly before an emergency crew storms down the hallway. They pass by Tyler and Marla, as they ask where the apartment they are looking for is located.
Tyler and Marla run away together. All the while, she is screaming to the emergency crew about the woman who lives in the apartment they are trying to enter. I cannot recall her exact words, but it is to the effect that they shouldn’t try to bother saving her. That woman is a lost cause, a waste. Marla is literally shouting about how much she hates herself – shortly after attempting suicide.
This is the state she is in when Tyler takes her back to the run-down house he is squatting in. She sits on the dirty floor, drugged almost beyond comprehension, as she tells him that he will have to keep her up all night. He does, by having loud and vigorous sex with her. Once again, Marla is not in a state where she is able to give consent.
The next morning, Marla wakes up, puts her clothes back on, and goes downstairs. Tyler sits at the kitchen table, and seems shocked that she is still here. He kicks her out. From her viewpoint, he saved her life, had sex with her all night long, and now… wants nothing to do with her.
Someone loved this dress intensely, for just one night… and then threw it away.
Marla makes several attempts to connect with Tyler anyway. One time, she arrives at his house wearing a bridesmaids dress that she got at a thrift store for one dollar. She notes that someone loved that dress, intensely, for just one night… and then threw it away. Again, she is talking about herself. Tyler is not able to pick up on it, and rejects her after she starts touching him.
After Marla leaves, Tyler appears and talks to the Narrator about her. Tyler says that the Narrator has some “fucked up friends,” and describes Marla as “limber.” The Narrator’s alternate personality is able to identify that Marla is a train wreck, while, at the same time, implying that she is interesting to have sex with.
Time passes, and Marla stays away from Tyler. One night, she takes the bus and arrives at the house he lives in. To her shock, there are tons of guys in the yard, and in the house. The air smells badly, and Tyler looks upset.
He tells Marla that Tyler is not here. Imagine, having the guy you are (more or less) dating tell you that he isn’t there. He’s standing right in front of you! She must think he is messing with her head, and she storms off to get back on the bus.
Toward the end of the movie, the Narrator finally figures out that he is Tyler Durden. He does some fact checking, travels around, and puts it all together. Now, it’s his turn to call Marla, from out of the blue. He insists that she say his name – and she does – Tyler Durden. After that, he hangs up the phone.
Marla and Tyler sort of breakup. Marla meets him in a restaurant, where he insists that she must leave town. Of course, the person in front of her is the Narrator, not Tyler. Even so, Marla says that he is just too messed up and she’s “done.” She takes the money he’s been trying to give her, says she won’t pay it back (“consider it asshole tax”) and gets on the bus.
Holding hands while the world come tumbling down
The scene that begins the movie is the same one that ends it. This time, Tyler’s army have kidnapped Marla and are bringing her, kicking and screaming, to Tyler. The two hold hands as they share the perfect view of the buildings around them blowing up and crumbling. That image is Marla’s entire life. She has always been searching for one, small, meaningful connection with someone, who will be there when the world falls apart.
Jen Thorpe is a freelance writer, podcaster, and gamer. She is the cofounder of the No Market website (nomarket.org) and writes for it frequently on a wide variety of topics and subjects. You can keep up with everything she does by following her @queenofhaiku.
Older women in film and TV are generally a stereotypical lot. They’re usually sexless matrons or grandmothers who perform roles of support for their screen-stealing husbands or children. These older women are typically preoccupied with home and family, lacking a complex inner life because they are gendered symbols of, you guessed it, home and family. Occasionally we see older women who go beyond that trope, even defying it to focus more on power, prestige, winning, and their own personal success and public image rather than that of others. Two potent examples of this are Patty Hewes from Damages and Victoria Grayson from Revenge.
Because Mary is teased for her old age, especially since she’s no longer viewed as the sexual being she was once known as, it’s at the forefront of particular episodes. In season three, Dick hounds a photographer who once took “tasteful, artistic” nude photos of Mary when she was younger, and he comes to terms with them only after he begins shredding them. He discovers that the shots are beautiful and capture how beautiful Mary was, but he also realizes that she’s still sexually appealing because he loves her; he tells her that she has aged “like a fine wine.”
There is a scene where Brenda is walking past a department store with a friend. She stops to look at a tiny black dress in the window. “Who’s supposed to wear that?” she rhetorically asks her friend, “Some anorexic teenager? Some fetus?” Her rant continues with her intent to lead a protest by never buying any more clothing until the designers “come to their senses.”
In a scene toward the beginning of Snow White and the Huntsman, during Ravenna’s and the King’s wedding night, she tells of how she has replaced his old (emphasis on the “old”) Queen, and how, in time, she too would have been replaced. Thus, Ravenna speaks of the “natural” cycle of youth replacing age and appears to blame patriarchy for this situation, as men “toss women to the dogs like scraps” once they have finished with them.
“When a woman stays young and beautiful forever, the world is hers.”
“We survived,” Emily is fond of saying to a number of characters in the film – and while she’s obviously referencing the terror attack when she speaks to her fellow “walking wounded” – it’s apparent from its very first utterance that Emily has survived far more than the explosion in carrozza 219. As her story unfolds, we come to discover that Emily is a survivor of childhood abandonment: she was sold as an infant to a childless couple by her parents who had no place for a child in their circus-act lives. She’s a survivor of sexual abuse and a survivor of a succession of abusive relationships.
