52 Films By Women: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

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By Andrea Thompson

It’s strange to imagine a world unfamiliar with Agnès Varda, but it was still in the process of getting to know her when she made the 1962 masterpiece “Cléo from 5 to 7.” It was only her second feature, and it took a subject other films would stretch across days, weeks, months, or more, and compressed it into real time.

Over the course of a mere 90 minutes, a young, beautiful, vain singer named Cléo (Corinne Marchand) is not just awaiting the results of a biopsy that will inform her whether she has cancer, she comes to terms with her own mortality. It would feel like paranoia or the hypochondria everyone assumes it is if the film didn’t heavily imply that Cléo not only has cancer, but that she will eventually die from it.

Thank goodness for Varda, because a lesser filmmaker, even a female one, would merely be punishing Cléo for her flaws. But Varda knows there’s more to it than merely portraying Cléo’s self-absorption and humbling her accordingly. As one of a very few female filmmakers during the male-dominated French New Wave, her signature touch, full of compassion, realism, and symbolism doesn’t just burst from the screen, it seems to swirl around us, gently sweeping all into her vision.

Yes, Cléo is focused on her appearance and her beauty, and she is well aware that it is her source of her power. It’s no accident that mirrors are a heavy presence in this film, appearing twice in the first ten minutes alone. But the kind of power Cléo possesses flows from others. It is the outside world who bestows Cléo with power, attention, and her career, and Varda’s camera, rather than lingering on Cléo and her, ahem, assets as she walks down the street, pulls back as both men and women stare and lavish her with attention. 

But not comfort. Every friend Cléo interacts with fails to give her the emotional support she needs, and almost all of them, from friends, confidantes, and colleagues, refuse to take her illness, or even her, seriously. It’s an old, practically classic revelation for women who supposedly enjoy all manner of power and privilege: the discovery of just how fragile their position really is. One of the first, and only, clearly spoken revelations Cléo has about halfway into the film is when she says, “Everyone spoils me. No one loves me.” It’s also when she strips herself of her wig, dons a black dress, and leaves her luxurious apartment to wander alone in search of consolation.

It proves to be an evasive thing. This poor woman must grapple with death all day, from shattered mirrors which she interprets as bad omens to various films and even taxi drivers casually referencing the ultimate end. Even the tarot reader at the beginning, the only portion of the film in color, sets the tone, casually predicting nearly every event to come, and privately stating that she believes Cléo is doomed. 

Varda refuses to give a final verdict, but just as another great film concluded “the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,” Cléo’s comfort arises from being able to see beyond herself. Or perhaps she just finally meets the right person-a young, talkative soldier named Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller). Unlike the other people Cléo encounters, who are still fully immersed in life, Antoine also has to grapple with the possibility of impending death as a soldier who will soon return to the battlefield of the Algerian War.

It is then when Cléo is finally able to lose her fear of her own possible end, and finally be at peace with herself in the Paris of the 60s Varda fully embraces in all its splendor. In this beautiful, fully alive world, perhaps Varda just found it unthinkable for despair or even death itself to emerge as the dominant force.

52 Films By Women: The Last Mistress (2007)

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By Andrea Thompson

What makes a movie sexy is often as difficult to define as what makes a comedy funny, or a horror film scary. But there’s no question that the 2007 Catherine Breillat film “The Last Mistress” isn’t just sexy, it’s a classic bodice-ripper. Set in Paris in 1835, a time and place that always seems ripe for cinematic swooning, the film features a familiar scenario that Breillat doesn’t so much subvert as explode, albeit with empathy and compassion.

Ryno de Marigny (Fu'ad Aït Aattou) is penniless in a fashion distinctive of the French aristocracy, and is about to wed Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida) the young, virtuous blonde jewel of Parisian society, to much disapproval and speculation. Ryno is what’s known as a rake, who swears he’s reformed and is deeply, sincerely in love with Hermangarde. The trouble comes from the woman who is in indeed the other side of his would-be bride’s virtuous coin - the dark-haired, deeply sexual spaniard Vellini, who is ferocity itself in Asia Argento’s spellbinding hands.

