Female Filmmaker February (pt. I)

Outrage

Monster

[TW: rape, sexual assault]

Welcome to Female Filmmaker February! Because I love female filmmakers, and because I love alliteration, every Thursday evening of this month, I’ll be viewing double features directed by women! I’m sure I’ll only be scratching the surface of the immense impact that women creators have had upon cinema and upon culture in general, but I look forward to exploring what the female gaze looks like, how transformative and cathartic and necessary women’s stories and perspectives are to the world of film but also to the world as a whole. Some of my favorite female directors are Sofia Coppola, Ana Lily Amirpour, The Wachowski Sisters, Celine Sciamma, Amy Heckerling, Agnes Varda, Gurinder Chadha, Karyn Kusama, Cathy Yan, Melina Matsoukas, Barbara Kopple, Kathryn Bigelow, Greta Gerwig, Penny Marshall, Julia Ducournau, Emerald Fennell, Joan Micklin Silver, Gillian Robespierre, and probably more that I’m currently forgetting. If you’re wondering “What about Jane Campion?” I’ll direct you to my review of her blue balls of a film, In The Cut. I could truly start anywhere, place my focus upon any given country or moment in time to celebrate female filmmakers because their work reaches every corner of the earth and every topic ever put to screen. So many of the films that I’ve avoided on this cinematic journey, female-directed or otherwise, are films that seem to be wholly centered around pain. So, to rip the bandaid off of what can only be an extensive, complex journey into female filmmaking, I wanted to view films expressing and exploring women’s pain. What I didn’t expect from these films, both with challenging subject matter, were the moments of beauty and peace found within the chaos. To begin, I’d be remiss not to include a film by one of the most famous female directors of all time: Ida Lupino. Widely renowned as the most distinguished female filmmaker during the regimes of the Hollywood studio system, Ida Lupino had an illustrious acting career before (and during) her time directing and producing and writing several films. The daughter of musical comedian Stanley Lupino, she spent her childhood and early adulthood acting on stage and in film, but her true desire was writing. While she was a hit with audiences, she often beefed with studio head Jack Warner—opposing roles that she deemed poorly-written and offering her rewrites to scripts, and turning down a role alongside Ronald Reagan in Kings Row, which resulted in multiple suspensions from the studio. (Reagan was still a democrat and an actor at the time but she must’ve caught his bad vibes) During one of these suspensions, she and her then-husband Collier Young started their own independent production company (The Filmmakers, Inc). She was the first woman to direct a noir film (The Hitch-hiker) directed 100 episodes of television, and was the first woman to direct an episode of The Twilight Zone (The Masks, one of my favs). Ida and her production company sought to add a dash of realism to the dreamy but shallow Hollywood film narratives at the time, focusing their films around socially conscious topics. Her 1950 directorial debut Outrage was a film with such social consciousness, as it was one of the first American films that dealt with the topic of rape. It’s not an easy topic to speak about or bring to the screen, but in 1950, positively no other film, other than Johnny Belinda (1948) even referenced the subject. Watching it now, in 2022, it is just as groundbreaking, just as frightening, just as real as it’s ever been. Outrage essentially begins as a horror movie. We meet Ann Walton, a bookkeeper and secretary who’s just been proposed to and is ready to start her life. As she’s leaving work late one night, she is stalked and tormented and raped by a man who’d harassed her previously, in the light of day, many times. The actual assault is never shown, nor is the word “rape” ever said, but every torturous, terrifying moment that leads up to it makes the experience just as unsettling. The camerawork throughout the film is stunning, but during this sequence the angles are particularly slick and cutting edge. After she is assaulted, Ann makes her way home in the dead of night. There is no relief when she makes it home, nor when her fiancé says “let’s run far, far away and get married”. She is rightfully shaken up and everywhere she goes, from her front door to her office to the bus stop, there are people whispering and there are men who feel entitled to touch her. She decides to run away on her own to Los Angeles, but along the way winds up in a small rural town outside of LA where a kind family and a kind reverend take her in and look after her. While she finds a way to acclimate to her new life, she remains in the throes of her trauma, as she unable to speak about what happened to her. Given the fact that the Hollywood