Her loneliness is compounded by this narrative technique, as Barbara is often given no one to play off of and instead watches interactions from a distance, remaining an entirely closed off person with a rich internal life she only reveals in her private writing. For an older woman, whose age, unmarried status and perceived lack of attractiveness leave her virtually invisible and of no value to society, this narration allows her to express her resentment. But underneath her malice is the profound loneliness of a woman who seems to have never learned how to connect to people and to remain in their lives without manipulations.
Golden Girls was ahead of its time. We rarely see female actors over the age of 50 portraying characters embracing and owning their sexuality. Reduced to our appearances, women are told time and again that beauty, youth and thinness determine our worth. When the media body shames and bodysnarks female actors’ bodies, it’s clear how how far we need to go in featuring women’s stories. And so in our youth-obsessed society, it’s revolutionary to see women over 50 on-screen as beautiful, vivacious and sexual.
As a 12-year-old, my life bore little resemblance to theirs, but The First Wives Club gave me one of my first, delicious glimpses into womanhood — a womanhood that includes sassy retorts and getting drunk at lunch and hanging out with your best friends (and also with Bronson Pinchot and Gloria Steinem). It’s a version of womanhood where we know that Maggie Smith, no matter how old, is always cooler than Sarah Jessica Parker. Where finding out that your daughter is a lesbian is no big thing. (“Lesbians are great nowadays!” Annie remarks after hearing the news.) Where female empowerment isn’t just a nebulous buzzword, but something you achieve and celebrate.
The Castle in the Sky includes an ambiguous character which is probably the funniest and most groundbreaking of all of Ghibli’s older women: Captain Dola, an air pirate. She initially appears to be a villain, but later she joins forces with the protagonists, Sheeta and Pazu, against Muska. With her sons as henchmen, stealing treasures is her main objective. She shows a great love for her sons, companionship with her husband, and kindness to Sheeta while still fulfilling the role of reckless, greedy pirate. She’s arguably the most memorable element in the whole film.
In American society and in Hollywood films, too often women are invisible, much less a force to be reckoned with. Older women in particular are meant to be hidden away, not viewed as holders of wisdom or desired as sexual beings or feared as people who could create change or cause damage. And when women ARE a force in film, there tend to be dire consequences for demonstrating independence and strength. This is not the case in Fried Green Tomatoes. Ninny and Evelyn are older female characters who not only carry the film with their stories but also demonstrate real strength and determination in the face of denial, obstinacy, and youthful swagger.
Betty White, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, and Helen Mirren… At first, when writing this article, I thought about pointing out the ways in which Hollywood has shorted these prolific and amazing actresses, and while I’m sure that’s happened to them at some point in their careers, in reading about their lives, I realized that would almost be a disservice to all that they’ve accomplished. Rather, this piece is meant as a tribute to these enduring female comediennes, who have not only flourished but also paved the way for so many other actresses and actors.
This is the turning point of the movie. All the conflicts revolving around jealousy, beauty, and, of course, youth, are henceforth turned into a spirit of sisterhood. The dependence on Ernest transforms into a friendly co-dependent relationship between the two women. However much of a love-hate sentiment resonates throughout the final part of the movie, friendship and solidarity triumph. The special bond that Madeline and Helen share is still based on the wish for eternal youth, but they have finally turned to each other.
There’s an imperative reason why Dench was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a film for Notes On a Scandal. The Academy can be a load of BS with their ageism and racism, but sometimes, they get it right. It’s also quite wonderful to point out that Dench scored her first nomination at 64, her first and only win at 65, and four nods after– the last being Notes on a Scandal. For people to say that she is too old for anything is simply wrong on all counts. She truly is at her artistic best.
Of course older women have traditionally not been allowed to be sexual beings, and mothers have always been held to a higher sexual standard than fathers. In fact, when a woman of any age does not conform or transgresses sexually she customarily suffers greater social condemnation. What Ali: Fear Eats the Soul makes clear is that the Whore-Madonna complex still reigned supreme in 1970s Germany. When Emmi first tells her daughter and son-in-law that she has fallen in love with a much younger man, they laugh. The thought of an old mother in love and lust is so impossible, so unnatural–horrific, in fact–that laughter is the only fitting response. When she introduces her children to her new husband, one son calls her a whore and another kicks in her television. In the eyes of her deeply conventional, racist children, Emmi is guilty of the most profane double betrayal–racial disloyalty and defilement of the maternal role.
Emily Delahunty is a writer of fiction. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of My House in Umbria, a beautifully atmospheric film by Richard Loncraine starring the inimitable Maggie Smith. Smith shines in a rich role that takes advantage of her great skill. Too often we praise her – as I did for Bitch Flickshere – for her fantastic comic timing and cut-glass wit, forgetting that she is a dramatic actress as well, and worthy of much better parts than those that ask her to do little more than deliver a one-liner. That’s sadly what seems to garner her recognition these days: an impeccable demonstration of acerbic wit in the form of what Smith deems a “spiky old lady.” In a season of melodrama and over-the-top performances on Downton Abbey, for example, there was one standout moment of arresting, extraordinary acting, and it belonged to Maggie Smith, standing alone beneath the stone arches in the aftermath of her Lady Sybil’s death. She looked for all the world as if burdened by innumerable sorrow, and it was an utterly heartbreaking image. My House in Umbria gives Smith the opportunity to exercise her considerable mastery in a part that provides ample moments of similarly reflective silence as well as witty repartee.
