52 Films By Women: Strange Days (1995)

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By Andrea Thompson

Some filmmakers, even the well-known ones, are full of surprises. Take Kathryn Bigelow, who has been directing for decades, but is mostly known for her later work, such as “The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and “Detroit.” I've already covered another of her lesser-known films, “Near Dark,” but “Strange Days” is even more unfamiliar. It's also most likely the most ambitious film Bigelow has ever made.

It has a few things in common with with “Near Dark” in that it's a blending of genres, although “Strange Days” was such a flop it nearly ended Bigelow's career. Where “Near Dark” was a masterpiece which blended the vampire movie with the western, “Strange Days” is even more unusual, a sci-fi neo-noir which takes place in a bleakly dystopian 1999 Los Angeles, a mere four years after the film was made in 1995.

In Bigelow's vision, the riots which the city apart in 1992 after the Rodney King verdict never really ceased, but became a pattern of violent social unrest, transforming Los Angeles into a war zone. Not that it seems to really bother Lenny (Ralph Fiennes), a dealer who feeds on the disillusionment of the populace to sell his very illegal wares, which is where “Strange Days” really gets prescient. People can fit themselves with recording devices they attach to their head, which allows them to record not only their experiences, but their emotions and sensations. The resulting videos, which can range from pornography to, in one case, a robbery, are in high demand, and Lenny is happy to provide them to his customers. For a hefty fee of course.

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Lenny is also an ex-cop and an addict of the drugs he’s peddling, frequently retreating into footage of his past relationship with singer Faith Justin (Juliette Lewis), who has long since left him for sleazy music industry mogul Philo (Michael Wincott). Lenny doesn't need much of an excuse to want to get Faith away from her new beau, but he has more reason than usual after Faith's former friend Iris (Brigitte Bako) comes to Lenny with a desperate plea for help. Faith is clearly caught up in something, but insists to Lenny that their relationship is over and she doesn't need rescuing. Lenny thinks otherwise, and when he receives a recording of Iris being raped and murdered, he decides to dig deeper.

From a modern perspective, much of the recordings in “Strange Days” look like either YouTube videos or first-person shooters. And much like today, the fact that so many people have recording devices meant that people who were previously deprived of a voice could hold the powerful accountable. Race isn't often addressed in noir or sci-fi, but it's one of the central themes of “Strange Days,” as much of the unrest springs from inequality, specifically a system that dehumanizes much of its citizenry.

Even if most of the characters are white, the concerns of black people and the racism they face is what fuels “Strange Days.” But they're really embodied in Angela Bassett's badass performance as Mace, a limo driver who also becomes Lenny's bodyguard throughout their investigation. She and Lenny met when he was still a cop, the day Mace's former partner was arrested for dealing, and she found her son in his room with Lenny, who effectively shielded him from the trauma of watching his father get carted off to jail. But where Lenny encountered heartbreak and only made himself more vulnerable, Mace responded to her difficulties by making herself stronger. This is a pattern that repeats throughout the film, with Lenny often depicted as vulnerable, while Mace is the one who repeatedly fights off both her and Lenny's attackers, even if they often just barely escape with their lives.

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What their pursuers are willing to kill for turns out to be footage of two police officers murdering the Tupac-esque rapper Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer) at a random traffic stop. Mace wants to release the footage to the media, but as several characters point out, such an action could make their already turbulent city explode into an orgy of violence. It's an excellent point, but this environment, which is an almost laughably Mad Max vision of a city on the verge of the apocalypse. is also what makes “Strange Days” so cringey at some points. It's a 90s vision of edginess, with music that would barely appeal in its own decade, what with its annoying combination of the era's grunge, rock, and punk aesthetic. People just thought they were so dark and edgy in the 90s.

