52 Films By Women: D.E.B.S. (2004)

SYFY Wire

By Andrea Thompson

The 2004 film “D.E.B.S.” is one of those deeply silly gems that was unfairly panned, both critically and commercially, but was subsequently rewarded with cult status once the dust settled. 

In a sense, it’s easy to see why so many were disappointed. The movie’s trailer and marketing teased a comedic, action-packed espionage adventure with girls in short skirts that poked fun both at itself and the action genre. And it’s not that “D.E.B.S.” doesn’t deliver the laughs and even the action, but at its heart, “D.E.B.S.” is a love story dressed up in action movie tropes.

The premise is that girls known as D.E.B.S. are trained in espionage at a paramilitary academy. They’re recruited via a hidden test in the SATs, which measures someone’s aptitude for the spy life. And what qualities, according to the movie, makes someone an ideal candidate? The ability to “lie, cheat, fight, and kill.” Such a cynical view of what is essentially government work is rather bold for a time when mindless patriotism was at an all-time high, even if the organization seems to have the usual goal of beating bad guys bent on destruction. Or in this case, bad girl, Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster).

With such a premise, it’s surprising that the action and the espionage itself falls rather short, and it’s not just due to budgetary constraints. The early 2000s was not a good time for film, given that a conservative brand of sleaze reigned supreme and CGI was just starting to really come into its own, giving studios shortcuts they hadn’t had access to previously, often at the detriment to things like storytelling and character. And the effects in D.E.B.S. haven’t aged especially well, even if they remain fun, and include components such as a plaid force field to shield their school/training facility.

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But the action sequences tend to lack urgency and suspense, and they’re actually rather boring. The love story is the interesting part, and it’s both a product of its time and ahead of it. Sure, sexual tension between a hero and their antagonist isn’t new by any stretch, but it is rare for both of them to be women. 

In true spy fashion, the two meet on a stakeout, where Amy (Sara Foster) is a top recruit, and actually the only one at the academy to get a perfect score, while Lucy is the villain who inherited a crime empire from her family, and has recently reappeared with plans to meet up with a Russian assassin. The logical next step is a dastardly plan, but as Amy discovers when she’s separated from her team and encounters Lucy, the meeting was actually a blind date. It went terrible, but sparks immediately fly between Lucy and Amy, and Lucy is soon abducting Amy at gunpoint to go on a date, and robbing a bank so she has another excuse to meet up with her. Such is their connection that Amy actually ends up running off with Lucy for a week, kicking off a montage of cute relationship moments, with the rest of the organization assuming Amy’s been captured.

The fallout is bound to come, and it’s brutal even before the rest of the D.E.B.S. find Amy and Lucy in bed together. Writer-director Angela Robinson, who is gay herself and typically includes LGBTQ themes in her films, makes it clear that much of her friends’ disgust with her isn’t just due to Amy falling for a villain, but falling for a female one. That someone who previously identified as straight and dated men in the past would suddenly fall for someone of the same gender is incomprehensible. Even if most eventually come around, and one even keeps her secret for as long as she can, Amy is also called a gay slut and a whore, and she insists she’s not gay, even as her attraction to Lucy grows. 

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While the D.E.B.S. demand that Amy hide her relationship with Lucy out of fear of their organization becoming a laughing stock, it’s Lucy and her supportive sidekick Scud (Jimmi Simpson) who come off as downright enlightened, especially when Lucy decides to get Amy back. Even if Lucy’s first instinct is an evil scheme, she eventually decides to become a better person, returning much of what she stole and sending Amy adorable presents. It’s far, far, easier to get behind the two of them then the so-called good guys who demand silence and conformity.

When Amy and Lucy finally do decide to commit to each other, Robinson is also sadly aware of what the limits of a happy ending are. Amy’s friends might come around, but the agency does not, with the two secretly departing together with implications of traveling to Barcelona so Amy can follow her dream of going to art school. They drive off not into a beautiful new day, but under the cover of night, with just a hint of sunset offering a glimpse of a better, happier, and more enlightened future.

52 Films By Women: Point Break (1991)

Twentieth Century Fox

By Andrea Thompson

For all the bluster and male machismo on display in Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 cult masterpiece “Point Break,” there’s a subtlety to it. Yes, behind the abs, the beaches, the surfing, the action sequences that include pit bulls being thrown around, airplane jumps, and robberies...there are some deep undercurrents.