In contemporary Italy, a terror attack on a train leaves only four survivors from a carriage of eight. Mrs. Delahunty, of course, is a survivor, as is the General (Ronnie Barker), a young German man (Benno Fürmann), and a little American girl (Emmy Clarke, in a remarkable performance for such a young actress). When the survivors can’t return to their homes until the investigation is complete, Mrs. Delahunty, an English expat, welcomes them to her villa in Umbria. There, they all find healing in each other’s company, the quiet routine of the countryside, and the presence of the little girl orphaned by the tragedy. Aimee arrives at the house rendered mute by the tragedy and the loss of her parents, but through the persistence and attention of Mrs. Delahunty, the others, and the staff – including Timothy Spall in a great turn as Quinty, manager of the estate – she soon finds her voice again, and it is she who inspires healing, forgiveness, and hope in the others. Their insular little community is rocked, however, by the arrival of Aimee’s estranged uncle, who comes to take her back to America, as Aimee’s departure threatens to destroy their tentative peace.
Maggie Smith as Mrs. Delahunty in My House in Umbria
“We are the stories we tell ourselves,” director Shekhar Kapur asserted in a TED talk about creativity, and that’s true; put differently, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion in 1979. We tell ourselves stories to overcome hardship, to reason ourselves out of the incomprehensible. We dream up explanations and embellishments. We protect ourselves and entertain ourselves, and in the end, there is often little difference between what actually happened and what we say happened. After a while, we come to believe the story, to find it true rather than fictitious, and our perspective is shaped accordingly.
“We survived,” Emily is fond of saying to a number of characters in the film – and while she’s obviously referencing the terror attack when she speaks to her fellow “walking wounded” – it’s apparent from its very first utterance that Emily has survived far more than the explosion in carrozza 219. As her story unfolds, we come to discover that Emily is a survivor of childhood abandonment: she was sold as an infant to a childless couple by her parents who had no place for a child in their circus-act lives. She’s a survivor of sexual abuse and a survivor of a succession of abusive relationships. She traveled extensively with boyfriends pursuing extraordinarily odd jobs. Emily recounts her own troubled history as a kind of story, her memories tinged with a distinctly literary tone, and at times – and like the characters – one questions the veracity of some of her stories, particularly when her version doesn’t exactly mesh with another’s. But does it really matter if they’re true or not?
The surrealist depiction of the terror attack itself
For Mrs. Delahunty, these kinds of stories seem to come as naturally as breathing: she invents entire lives for the strangers around her – like this writer has done since she started dreaming up stories for the staid nuns teaching her lessons – and relates them with such authority that it’s difficult to retain a critical air about them. We believe the stories Mrs. Delahunty tells because she believes them. Maggie Smith underscores this over and over again. She crinkles her eye, purses her lip, fiddles with her sunglasses or her ever-present glass of grappa in such a way that, even as we believe wholeheartedly in the story Mrs. Delahunty weaves, we can’t help the flicker of incredulity that creeps up. Of course, we do believe her, as the writer intended, but our perception of Mrs. Delahunty is marked by the subtle reminders from Smith to listen with a critical ear.
Because of this, My House in Umbria succeeds primarily on the strength of Smith’s acting. Much of the film consists of an internal narrative, in which we hear through voiceover Smith’s thoughts on the fellow passengers who become her houseguests. She concocts background stories for each of them, a mixture of dreams, astrology, and deductions liberally sprinkled with what she wants their stories to be. She wants to create, for example, a love story between Werner and the young woman accompanying him. When the General takes to Aimee, she decides that it’s down to a bit of guilt about the way he raised his own daughter who perished on the train. These ideas are rooted in her observations, of course, but they aren’t necessarily real. The General might have actually had a very good relationship with his daughter, for example, barring his dislike of her husband, and might not harbor any regrets over her childhood. Of course, he might not, but it doesn’t matter; what matters is that Mrs. Delahunty believes these stories, and we believe them right along with her. It’s to the credit of actors like Timothy Spall, Ronnie Barker, and Chris Cooper that they deliver the kind of quiet, restrained performances that render Mrs. Delahunty’s musings believable.
Emmy Clarke as Aimee and Maggie Smith as Mrs. Delahunty in My House in Umbria
Her stories ultimately influence the ways in which she interacts with her guests, most notably Mr. Riversmith (Chris Cooper), Aimee’s estranged uncle. Through a bit of eavesdropping and her own tendency to dramatize a situation, Mrs. Delahunty – to her mind – fleshes out Mr. Riversmith’s character, melding bits of reality (he’s a professor who studies the carpenter ant) with logical extensions and explanations, some of which require her to dismiss the observations that don’t quite fit her narrative. (She steadfastly refuses, for example, to leave him alone as his body language would attest, convincing herself that it’s a front.) Mr. Riversmith, however, is the one guest who fights back against her, refusing her repeated offers of a drink – “You could do with a drink,” Mrs. Delahunty asserts time and again, to which Mr. Riversmith replies, in escalating anger, that he drinks little, if at all, and certainly not at 9am – and suggesting she kindly get her nose out of his business. Yet, Mrs. Delahunty persists, and it’s to Smith’s credit that we cheer her on, and see the value in it, even when it becomes uncomfortable to watch.