That's about the only part of the film which really feels dated, as the movie's flaws are more than compensated by the absolutely terrific performances and Bigelow's skillful direction. Ralph Fiennes has flexed his comedic muscles in films such as “Hail Caesar!” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” but he's mostly become known for his more serious work. In “Strange Days,” Fiennes is hilariously appealing as the weaselly, yet charming Lenny, and we have no problem rooting for him. And while Bassett is incredible in her supporting role as the film's moral center who isn't willing to compromise her ideals and bargain away a tape that could change things, Juliette Lewis might just be the one who accomplishes the most. Faith could've easily been another objectified damsel, but Lewis gives her real heart as a woman so desperate to sate her desires that she's willing to put her life and sanity in the hands of a man who's as paranoid as he is abusive, only realizing the true gravity of her situation until it's too late for her to escape unscathed.

It's really Bigelow, however, who makes all the difference. “Strange Days” features quite a few recordings that feature violence, rape, and murder, but she never glorifies the horrors on display. During the robbery, we share in every bit of the victims' fear as armed men burst in on them with guns, then the horror and panic as thing going south. Crucially, the rape scenes are brutal, but not graphic. We feel the pain of the women who are not only violated, but also made to see what their attacker sees, in essence witnessing their own assault and murder through his eyes.

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With so much unrelenting darkness, you'd think that the hope Bigelow offers at the end would feel hollow. But she surprisingly makes a damn good case that maybe, just maybe, things could be different in the new millennium. After so much brutality, the year 2000 actually kicks off with a high-ranking law enforcement official doing the right thing, a black woman being believed, and the police actually serving and protecting. Even if it feels like we've regressed in many ways, at least we seem to be confronting the many themes “Strange Days” addressed far before #MeToo, Time's Up, and Black Lives Matter forced such difficult discussions into the mainstream.

52 Films By Women: Death is a Caress (1949)

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By Andrea Thompson

It's still Noirvember, and I wanted to mark the occasion with another noir film directed by a woman. Having discussed Ida Lupino's “Outrage” last week, my options were predictably limited. Lupino was practically the only female director working in Hollywood at the time, and breaking it down by the genre made pickings far slimmer if I wanted to focus on a film by a different director.

But bless this wonderful age we live in, where there's always something somewhere that will reference the more obscure titles even some of the most devoted cinephiles haven't heard of. That, in short, is how I came across “Death is a Caress.” Made in 1949, it was apparently the first Norwegian film directed by a woman, and it upends many of the typical noir staples.

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The film is narrated via flashback, beginning as a police vehicle drives through the streets. Ah siren, siren, what crime brings you forth? This is how we meet Erik (Claus Wiese), the young man under arrest who proceeds to narrate the film via flashback to his lawyer. Before his troubles started, he was a successful mechanic who was engaged to a beautifully innocent, adoring young woman named Marit (Eva Bergh). In true noir fashion, the best you can say about her is that she's delightfully bland. During one of their interactions, the camera zooms in a lovely white ornament nearby, as if to dangle the possibility of a happy, pristine future that's not to be.

Needless to say, Sonja (Bjørg Riiser-Larsen ) fits neatly into the mold of the femme fatale from the minute she appears. She's not only married, she's older and in full possession of wealth all her own, having never needed a man to support her. She's beautiful, but it's in a different fashion than noir dames typically are, with the sheer force of her presence being a large component of the impression she makes. When she shows up, she strides right over to Erik and demands his attention on their first encounter, and nearly runs him over in the next.

As their seductive dance continues, Erik tries to resist it, take solace in Marit, and avoid Sonja, only to be drawn back to her more and more willingly. Even when he meets Sonja's oblivious husband, Erik and Sonja exchange the kind of knowing smirks and glances that can only mean one thing as their interactions become more and more charged, and Erik soon abandons Marit without looking back. When he and Sonja do finally consummate their mutual attraction, it's far more erotic due to the lack of interference from the Hays Code, even if it's far less graphic than the films of today.