The movie actually spent quite a few years in development, with various directors, casts, and titles attached and discarded by the time Bigelow came into the picture while she was still married to James Cameron, who is one of the producers. Both of them also apparently did quite a bit of rewriting on the script, even if they never received credit for it, and the result was a film that contains some of the best characters and action cinema has ever seen.

This rebirth of sorts accounts for much of the movie’s tone, which could be called outright ridiculous at times, even if it’s always enjoyable. “Point Break” is for all intents and purposes an 80s movie, and it has nearly all the staples of the decade’s cop dramas. There’s the loose cannon cop, the boss who takes every chance to eviscerate him, the ridiculous plot that includes surfers who rob banks to fund their totally awesome lifestyles, blustery banter, and its apparent embrace of all things machismo. Even our lead rookie cop Johnny Utah (oh, what a name), played by Keanu Reeves, is a former Rose Bowl-winning football quarterback.

Dig a little deeper though, and there’s much of the more progressive vibes that would come to define the 90s. Take the love interest, Tyler (Lori Petty). A name like that practically screams androgynous, and sure enough, Tyler is no unflappable blonde beach goddess in a bikini framed in a holo of light as she soaks up the California sun. When Utah first meets her, she’s dressed in a wetsuit, barely even framed as she scrambles in the chaos of the ocean to save Johnny from drowning after his disastrous attempt to learn how to surf. When he tells her his name, she shouts back, “Who cares!”

With her brunette pixie haircut and deeply 90s wardrobe, Tyler is feminine but not objectified. Her and Utah’s relationship, which eventually does become romantic, is far more equal than in most action movies. Tyler is the one who teaches Utah to surf, and her presence and framing itself is a commentary on the sexism of the genre. Bigelow literally films Tyler and Utah on the same level, rather than lingering lasciviously on Petty’s body, and Tyler constantly pushes back against the toxicity she encounters. When she is eventually, inevitably held hostage, that is when her wardrobe becomes far more traditionally feminine, with Bigelow dressing Tyler in a short white nightie.

Tyler is also the one to warn Utah about Bodhi (Patrick Swayze, RIP) one of the most iconically charismatic villains the movies have ever produced. From the start, Bodhi and Utah’s relationship has a deep undercurrent of homoeroticsm, with the kind of intense, love at first sight moments that’s typically framed as romantic, as Utah admires Bodhi’s surfing prowess as he is indeed framed and surrounded by the sunlit waves.

The late Swayze threw everything into this role, and it shows. He is entirely believable as a leader of a group of surfers so completely under his sway that they remain true believers even as they’re bleeding to death, a result of Bodhi chasing greater and greater highs.

Twentieth Century Fox

That is indeed what makes this, or rather his, group unique. They aren’t exactly robbing banks for the money, which they use to fund their surfing adventures. They justify it by a kind of spiritual philosophy, which Bodhi neatly sums up when he tells them, “We are here to show those guys that are inching their way on the freeways in their metal coffins that the human spirit is still alive.” It’s a grand statement, but then, junkies are pretty good at rationalizing their behavior. These guys risk their lives surfing the biggest waves, and their crime spree is little more than an extension of that same sickness. 

As Tyler points out in one of her many warnings to Utah, Bodhi can sense that Utah shares his sickness, and it’s no accident that Bodhi’s true toxicity is revealed via Tyler. He may wax sad about how he despises violence, but he sets up Tyler’s kidnapping so perfectly, Utah has no choice but to go with Bodhi’s demands and help him rob a bank. Bodhi may grieve when things go horribly wrong and the bodies start piling up, but he refuses to stop, even as he loses the rest of his team.

As Utah is pulled into circumstances that take him closer to, and eventually beyond the edge and he suffers his own losses, he in a sense becomes Bodhi’s final victim. He remains under his sway, even after he manages to track Bodhi down, overpower him, and subdue him. Ultimately, Utah can’t bear to see his wild man in a cage, and releases him so Bodhi can die doing what he loves: surfing the once-in-a-lifetime wave that will kill him, while Utah walks away and tosses his badge in the ocean.

Bigelow makes all this fun, tragic, and yes, deeply sexy without lingering too much on the bodies of the various surfers, male or female. It takes a hell of a director to get us to feel so much of the rush her characters feel, whether in the ocean, on a robbery, an iconic foot chase, or free falling through the air. You’d think it would’ve led to far more action films directed by women, but alas, change comes slow...until it doesn’t.