The film’s climax sees Mrs. Delahunty, sloshed beyond belief on her grappa, stumble into Mr. Riversmith’s bedroom in the middle of the night, clutching a bottle and two glasses, and demanding that he speak to her (and share a drink, of course). She levels all of her conjectures at him – her reasoning about Werner, her thoughts about healing as a group, the defaults she finds in his character, and, above all, her desperate need to keep Aimee in Italy. She is practically paralyzed with fear and sorrow at Aimee’s leaving; her anxiety reveals itself in a surprising way. There’s always been an undercurrent of latent romance on Mrs. Delahunty’s part; here it bubbles to the surface in a scene achingly sad in its desperation. She opens her robe and offers him her breast, and, to her shock, he shields his eyes and turns away. The anger melds with crushing disappointment in Smith’s expression – but at what? At Riversmith’s refusal? (She is a woman, after all, who remarks in the opening scene that men still continue to give her a second appreciative glance.) At Riversmith’s defiance? We aren’t sure, and neither is Mrs. Delahunty.
The General teaching young Aimee the Cha-Cha
For the real truth of Mrs. Delahunty’s stories has nothing to do with actual events or actual personalities and everything to do with seeing the heart of a person or a situation. She has a knack, through her fictionalizations, to make blatantly, disturbingly, brutally honest observations of the people around her. (She cracks the case before the inspector does; not by research and detective work, as he does, but on the strength of a dream and eagle-eyed observation.) And it’s Mrs. Delahunty, therefore, who manages, in a web of conjecture, to get at the core of Mr. Riversmith’s character: his guilt. “Colpa,” she tells him before he throws her out of his room, her voice wavering in her drunkenness. “It means guilt. We all of us feel colpa about something. Do not, I beg you, let colpa stand in the way of your actions.” He responds with an angry, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
“I think you do,” Mrs. Delahunty replies. “You feel colpa because you never made peace with your sister. And because of that, you feel obliged to take the child back with you.” He’s never said as much to her, of course – he never mentioned Aimee’s mother apart from a brief acknowledgment that he had never met Aimee because of his falling-out with her mother, his sister.
The tension between Mrs. Delahunty and Mr. Riversmith comes to a head when she argues with him late at night
And yet she is right: he does feel guilty, and, the following morning, Aimee returns home, welcomed back into Mrs. Delahunty’s arms in a beautifully shot scene. This parallels the shot of Aimee standing at the window as the carriage explodes, the light bright behind her; in this scene we see her lit from behind, away from the window, locked in a loving, maternal embrace. There’s no need to emphasize the Italian, or to couch her words in bumbling poetry. It’s a literary trick, to use a foreign word in place of an English translation, and one we’d expect to find on the page rather than on screen. But in Smith’s hands it transfers marvelously to film, and we’re reminded, once again, that all of this has been made possible because Mrs. Delahunty sees the world as a writer of fiction.
My House in Umbria is in many ways a meditation on fiction and characterization, on the way we writers create characters from those around us, and fictionalize our friends. It is, on a smaller scale, about grief and about survival. What it is not about is justice: there’s nothing more than the sketchiest of explanations for the perpetration of this crime; there is no arrest, and the terrorist ultimately gets away. This is unsurprising, perhaps, as the attack itself is presented in a dream-like, surreal manner, happening in slow motion as if it’s already a memory. In that particular sense, My House in Umbria is not especially satisfying. But as a film that grapples with the concept of forgiveness in the wake of tragedy, My House in Umbria is hugely successful. For Emily, writing and forgiveness (and guilt, yes) are inextricably linked.
Aimee’s return home, with the sunlight streaming behind her
And yet, through all of this, Emily is a writer with a terrible case of writer’s block. She writes the odd phrase in her notebook, but throughout the film, we never see her write. Her literary career is in the past, her interest in her work having been eclipsed by a steadily increasing dependence on alcohol. The ending is happy not just because Aimee returns home but because Mrs. Delahunty seems to find her own footing again. “She’s happier than she’s ever been,” Quinty remarks to the General, and then, Mrs. Delahunty says it herself, marveling that she feels the inspiration to write returning to her after a long winter. What makes Maggie Smith a great actress, of course, is that she develops incredible depth to her characters. Far too often, an older actress must create that intensity for herself out of a supporting part that’s lacking in complexity or that’s rich in tropes. In My House in Umbria, Maggie Smith delivers an exquisite performance that should drive home to screenwriters the necessity of writing complex roles for older women: Smith takes a well-rounded character and rich scenario and makes them so compelling, so enthralling, so utterly fascinating that one wonders why screenwriters aren’t lining up to craft such parts for her. And, more importantly, why the parts waiting for her are reinventions of the same, tired tropes.
Amanda Civitello is a Chicago-based freelance writer and Northwestern grad with an interest in arts and literary criticism. She is the editor of Iris, a new literary magazine with an LGBTQ+ focus for YA readers. She has contributed reviews of Rebecca, Sleepy Hollow, and Downton Abbey to Bitch Flicks. You can find her online at amandacivitello.com.
This piece by Magda Knight originally appeared at Mookychick and is cross-posted with permission.