production code forbade the use of the words “sex manic” “sex fiend” “rapist” and “rape”, Ann’s silence and avoidance of her feelings was a perfect metaphor for the restrictions Ida was under. For a film with such intensely distressing subject matter, it had a surprisingly happy ending. Outrage is a film about rape, but it isn’t just about the tragedy of this reality, it’s about the processing, healing, and living that happens subsequently. One of the things this movie does best is show that men are creeps and that they’re everywhere: the bad guys, the “nice” guys who mean well, her boss, the cops, even her fiancé, these men felt that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to Ann. And through this one role, in a time when absolutely no one was talking about rape and assault and domestic violence, Outrage boldly spoke the truth. Mala Powers’ performance is superb and in it we see the brave faces that so many women have to put on, the roles they must constantly serve, the dangers they constantly face. By the end of this film there is a sense of relief to be felt, and I sincerely wish the same could be said for Patty Jenkins 2003 film Monster. Starring unrecognizable powerhouse Charlize Theron and OG aloof loner weirdo queen Christina Ricci, Monster tells the story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos and her girlfriend Selby, who, unlike most serial killers, is really easy to sympathize with. I am so not a fan of Patty Jenkins’ movie Wonder Woman, I could write an entire blog post about how much that movie maddened me (but instead I’ll just direct you to two WAY better Chris Pine films), so I was so pleasantly surprised by her directorial debut—a completely compelling, heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, entirely immersive knockout of a film. I have, for many years, heard how excellent Charlize is in this movie, I remember watching the Oscars that year as a 7-year old and thinking “no WAY are those ladies the same person”, but actually watching her performance I really came to understand how she rightfully won Best Actress. Aileen Wuornos was not your typical serial killer. For one, she only barely earned that title due to the fact that she killed seven people, (murdering three or more people gives you that title) as opposed to people like Ted Bundy who murdered thirty people or Jeffrey Dahmer who murdered seventeen. Aileen was a victim of circumstance, forced into sex work at a young age and forced to struggle through her life mostly alone. The first time Aileen kills a man is in self-defense, after he brutally assaults and tortures her, which is understandably the hardest scene to watch. The man who takes advantage of her is such a despicable scum-sucking shitbag of a man that you wanna cheer and rejoice and jump for joy when Aileen murders his ass. Aileen only knew a life of survival and turmoil, but when she meets wallflower Selby (real name Tyria), she experiences true, consensual love and acceptance. These moments of joy were captured so beautifully, and were just as visceral as the scenes of violence. The love story here is a tragic one, but it is nevertheless represented in a compassionate and judgement-free way. The conversations Aileen and Selby had when they’re first getting to know each other were so interesting, so sweet, and so earnest that it makes you wonder if their story would’ve ended differently had they not been stuck in a cycle of poverty and desperation. Aileen was far from perfect, but she didn’t deserve abuse and she didn’t deserve the death penalty. She didn’t enjoy killing, she didn’t enjoy the lifestyle she lived, but she found a way to survive—just as she always seemed to do. She didn’t force any man to do anything, she just waited to be picked up and escorted to a securely hidden spot of each man’s choosing. I’m not saying I support what Aileen did, I’m just saying, like, listen… when men are horrible to you your whole life, disrespect you, discount you, treat you like you’re nothing, try to rape you, try to kill you, you can’t blame a girl for snapping. Monster is shocking, mesmerizing, entirely gripping, and has a unexpectedly warm aesthetic and fun soundtrack (in spite of the needle drop of “Don’t Stop Believing”) While I know that neither of tonight’s films sound terribly fun to experience, I promise you that they were both way easier to watch than you’d think. There’s a lot of pain, don’t get me wrong, but it was not without peace and serenity as well. I can’t say they’ll make you feel good, but both of these films have tough conversations that so many other works of media still cower from, which is admirable. How you may feel about these depictions is subjective, but the material is nonetheless true. I promise not to spend the entire month of February upon female-directed pain. There are many more topics to explore, and many more good films to watch, so stay tuned!