Vellini has been Ryno’s mistress for ten years, which as one character remarks, is rather shocking when there’s no legal ceremony compelling them to stay together. So how exactly did these two come together, and why did they stay together? Ryno reveals all when Hermangarde’s spirited grandmother (Claude Sarraute) demands to know their story so she can determine if he should really marry her granddaughter. 

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From the beginning, Ryno and Vellini’s love was about as tempestuous as can be expected, full of not just passion and fury, but violence and blood. The second their eyes meet in mutual dislike and lust, neither of them stood a chance. But as Ryno continues telling the story of  their now doomed (in one way or another) romance, it’s far more complicated than a simple case of mutual emotional abuse. The truly tragic thing about their now quite dangerous liaison is it once blossomed into one of mutual love, resulting in a daughter. When that daughter perished in a tragic accident, the affection that grew between them curdled into an addictive toxicity.

If Ryno is both more aware of it and eager to escape it, it’s less due to any quality of his than the fact that he has more of an opportunity for a life. Yet even Ryno with his supposed freedoms is stifled by the mores of their time, which insists on prescribed roles and conformity.His genuine feelings for Hermangarde are based as much on reverence as real love, and you can hardly ask such a revered wife to demean herself by acting like a mistress. 

Nor can Hermangarde bring herself to allow her husband to see her in anything less than a pristine state of emotions. When she learns that Vellini has followed them to their beautiful home in the countryside, supposedly removed from the decadence of Paris, she doesn’t allow Ryno to see the tears she sheds. And she continues to hide the worst of the emotional fallout, even when she sees for herself that Ryno has been unable to resist rekindling his relationship with Vellini even though he is aware that Hermangarde is pregnant. When she miscarries, she is unable to berate Ryno although he begs her to, desperate to break the silence his actions have wrought.

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There’s nothing like watching high society ruin the lives of its denizens, but few have depicted such a decline like Catherine Breillat has. If it’s narrated from a male perspective, she found the perfect vessel in Fu'ad Aït Aattou, who has the pouty lips, perfectly wavy hair, chiseled cheekbones, and piercing eyes that are just masculine enough to make him believable as a playboy, yet vulnerable enough to sell a conflicted soul. He holds his own against the far more experienced players, most of whom are women, and include Léa Seydoux in one of her first on-screen appearances in a small role as Vellini’s servant and occasional lover, since apparently in France even the mistresses have mistresses.

To say that these women are ahead of their time isn’t exactly accurate. Many of the female characters, most of whom are older, are indeed out of step with the times, but much of that is merely due to the world becoming a far more sentimental and evangelical one than from what they knew in their youth. They accept the unhappiness in their lives as a simple matter of fact, casually discussing the men who flagrantly flaunt their privilege and lovers as a matter of course. It’s a quietly powerful commentary on the lack of any options or alternatives these women have, despite the wealth and sumptuous surroundings Breillat magnificently depicts in all their decadent glory. 

When even people such as these have such a small chance at happiness, watching it slip away from those who have the best of intentions feels like a tragedy for all, from those involved to the ones who sadly watch from afar as it crumbles and slips away.

52 Films By Women: By the Sea (2015)

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By Andrea Thompson

“By the Sea” would be an interesting film on its own terms, if only due to the deliciously scandalous personal lives of its two leads. And what transpired shortly after its release in 2015 only thickens the plot. The film not only stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as a married couple dealing with some serious issues, it was shot on Jolie and Pitt's honeymoon, with Angelina Jolie herself taking on the writing and directing duties. It was the first film the two acted in together since “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” in 2005, which sparked the beginning of a media frenzy around them after Brad Pitt left his wife Jennifer Aniston for Jolie, who gave birth to their first child in 2006.

But if it took one film to bring them together, this one seems to have driven them apart. Not only was “By the Sea” a box office bomb, making only $3.3 million of its $10 million budget back, Jolie and Pitt separated in 2016, then made it official by divorcing a few years after. Critics also almost universally panned the film, calling it a dull, plotless slog full of rich people problems in another gorgeous locale with some equally sumptuous visuals.

To be fair, there's some truth in this “By the Sea,” does have little plot to speak of, and it remains a mostly interior drama about the lives of some very wealthy people in a remote hotel in the south of France. It may take place in the 1970s, but the 60s vibes are strong with this one. Such familiarity doesn't seem to leave much of anything else to explore, but the real problem might just be how Jolie actually did succeed in subverting that familiarity in a fashion that didn't satisfy critics or audiences. Or maybe it was simply a matter of timing. “By the Sea” might have found more success if it had come out a year later, when it was once again not only finally acceptable to center a film around women's concerns, but for them to respond in a way deemed taboo for female characters: unlikably.