A 1985 comic strip by US cartoonist Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For, features a character who says they’d only go to see a movie on three conditions:
The film has at least two named women in it
Who talk to each other at some point in the film
About something other than a man
The idea of the Bechdel Test caught on, and you can now visit the Bechdel Test Movie List, a giant community-run resource that catalogues over 4,000 films which have women talking to each other about not-man things. I highly recommend you check out it out. Partly because it’s really interesting and eye-opening (Straw Dogs just makes it), but mainly because you’ll see passionate and lengthy discussions of the merits of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls and whether the lead females, being ponies, pass the test. AND OH, THEY DO. THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS IS RESTORED.
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls
How do I feel about the validity of the Bechdel Test? My only reservation about it is that I think it’s terribly neat, and I fear tidy things because, as Erma Bombeck said, “My idea of tidy is to sweep the room with a glance.” Tidy is not something I demand of my hair, my house, my film theory or my beliefs. Tidy is rigid, and life ebbs and flows like a vast, floppy, wet and ultimately quite messy ocean teeming with potential and things with too many legs and other things, also with probably too many legs, all of which I’d honestly rather not have to tidy up. If you’re something with that many legs, you can tidy up after yourself. I’ll be on the sofa reading a book.
Einstein believed the universe would eventually boil down to just one universal constant, but I don’t even think art can be condensed into one neat little set of rules, however awesome they are. After all, Fight Club is one of many excellent movies that fails the Bechdel Test, and I’m not going to harsh on Marla the Magnificent’s buzz for not talking to any women in the movie. Hot damn, Marla.
Helena Bonham Carter as Marla in Fight Club
Bride Wars, on the other hand, gets a flying pass, and it’s a hideously cynical chick flick about two “best friends” who have sculpted their life ambitions around weddings. They discover they’re booked into the same hotel for a wedding on the same day and turn on each other like rabid dogs and dye each other’s hair blue without asking first because HEY THAT’S WHAT WOMEN BEST FRIENDS DO. The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club (unless it’s to gush about the wonderfully dark things it says about the human condition). The first rule of Bride Wars is, obviously, to just not watch it.
What I really do love about the Bechdel Test is the wonderful questions it encourages us to raise. I think it’s excellent for filmmakers and screenwriters to have in the back of their minds: Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if this film I’m creating had some women who talked to each other? Whose lives didn’t triangulate around men like bogeys on a radar screen?
Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson in Bride Wars
A study by the University of California looking at the 100 most successful box office films in 2012 found that just under 30% of the speaking roles were for women, and nearly 30% of those had revealing clothes, a figure which jumped to 56% for teenage girls. And never mind the clothes–how many of those speaking roles were for first or second billing, I wonder, and how many of them involved saying something other than, “We showed each other our private parts yesterday so let’s talk about where this relationship is headed, Dave,” or “Honey, of course you’ll make it through the robot jungle alive. I knitted you a robot handkerchief for good luck; now kiss me, you great big loveable robot fool”?
Helen Mirren
2013 has been a particularly tricky and vocal year for women in films and visual entertainment:
In March, Helen Mirren publicly criticised Sam Mendes for not including any women filmmakers in his list of inspirations and spoke out against the lack of women in the film industry when accepting her Empire Legend Award. BOOM.
Professor Maggie Gale of the University of Manchester revealed to the Daily Telegraph that more plays were written by women in the Sufragette era than there are today.
Thandie Newton told CNN how she’d been forced to have a movie camera stuck under her skirt as a teenager for a screen test. And how the resulting footage had been played to other people privately. Eurgh.
Audrey Tatou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) told the Radio Times that she decided not to pursue a Hollywood career because she did not want “every single millimetre” of her body being scrutinised, because the Hollywood approach to an actress’s figure was “unforgiving.” If even Audrey Tatou feels she can’t aspire to be Audrey Tatou, what chance does a young female actress following in her footsteps have?
It’s not just western cinema, either; Aruna Irani has spoken out against the lack of good roles for middle-aged women in Bollywood, saying, “There is no role for female characters, especially of my age group. Actresses like Hemaji, Rakhiji and Moushmiji, they all are just at home. And if sometimes they get the chance to be part of a film, then that is for three or four scenes.”
Audrey Tatou
It’s almost a case of: if you’re a young and talented actress, you better make the most of those apples in your cheeks while you’ve still got them, apple-face, because only three women of your generation will get to be Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren, and you’re going to be expected to fight other actresses tooth and nail–almost as if you’d booked a wedding in the same place on the same day–to be one of them. And that percentage of women with speaking parts in film? The number’s been going down since 2009, not up. Speaking roles for women in film are currently at their lowest in five years.
Sony’s Amy Pascal, who ranks 14th on Forbes‘ 20 Most Powerful Women in Business list, gave a really interesting interview on closing the pay gap between men and women in Hollywood, and why women get paid less than men. I literally couldn’t figure out how to fit that into this article tidily (see above), so I’m just going to throw it in there. Enjoy!
Sony’s Amy Pascal
If we take some positives from this…
If you’re creating a film or play, consider the Bechdel Test. Could your script do with more speaking parts for women? Even older women? About non-man things?
If you’re not creating a film or play but have always wanted to, give it a go. There are more Jane Campions and Kathryn Bigelows out there in the filmosphere, and one of them might be you.