52 Films By Women: The Old Guard (2020)

Netflix

By Andrea Thompson

Action movies are every bit as much wish fulfillment fantasies as rom-coms. We want to believe that people are capable of these kinds of breathtaking physical stunts, this formidable of a mindset, and that they could not only stand up to the bad guys, but beat them against all odds, just as we want to believe in the great love stories. 

In real life we know our heroes seldom live up to our impossibly high expectations, or they prove to be all too vulnerable, to pressure and bullets alike. And love can fade, or turn to outright contempt with little to no explanation save for the slow, mundanely cruel struggles of everyday life.

Part of the genius of the Netflix film “The Old Guard” is how brilliantly director Gina Prince-Bythewood gives us this fantasy while updating it for our times. There’s not just a damn good reason our action heroes survive everything their adventures have to offer, from hails of bullets, slit throats, and falls from multiple stories, there are major drawbacks to such resilience. If the immortals in “The Old Guard” no longer have any reason to fear death, an eternity of imprisonment offers chills galore.

Our introduction to this world is Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), a Marine who gets her throat cut when she’s on a mission to take out a military target in Afghanistan, only to find herself healed without a scratch. When she’s approached, or rather, kidnapped by the world-weary Andromache, or Andy (Charlize Theron), she receives explanations, but precious few answers. Andy and the rest of her team, who are also immortals, not only don’t know how or why they received their gifts, they’re also on the run from those who wish to exploit their abilities.

What they have done is spend their time assisting those in need, which is a welcome change in a genre which often seems more interested in taking the time to reassure us that the men dying on-screen are evil in order to justify disposing of them with relish. But “The Old Guard” is more interested in telling us about the people Andy and her men are rescuing, rather than delving into the lives of those who victimized them.

Just as remarkable is the team’s diversity, with Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky’s (Luca Marinelli) relationship not only treated as a simple matter of fact, but spelled out with one of cinema’s most beautifully poetic declarations of love before adding another entry to one of its most passionate kisses. Such a simple thing as a great love story between two men shouldn’t feel so monumental, but it remains so, since the genre’s also known for its reverence for not just traditional masculinity, but hypermasculinity, and often has difficulty doing right by female love interests, let alone two male ones.

Netflix

Skill like this also goes a long way towards excusing plot holes, and this is one area where “The Old Guard” is by no means an exception. You’ll not only excuse Nile still having her phone, but perhaps the biggest hole of all, and that is people continuing to trust CEOs. But multiple people make the decision to trust Merrick (Harry Melling), who’s not just any CEO, but the head of a pharmaceutical empire. Why anyone would be shocked that he turns out to be, shall we say, ethically challenged is beyond me. 

Good thing there’s the incredible action scenes to distract. Andy and her cohorts may heal from any injury inflicted on them, but they still feel pain, and they aren’t gifted with any other power such as super strength. Their abilities come from the fact that they’ve had a very long time to hone their combat skills, and their time on the run is less than glamorous. You’d think they’d have made a few investments, but these action heroes don’t have unlimited access to a vast horde of resources; they hide out in trains and long abandoned buildings while they’re figuring out their next moves. 

Gina Prince-Bythewood saves the most satisfying fantasy for the end, where she gives us a taste of something we crave about as much as love: meaning. When the team gets a small sense of what their actions have wrought for humanity over just the last 150 years alone, it’s a realization that perhaps they are a part of a larger story after all, one that consists of humanity continually choosing their better natures. In our current moment, perhaps that’s the most unlikely belief of all, but “The Old Guard” sells it with such conviction that you can’t help but hope for the best, not just for its characters, but for us all.

52 Films By Women: Revenge (2017)

Film Affinity

By Andrea Thompson

They say hell is other people, and in the 2017 French film “Revenge,” a young woman is certainly put through the ringer, not just because of the men around her, but their toxic entitlement that views her as an object to be used and discarded at will.