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Surprisingly, Erik and Sonja's relationship soon incorporates love as well as lust, although Sonja has clearly formed similar liaisons previously. Sonja even promises Erik to divorce her husband and marry him. Even more shocking is that after an initial hesitation, Sonja actually follows through. But her and Erik's interactions have always been laced with harbingers of doom, and the problems start to arise as early as their honeymoon, and continue to grow throughout their relationship, which becomes more and more turbulent. Erik is somewhat resentful of Sonja's money and position, and she becomes more and more jealous and suspicious of him. Yet they always return to each other, until finally their mutually destructive impulses culminate in a horrifying climax.

This kind of toxic relationship is all too familiar, especially when it comes Erik's fatalistic mindset, which justifies his inability to take responsibility for his actions. He regrets what he's done, yet he believes it was inevitable, albeit in a more complex fashion than usual. As he puts it, things aren't decided in advance, but people have to follow their path, even if he allows that our choices are affected by our experiences. Granted, it's easy to trace the roots of this belief, since even Erik's boss remarks that they're one day closer to death at the end of the workday. Is all Nordic cinema obligated to somehow reference and/or grapple with death and existential angst in general?

Erik says he doesn't blame Sonja, but rather the class differences that kept them at odds. To the movie's credit, class itself is the source of much of the film's commentary on how many restrictions women face in their public and private lives, even when they seem to have a dizzying number of options. Yet at his sentencing, Erik seems determined to assign much of the blame to Sonja, not only claiming he never would've been a killer if he hadn't met her, but that Sonja actually participated in her own killing. He is unable to accept that he deserves to punished. And the system seems to partially agree, since Erik gets a mere five years for his crimes. Rather than vanishing, one could argue that this trope has merely evolved, with powerful women often being depicted as unstable at best, and still have a tendency to perish in the arms of the same men who profess their love for them.

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The movie's title becomes an indictment, unintentional or not, about how common this kind of brutality is, especially for the women who typically suffer the worst of the consequences. In every statistic, the rates for those who have experienced intimate partner violence are not only higher for women than men, but the CDC estimates that “nearly half of female homicide victims in the U.S. are killed by a current or former male intimate partner.” There's a lot of insight into a certain kind of toxicity that fuels many a vicious cycle. Like many co-dependent couples, the highs were dizzying, but the lows were also devastating.

As for Erik himself, his obsession with Sonja is still powerful enough that he seems perfectly capable of giving himself the life sentence his judges will not. By the end, sitting alone in the darkness of his cell while bathed in warm light from the nearby window, he first speaks into an unseen distance, then unsettlingly, directly to us as he says he still can't say he would've avoided her Sonja even if he knew how his time with her would end. He's still filled with a longing for not only her, but “a heaven or hell where they could meet again.”

52 Films By Women: Outrage (1950)

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By Andrea Thompson

If you want a female director to celebrate for #Noirvember, Ida Lupino is pretty much the go to. She wasn't just the main female director working at a time when noir films were at their height, she was pretty much the only one. And while her other films such as “The Hitch-Hiker” are far more well-known, it's the underseen “Outrage” that feels as disturbingly relevant now as when it was made in 1950.

Its beginning is a common one for noir, with a woman alternately staggering and running through a lonely street at night. She's clearly been through the ringer, and we immediately wonder what she's trying to escape. A pursuer? Is this the aftermath of a terrible crime? Or is she suffering from something more existential, like the past she thought she left behind? Is she a woman on the wrong side of the law, a player who got outplayed? Did she set a plan in motion that spun out of her control?

Turns out it's something simultaneously far simpler and complex. Ann Walton (Mala Powers) isn't a noir dame who walked into a bar with a plan and eye for her next mark. She's a happy, ordinary young woman with a loving fiance, Jim (Robert Clarke) a supportive, close-knit family, and a steady job with coworkers she likes and gets along with. Even the guy who serves food at the counter and frequently gives her attention she doesn't want doesn't disturb her. What “Outrage” does as it follows Ann's struggles is offer up a critique for something the film didn't have the words for, and were prevented from even naming, what we now call rape culture.