If you’re an actress, ALL POWER TO YOU. Things will be addressed, and they will get better. If it gets to the point where you’re giving an interview to CNN or accepting an Empire Legend Award? It’s not just acknowledgement for your talent and hard work, it’s a platform. If you speak out, people will hear you…
@MagdaKnight is the Co-Founding Editor of Mookychick. Her YA fiction and other writings have been published in anthologies and in 2000AD. She likes you already, so Email her and say hi, or visit her blog. She is on Google+.
“Once women passed childbearing age they could only be seen as
grotesque on some level.”
– Meryl Streep
As female actresses age, their roles–in film and television–seem to rapidly diminish. In a 2012 interview with Vogue, Meryl Streep said that when she turned 40 in 1989, “I remember turning to my husband and saying, ‘Well, what should we do? Because it’s over.’” The magazine points out that, “The following year, she received three offers to play witches in different movies.” She has gone on to star in many multifaceted roles, but her observation of ageism in Hollywood–against women specifically–is on point.
In a recent interview, Melanie Griffith described the same frustrations: “It is what I never thought would happen when I was in my 20s and 30s, hearing actresses b—- about not getting any work when they turned 50. Now I understand it, it is just different. It is all about youth and beauty, for women anyway…”
While some publications point out that the “over-40 actress” is seeing fame and fortune in today’s Hollywood, others depressingly point out that this might have something to do with an advance in “anti-ageing techniques” (while citing Tina Fey’s assertion in Bossypants that men cast who they find “fuckable”). Not surprisingly, a majority of women between 50-75 have reported being unsatisfied with the representation of their age bracket (and especially their sexual desires) on film. Older mother/daughter duos on screen are often just a few years apart in real life.
Bitch Flicks‘s Robin Hitchcock looked at statistics from the Oscars over the years, and found that female actresses win more awards when they are young, and male actors win more awards as they age. It’s all too clear not only what Hollywood values, but also what we’ve been conditioned to expect. Statistically, male protagonists may get older, but their love interests do not.
This month at Bitch Flicks, our theme week will explore “Older Women in Film and TV,” and we are excited to open up the floor to analysis of films and television shows that get older women right, and those that get older women wrong. We look for analysis of the film or show as a text, but also for specific character studies, in addition to general commentary.
Below is just a sampling of films and television shows that highlight older women:
Amour Harold and Maude Away From Her Golden Girls The Joy Luck Club Refuge Damages Over the Hill Band Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Made in Dagenham Calendar Girls Shirley Valentine Another Happy Day The Stone Angel Hot in Cleveland RED RED 2 The Iron Lady The Turning Point Something’s Gotta Give
First Wives Club Being Julia The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Bread and Tulips Absolutely Fabulous All About Eve The Hot Flashes Under the Tuscan Sun Two For The Road Young at Heart Death Becomes Her Fried Green Tomatoes
Hope Springs
Lovely, Still
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Here are some basic guidelines for guest writers:
–Pieces should be between 700 and 2,000 words.
–Include images (with captions) and links in your piece, along with a title for your article. –Send your piece in the text of an email, attaching all images, no later than Friday, September 20. –Include a 2-3 sentence bio for placement at the end of your piece.
Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts. You may either send us a query and a writing sample or a completed piece for consideration.
The adage of “Behind every good man is a great woman” is worn out, particularly in the realm of boxing movies. You can reduce the entirety of Rocky to the battered Stallone’s anguished cry of “Adrian!” as he wraps up a brutal fight. We’re meant to believe that what kept him alive was passion, love, a desire to see life through to the closing bell. It’s a hackneyed way of suggesting that though Rocky pounds with his fists, he really leads with his heart. This is the kind of boxing movie that writes itself, and one that doesn’t really need to be seen more than once. Luckily for everyone, David O. Russell’s The Fighter is not that kind of movie. Instead of being a movie about masculine physicality and power, we get a subversive movie about the women that wage real battles outside the ring, the kind of battles aren’t cleanly won.
The sisters of The Fighter
The same idea is suggested in David O. Russell’s The Fighter, which tells the true story of boxer Mickey Ward’s comeback from next-to-nothing welterweight to one of the most admired fighters in the ring. Micky, as portrayed by that yummy hunk of Irish soda bread Mark Wahlberg, is a softie who finds himself losing fight after fight under the coaching of his half brother Dicky Eklund, a former boxer and current crack-addict (played by a wiry, skittish Christian Bale) and his domineering dye-job of a mother, Alice (the always wonderful Melissa Leo). Behind Dicky and Alice looms Micky’s seven sisters (the most foul-mouthed Greek chorus you could ever come upon), and beyond them the town of Lowell, a neighborhood that treats Dicky like the prizefighter he believes he once was. What defines Micky as a fighter is not so much his hesitation to throw a punch as his willingness to suffer them. In a fight shown early in the film, Micky is beaten so hard his cheek is punched clear through—a beating he takes because his brother and mother placed him against a much larger opponent, and one he takes because unless he fights, no one gets paid. Micky is punished as a boxer and as a son because he is obligated to his family—to his mother, a manager without any managerial tendencies; his brother, bossy in the ring but willing to jump through windows to escape being caught on the crack pipe. (Both sons seem more terrified of disappointing their mother than they do of getting arrested or beaten down.)