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Time also worked against “By the Sea” in another way. Its location and patterns may be evocative of 60s ennui, but there's little sense of a capsule meant to evoke a lost age of American optimism and prosperity. What does emerge is a beautiful fusion of modernity and timelessness. There's a dreamlike quality that springs not only from two almost impossibly beautiful, very sad people, but also their very real closeness, and the rhythms and routines they've built around each other. Familiarity hasn't bred contempt with Roland (Pitt) and Vanessa (Jolie), but there's an immediate sense that something's deeply wrong. Vanessa pulls away when Roland reaches out to her, emotionally and physically, which between that and his drinking problem has left him unable to write. At least he knows there really is no excuse for writer's block in such a breathtaking location, particularly when there's guys around like Michel (Niels Arestrup), the elderly owner of the local cafe, to muse about life and the deceased wife he still mourns and cherishes.

When Roland and Vanessa notice that a newlywed couple on their honeymoon has taken the room next to theirs, it initially appears as if they'll be the salt in their wounds. Vanessa finds her own method of coping though, like discovering she can spy on them through a hole in her wall, gazing at a happiness she clearly once experienced but now feels so far from. Her interest isn't overtly sexual at first; she's just as fascinated by the sweet nothings of their conversations as their bedroom activities, which she doesn't see until about an hour into the film.

For Roland, it's a chance to experience something with his wife again after he discovers the secret. Soon they begin to engage in a perverse kind of dance with their young counterparts by going on various public outings together, then eagerly spying to see how they react in private. Bizarrely, it seems to work for a time, with Roland and Vanessa becoming intimate again themselves, emotionally and physically. Their problems, however, are not going to be solved so easily, as Roland quickly realizes. He may be another struggling writer, but he's still a perceptive man who's mostly correct about his wife's flaws. In many ways, Vanessa does want to resist the possibility of happiness and play the victim, and lash out at their counterparts simply because she wants to punish people who can achieve what she cannot.

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Vanessa's repression and her very real oppression is also far more complicated than it first appears. Her husband's writing career may be floundering, but he still has the opportunity to continue. Vanessa, not so much. She was an exquisite dancer, but she aged out of a profession that probably disposes of women even quicker than the film industry. It's left Vanessa floundering, not just due to the abrupt end of her career despite her talents. She's also literally unable to produce new life in the next stage of her own, just as she finds herself so much more vulnerable. Being denied motherhood can be a devastating crux in itself, but what Vanessa is truly struggling with is the loss of her ability to create on every front.

Given this context, it's understandable why Vanessa is defined as much by her anger as her sadness. True, she may dramatically stay out in the rain, only to return home and tell her husband, “Now my outsides match my insides,” but the rage she's repressing and denying is an equally defining force. Complexity and unlikability in a female character can be a heavy burden for a film, but Roland does his share of damage to the concept of masculinity too. He's not the flamboyant, flailing writer who has to be reined in by his sadly understanding wife, he's the more moral of the two, quickly realizing that they should stop the sick game they're playing and just “stop being such assholes” in general.

Easy categorization, in other words, isn't something that can be applied to either of them. Neither a dreamboat nor a doormat, Roland is very aware of his wife's flaws and the reasoning behind her actions. It simply doesn't keep him from loving her, despite everything. It's a setup that doesn't lend itself to easy moral conclusions, and sure enough, “By the Sea” keeps them to a minimum. That these two deserve each other by the end is clear enough, but it's truly for better and for worse.

52 Films By Women: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

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By Andrea Thompson

Watching the passionate 18th century French romance “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is an experience, and not just because it's such a beautifully told love story. Since it also happens to be a love story between two women, it's going to be about far more than the lovers themselves, and sure enough, “Portrait” is both an indicator of how far we've come, and how far we have yet to go. However, the film not only seems aware of this, it's pretty damn intent on charting its own course, and to hell with the male gaze and all the expectations thereof, with none of their love scenes even shown on-screen.