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Because that creepy counter guy that Ann barely notices follows her home one night when she's working late and rapes her. Not that the movie is allowed to say it, instead using using the word assault or attack to describe the horrifying sequence where Ann's unnamed rapist follows her throughout the dark, deserted streets as she desperately tries to call for help from various sources while attempting to evade him. When she collapses from running, the final tragic accident is a car horn which covers her implied screams, as well as a man who hears the horn but unable to see what is happening from his angle.

When Ann returns home disheveled, “Outrage” chooses empathy rather than revenge, as not only Ann but her family grapples with the aftermath of her attack. In “Lucky,” the memoir of her own rape, author Alice Sebold wrote how she learned that, “no one – females included – knew what to do with a rape victim,” and even Ann's loving parents are unsure of what to say to their daughter.

Nor does their community. How everyone learns of Ann's rape is left unsaid, but it's made very clear that they do. The students in Ann's father's class and the other teachers stare at him. More disturbing is how men try to be well-meaning and kind, patting her comfortingly, but the women mostly keep their distance as they stare and whisper. No wonder that when Ann attempts to go back to work, small noises quickly overwhelm her. After such silence, even the softest sounds are deafening to her, and the film doesn't so much as portray her mindset but embed us in it as we share Ann's pain and deterioration.

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The situation with her fiance also doesn't help. Jim still wants to marry Ann, but only on his terms. When he says he wants to tie the knot the upcoming weekend, she stares at him with a repulsion and horror modern audiences may not be able to fully grasp. Marriage didn't just mean sex, it meant a husband could legally demand it anytime he wished, marital rape not yet being illegal. When Ann refuses, Jim shakes her and tells her to shut up. She responds, “I don't want to get married, ever. I don't want you to touch me. Everything's dirty, filthy and dirty.” Shortly thereafter, she runs away from home and finds herself on an orange picking farm.

In “Outrage,” it isn't only Ann's rapist who feels he has a right to her body. Every man in the film is entitled is his own way, even the saintly Rev. Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews), who takes Ann in and helps her get work as a bookkeeper on the farm. But when's Ann's past rears its ugly head, he only takes her side up to a point. At a dance, a man comes up and keeps following Ann, touching her, and insisting after she repeatedly says no. It brings up memories of her trauma, so Ann hits him with a wrench, severely injuring him. But since he has a reputation as a good guy, he's given a pass for his creepy behavior and it's Ann who is blamed. Bruce never even asks if the man made her uncomfortable, even if he's eventually able to understand and empathize with her actions.

As Ann awaits judgment, she murmurs, “Maybe I am crazy. Sometimes I feel as if the whole world is upside down.” Even if “Outrage” can't quite fully grasp what exactly makes her world seem so backwards, it can hardly be faulted for failing to realize something we're still struggling to understand today. At least the film urges reform rather than punishment, not just for Ann, but for the man who raped her, who was caught and revealed to have spent half his life in reform schools and prisons without being identified or treated as a “sick individual.” Through Bruce, “Outrage” ends up advocating not just for compassion, but for more hospitals and clinics rather than prisons.

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As a result, Ann is not charged, but rather ordered to undergo outpatient treatment rather than sentenced to imprisonment or institutionalization. At Bruce's encouragement, she eventually stops running and goes back to the life she left behind. As she departs, “Outrage” optimistically imagines a happy future for Ann, one that is not defined by the trauma she endured. Even if it seems a bit too bright of an ending, it's one that's well-earned, and more than other movies seem to expect from women who have similar experiences.

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.

52 Films By Women: Prevenge (2016)

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By Andrea Thompson

The 2016 British offering “Prevenge” is a comedy that might just be too dark even for those who prefer their laughs as bleak as possible. In a sense it's...the mother of all comedies.

What can I say? I'm sure Alice Lowe, the director, writer, and star of “Prevenge,” would agree that you just need to get some things out of your system. Ruth, the woman, she plays, certainly does. She's a heavily pregnant woman who lost the father of her child in a climbing accident that wasn't so much an accident as the result of a group decision from the other climbers to literally cut him off to save their own lives.