Alice the Mom (played by Melissa Leo) in The Fighter
And they’re right to fear her: with her steely nerve, Alice is as brazen a coach, Mama Rose in the boxing ring, Joey LaMotta in a push-up bra. When Micky goes absent from her immediate purvey, she shows up on his porch with the sisters in tow, posing questions that put him right back in the place of the apologetic son. “What’re you doing, Mickster?” she asks, her eyes all hard with disdain and disappointment. “Who’s gonna look after you?” Alice knows that mother love—and filial obligation—is one of the most powerful weapons she has. “I have done everything, everything I could for you,” she mutters. Her life is bound up in her children, and her coaching mantra is entirely one of maternity. When she catches Dicky sneaking out of a crackhouse, she shakes her head, on the verge of tears, and he has to sing to her like a little boy to pull her back to sanity.
Micky (Mark Wahlberg) and Charlene (Amy Adams)
It’s not easy being the son of such a demanding mother, and while Dicky gets to joke his way back into favor, all Micky can do is fight—fight and lose, but fight nonetheless. So it makes sense, given his messed-up family history, that Micky first starts to move out of the nest after falling for Charlene, a local bartender and the first person to call “bullshit” on his family-as-manager situation. (As portrayed by an utterly unglamorous Amy Adams, Charlene is one of the few college-educated characters in the film—due to an athletic scholarship for high-jump.) Charlene’s power in this movie is not as a love interest, but as someone who doesn’t treat Micky like a son or like a brother. She tells him he has to seize control of his career, toss Alice and Dicky off his team, and get serious with a real coach. We think she’s imagining him as a full-grown, self-sufficient man, but she also can’t help but place herself as an equal contender for the managerial job. She gives him a reason to go looking for new management, but she also seats herself decisively by the side of the ring. This is not a woman content to show up after the fight is finished—she is very much an active participant. “You got your confidence and your focus from O’Keefe, and from Sal, and from your father, and from me,” she declares, and there’s not an ounce of hesitation in what she says. It’s thrilling to watch the formerly meek mouse known as Amy Adams get to play someone so fierce.
Dicky (Christian Bale), Alice, and Micky in the ring
It’s when the instincts of the protective mother and the defensive girlfriend go up against each other that all hell breaks loose. Alice decides to storm over to Micky’s house with her daughters in tow, ringing the bell and banging on the door just as Micky and Charlene are doing the nasty. The bell rings and rings, and Charlene, furious at being interrupted, throws on a t-shirt and storms downstairs. Alice pleads with Micky to leave and come back home, but Charlene accuses Alice of allowing her son to get hurt, instead of stepping in and protecting him. In the midst of a boxing movie, what we get is a treatise on how women are the only ones that really know how to fight. Alice calls Charlene a skank, an “MTV Girl” (because clearly all MTV girls are hefting pitches of lager and fending off crude bar patrons), and Charlene lands a solid punch on one of the Eklund sisters. Her fists crunch into the girl’s face, red hair flying wild and legs kicking, and we know that none of these women can be fucked with.
Dicky is manic, and Micky is panicked, but it’s the women who are the real pillars of strength. Thus Micky and Dicky are forced to mediate through their female counterparts—Alice, who can’t stand to let her son give up, or Charlene, who forces Dicky into conceding some deeply held delusions. The dual strength of these women are what define the movie, what separates The Fighter from its fellow inspirational tales of athletic triumph, and what catapults it into a movie about athletic effort, and the force of will. And in the movie’s final joyous fight, we still get a triumphant romantic kiss…and it feels anything but hackneyed.
Jessica Freeman-Sladeis a cookbook editor at Random House, and has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She lives in Morningside Heights, NY.
Is Hollywood really churning out the same movies, with the same stories over and over, revolving around men?? Yes, yes and yes. Geez, it’s called diversity, Hollywood.
Men saving the world. Men doing what no one else can. Men, men, men. Oh yeah, and it’s almost exclusively white men. Sure, two women do make an appearance as the focus of the narrator — “one reporter” and “one woman,” aka Linda Fiorentina … in one frame holding panties. But in that sea of men, seeing only two women doesn’t really cut it. Men are not the only ones whose stories are worth telling. They’re not the only ones making a difference or saving the world. But you’d never know it.
Writing about the video, Joseph Lamour said, “This montage of movie trailers may seem like just another funny supercut, but to me it plays like a highlight reel for what’s wrong with American cinema.”
I thought it was a bit strange that all the movies in this video are about 20 years old or older. But has that much really changed? Of the top 250 grossing films in the U.S. in 2012, 9% were directed by women and 15% of the scripts were written by women. Of the top 250 films, women comprise 18% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors. Only 33% of speaking roles in movies belong to women.
You might also be thinking, “But these are just trailers. Who cares about the trailers??” But movie trailers, just like advertising in general, affect us. As I’ve written before about the prevalent sexism with Super Bowl ads: “Most people think they can ignore ads or that marketing is harmless. But advertisements splatter across billboards, buses, magazines, TV, radio and the internet. In Jean Kilbourne’s groundbreaking book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, she argues sexist and misogynistic imagery bombards us, inundating our senses even on a subconscious level. Whether we realize it or not, ads impact our choices and views.”
When we see movie after movie, ad after ad, revolving around men, it implies and reinforces the message that women don’t matter as much as men.