However, “Revenge” isn't just a melding of genres, an action thriller that's also a horror film. It's clearly a rape revenge movie, a horror subgenre that doesn't get a lot of respect, and rightly so. Typically, they're films that claim to be about empowering women after a devastating attack, but more often than not, they're exploitative in the most unenjoyable way, relishing women's pain and not just the violence they inflict, but also endure. Such films also tend to enforce gender norms, typically depicting a stereotypically innocent girl or woman who is “tainted” by her rape and must be avenged. Sometimes it isn't even her who does the avenging, but her family, as was the case in “The Last House on the Left” and “Death Wish.”

Given such staples, it's hardly a surprise that nearly every film in the genre was written and directed by men. Even if “Revenge” contains all the typical elements, its female gaze makes all the difference. Coralie Fargeat wrote as well as directed the film, and the longer you watch “Revenge” the clearer her intentions become. Much like a film we previously discussed, “Revenge” caters to the male gaze, but Fargeat has far more success subverting it.

IMDB

The heroine, Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) isn't just an atypical heroine, she's the girl who's more likely to be killed off as punishment for her sexual sins. From the minute she appears in all her blonde glory, sucking on lollipop and then going down on her handsome blonde lover Richard (Kevin Janssens), in his gorgeous, isolated desert home he uses as a getaway for himself and his friends' hunting trips, she seems doomed, with nearly every thought emphasizing her beauty and sexuality.

How doomed becomes clear once Richard's friends Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchede) join them early, much to Richard's dismay. From the beginning, they unsettle Jen, but she makes the best of it, and they party late into the night. In films such as “Straw Dogs,” Jen's deeply sexual dance would be a provocation, but in “Revenge,” it's just a party, and in no way an excuse for what occurs the next morning when Richard departs on an errand for a few hours.

Even if they've never been through such an attack, so many women can relate to what happens to Jen, and the discomfort she immediately feels sitting across the table from Stan. At first she's able to laugh off the unnecessary touching and the comments. Then his leering intensity, which Jen tries to ignore, makes her so uncomfortable she retreats to her room. Stan follows her, then gets angrier when Jen doesn't respond to his advances, which she first tries to placate, then flee from. It's to no avail, as Stan not only rapes her, but is abetted by Dimitri, who not only walks away, but turns on the TV to drown Jen's screams.

IMDB

Far from reveling in the attack, Fargeat refuses to show it or Stan himself, with the few shots emphasizing Jen's pain and refusing to consider it in any way justified. When Richard returns, his concern is keeping Jen quiet, and offers her a large sum of money as well as a job in Canada as a bribe. Jen is unsurprisingly less than receptive, only wanting to return home, and their argument escalates in Richard pushing her off a cliff, something which shocks even Stan.

Jen doesn't so much survive as experience a kind of rebirth, just barely able to at first evade the men who intend to finish the job Richard started once they discover she's alive. At first, Jen is little more than a wounded animal, but she needs no persuasion to do away with Dimitri, the first man who finds her. After that first kill, she spends the night healing herself thanks to a drug and some methods that don't seem like they'd be effective enough to allow her to walk, let alone run and fight, the next day. But in case we missed the point “Revenge” has been trying to make, the phoenix from the bar can Jen used to cauterize her wounds has become magnificently branded onto her skin. With such flourishes, who really cares about plot holes?

Sure enough, when Jen spots Stan, she runs toward him, not away. Is Jen objectified, even though she's become the hunter, rather than the hunted? To be sure. This is still an exploitation pic where a devastatingly attractive young woman woman is wreaking havoc in skimpy clothes. But Jen's scars are also her glory, adding to her new identity as a hawk-like avenging angel who tears her prey to shreds.

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Then again, she's not the only one who's objectified. The final showdown was always going to be between Jen and Richard, who underestimates her to the end, with him insisting he and his friends split up even when they discover Dimitri's body. He is also naked throughout their confrontation, and Fargeat's camera is like a voyeur, lingering behind Richard and emphasizing his vulnerability for the end we know is coming, and which leaves his immaculate home smeared with blood on nearly every surface, with his ultimate insignificance emphasized.

Neither Jen or Fargeat gives these men any mercy. They're all married, but their families only serve to emphasize their coldness and entitlement. They're all held equally responsible for Jen's suffering, and they all pay the price for their vicious misogyny. There is no voiceover, no running dialogue of Jen's mind, but Fargeat doesn't need it with an actress like Lutz. Her mostly wordless performance proves that less really can be more, with her journey from sex object to victim, and finally, action heroine, gives us a deeply satisfying, stylish feminist vision bathed in blood.