Even juicier is the fact that writer-director Céline Sciamma previously dated Adèle Haenel, one half of the couple her film breathtakingly portrays. Sciamma certainly shrouds the noblewoman she plays, Héloïse, in mystery, revealing various faceless portraits of her far before she reveals the woman herself, even shrouding her in a cape before she joyously bursts onto the screen on a sumptuous scene set on the cliffs overlooking the sea on her isolated estate.

Observing her is Marianne (Noémie Merlant), who has been hired to paint Héloïse's portrait for her upcoming marriage to a Milan nobleman, which will occur once the painting is finished. Héloïse is opposed to the nuptials, so she has refused to sit for it, and she's unaware that the young woman she believes has been hired as a walking companion has actually been tasked with closely observing her so she can finish the portrait, which will allow the marriage Héloïse dreads to take place.

It's a sad fact that films with protagonists other than white men will inevitably be compared to each other. Case in point: how many of us compared “Captain Marvel” to “Wonder Woman” when it came out, even though “Wonder Woman” was released two years prior? I know I certainly couldn't resist, despite my best efforts. So I hope I'll be forgiven for “The Handmaiden” being at the forefront of my mind during the first half of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Both kick off a love story between two women based on deception, although “Portrait” is more heartbreaking. Héloïse believes Marianne's glances are due to passion alone, but Marianne is part of the forces slowly closing in, and she must hide her true profession, and all the evidence of it, such as the work itself, and the clothes and hands spattered with paint.

Héloïse in essence begins as a silenced woman, a traditionally passive muse whose future has been decided, although the artist portraying her has a more direct role in that future than usual. This silencing, this forced passivity that is a direct result of the patriarchal world all the women on-screen cope with in various ways, is what “Portrait” really delves into, and the wrenching vulnerability, as well as the power, of seeing while being seen. After Marianne reveals her true purpose, she is startled and unsettled when she realizes her seemingly unaware subject has been closely observing her too.

Héloïse quickly becomes an active partner in Marianne's creation, especially when Héloïse's mother (Valeria Golino) departs for a few days. Not only Héloïse and Marianne, but Sophie (Luàna Bajrami), the maid they also befriend, are free to create their own matriarchal world...and help Sophie get an abortion. All three women bond, but it's also clear who's falling for whom. Héloïse not only encourages Marianne not to look away from Sophie's procedure, she is the one who decides that it's a worthwhile subject to paint. For Sciamma, women's art and their lives aren't just worthwhile subjects that have been neglected, they're part of a history that's still barely acknowledged today, as hashtags such as #shoutyourabortion prove.

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Marianne is the one who has the ultimate luxury, that of a choice. It shapes her life and how she responds to the world. Sciamma emphasizes her independence from the start, as she jumps off the boat bringing her to the estate to rescue some of her equipment and carries it in herself rather than depending on the men conveying. She is also the one who takes the male role in the much-discussed story of Orpheus and Eurydice when the three women ponder why Orpheus looked back at his wife Eurydice at the last minute, dooming the lovers to part ways as Eurydice is dragged back into the underworld. Marianne suggests that perhaps Orpheus chose the memory of her rather than Eurydice herself. “He doesn't make the lover's choice, but the poet's,” Marianne says. “Perhaps she was the one who said, 'Turn around.'”

That might indeed have been the case, but actively choosing to part ways is not an option for either lover in this case, who never even discuss the possibility of a future together. When the inevitable parting does indeed come, and Marianne sees a vision of Héloïse in her wedding dress telling her to turn around, it feels like a coping mechanism, an illusion of choice in a situation where there isn't one. Men may only have cameo roles in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” but this is nevertheless their world, and there's no place for a love like the one Marianne and Héloïse passionately share. Even Héloïse's mother, who knows the pain her daughter is feeling, is nevertheless willing to give her daughter to a stranger, simply because she can't imagine any other path for her.

However, their bond lives on, and Héloïse goes on to play an active role not only in Marianne's art, but in the art others create, even if in some cases it's only visible to those who know how to look. When Marianne sees her for the last time, it's also when Héloïse is at a concert, where she passionately reacts to music she heard for the first time when Marianne played it for her. Both may be alone, but they will remain connected for the rest of their lives.

52 Films By Women: Revenge (2017)

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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.

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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.

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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.