We talk A LOT at Bitch Flicks about the need for more women in film. More female protagonists, heroes, anti-heroes and villains. More films passing the Bechdel Test. More films focusing on mothers and daughters, sisters and female friendships. More female directors and screenwriters. More women of color. More queer women. More women of different sizes, ages, socioeconomic statuses, personalities, etc, etc, etc. More, more, more. We desperately need more.
Listen up, Hollywood. We’re tired of the same shit. We want to see more of all of our stories reflected on-screen. Not just white dudes.
In discussions of Sofia Coppola, nepotism is a long-covered topic. Regardless of early exposure in her acting career, I have no doubt that Coppola has ultimately benefited from the privilege of being surrounded by famous company. Without Francis Ford or Roman or Jason Schwartzman or Kirsten Dunst or Nicolas Cage would we be discussing a film written and directed by Sofia Coppola? Possibly–she is quite talented–however, while discussing that talent, we cannot ignore the methods by which that talent is displayed to us.
The Bling Ring, Coppola’s fifth film, follows the story of a group of Hollywood teens, spoiled and bored, who commit a series of celebrity robberies. The piece credited for inspiring the film is “The Suspects Wore Louboutins” by Nancy Jo Sales (now expanded into a full truth-based novel bearing the same title as the film. We dive into the brightly-lit suburbs on the tails of Marc (Israel Brussard, Flipped), the awkward new kid in town. Of course, his dad is in “the biz,” so he’s no stranger to the celebrity-saturated culture in which he now finds himself. Marc attends the area’s remedial school–he’s been held back because of missing classes–and while the students may be having difficulty succeeding at traditional subjects like math, they appear to do really well in subjects like underage drinking, parties, fashion, and clueless parents.
Katie Chang as Rebecca in The Bling Ring
Marc soon befriends aloof Rebecca (newcomer Katie Chang), and while the initial basis for their alliance seems to be rooted in traditionally queer-eye-for-the-straight-girl territory, the bond that develops goes deeper. At one point, Marc explains that his love for Rebecca is like a sister. One day, seemingly bored with their usual activities, Rebecca suggests that she and Marc commit a bit of robbery. The film lacks any but the barest suggestion of motive. Characters suggest that Rebecca is “obsessed” with these celebrities, that she wants to be them. What causes her to cross the line from coveting to claiming? Is it the hint of an unhappy home life, the incongruous image of the self compared to glossy magazines, the culture where becoming a celebrity is the highest honor (and a fully achievable one, given enough money, timing, and good clothes)?
Once the initial success wears off, and despite Marc’s jitters and (fully appropriate!) wariness at committing crimes, Rebecca is eager to try again, and to expand their crew. The rest of the “Bling Ring” is rounded out with Chloe (Claire Julien, another newcomer to film), Nicki (Emma Watson), and her adopted sister Sam (Taissa Farmiga, American Horror Story). Again, we don’t get much in the way of personality aside from Sam really liking leopard print, for example. The action quickly escalates, but in the slow, pondering way that only an indie film can truly manage. The group robs more celebs (Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom); they party in stolen clothes, spend stolen money, and snort stolen coke. They brag to friends. They post on Facebook. They get cocky, and not even security camera footage and a news story can deter them.
Emma Watson as Nicki in The Bling Ring
Of course, things come to an end. What had been an entertaining thrill ride dwindles out in courtroom sessions and talking heads. Whatever message Coppola seemed to strive for gets lost by the ending credits. After the film ended, I heard the girl seated in front of me ask her friend if the group was still in jail (sorry, is that a spoiler?). “I’m going to google Nicki,” she added, whipping out her phone. Perhaps that is the real question–how do we critique celebrity without adding to it; how do we ask questions in a way that might promote actual changes in attitude and behavior? These are questions, I think, that Coppola doesn’t have the answer to. There lies the conundrum: by telling this story, Coppola plays into the fame of the original “Bling Ring,” plays into our culture of voyeurism–not only do we want to watch celebrities, but we want to watch them get robbed. We want to sneak inside of their houses, watch their trials, and google them after watching fictionalized accounts of their lives. Of course, by telling this story, we also witness the factors that led to it.
Is it great to see a film written and directed by a woman, marketed as starring a woman, and led by a mostly-female cast do well in theaters? Abso-fucking-lutely. But no matter the highlights of The Bling Ring–the critique of excessive wealth, “sad white girl” culture, and the nature of celebrity–I cannot forget that Coppola is thriving off the very things she critiques.
Ladies of The Bling Ring
Other than the name changes, the major difference between the cast of The Bling Ring and the original gang is whiteness. Katie Chang does a stand-up job as Rebecca, but it is now-grown Emma Watson (Harry Potter, The Perks of Being a Wallflower) who fills advertisements and trailers for the film. She is playing the kind of girl who many fantasize about: sexual, liberated, rich. Nearly the polar opposite of Hermione Granger. She’ll flash cleavage and take a turn on the stripper pole. She’ll sell tickets.
And sure, we’ll laugh at dim-witted Nicki when she declares that she wants to be famous and run a charity organization, or that this “situation” was given to her as an opportunity. We’ll laugh, and then we’ll hit google. Maybe we’ll even try to find out when Watson will be out of town so we can take an unauthorized tour of her place.