Given such circumstances, it's hardly a surprise that Ruth decides to take revenge by hunting down and killing the other members of her partner's climbing group. What is a shock is that it isn't her idea, but her unborn daughter's, who speaks to Ruth in a psychotic baby voice to encourage Ruth's murderous deeds throughout “Prevenge.” It's the perfect Halloween watch, with part of the movie even taking place during the holiday. And in a time when the behavior of pregnant women is more monitored than ever, it's refreshing to see a heroine directly take on the motherhood's strict expectations.

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At first, it's not that hard to get behind Ruth's mission. The first people she offs seem pretty deserving, from a creepy pet store owner, and a DJ who talks about how he loves fat girls because they're so open-minded they don't mind what people do to them, then vomits, and kisses her right after. Really, by the end of her time with this dude, I was practically cheering, “Kill this guy!” The fact that he lives with his mother didn't humanize him so much as reveal him to be an even bigger asshole than he seemed, as impossible as it sounds.

By the time Ruth gets to her third victim, a cold-hearted woman who has clearly centered her life around her cutthroat profession, Ruth starts to develop a taste for murder, much to her daughter's glee. Ruth also begins to engage more with her child, with the camera emphasizing their newfound unity in a straight on shot as Ruth converses directly with her looming baby bump.

It's hardly how pregnant women are allowed to act on-screen, and it'll probably make even some of horror's most jaded fans who pride themselves in remaining unfazed by violence rather squeamish to know that Lowe was actually pregnant when shooting “Prevenge” over a scant 11 days. Ruth's wardrobe also undergoes a metamorphosis that begins as subtle, with her outfits changing from that of demurely typical, earthy mom clothes to a style that favors black hoodies as she stalks her various victims.

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And Ruth's victims also get steadily more sympathetic, even human. Ruth's mental state deteriorates further as she works her way through her kill list, then even disposes of a witness (off-screen) who actually came across as a genuinely nice guy. Not that her daughter seems to mind, much to Ruth's annoyance. “Kids these days are really spoiled,” she says, exasperated. “It's like, 'mummy, I want a Playstation! Mummy, I want you to kill that man!'”

And it's not just the murders that are graphic, the methods of which include a castration as well as more classic throat slittings. (Fans of “Game of Thrones” will recognize a few of the victims.) No, “Prevenge” also gives us a birth scene via C-section that includes plenty of blood and viscera. Yet for all that, Lowe is incredibly adept at keeping the laughs coming along with the scares. Don't expect jump scares, or really any kind of flashiness at all, since the scares in “Prevenge” all involve body and psychological horror.

Ruth is the kind of anti-heroine who is truly unique, a woman who isn't driven to extremes by a desire for a child, to protect hers, or from fertility issues. Mothers and motherhood in general have both long been a source of horror in cinema, from “Psycho” to “Rosemary's Baby” to “Black Swan.” In a sense, Ruth is a fusion of both the old and the new. She's terrifying in the ways she represents a permutation of motherhood, but she's also part of a new wave of heroines in which parenthood itself is the ultimate horror, as was the case in films such as “The Babadook,” “Hereditary,” and “Us,” all of which are female-centric and feature flawed, complicated matriarchs. Yet Ruth is unique in how fully she embraces and embodies old and new fears.

52 Films By Women: The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

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By Andrea Thompson

The 1982 film “The Slumber Party Massacre” may not seem too feminist in the beginning, but that's because it seems to think it needs the male gaze to draw in the audience. Just keep watching, even if it's difficult not to wince at the topless scene, the closeup on the posterior of a repair woman who is later murdered, and the camera's outright lecherous gaze as it travels down the body of the high school girl showering in the school's locker room. All within the first ten minutes.

But patience is rewarded, since “The Slumber Party Massacre” actually offers up some pretty good slasher scares. It's not only directed by a woman, Amy Holden Jones, but also written by noted feminist Rita Mae Brown. The film would become something of a modest franchise, spawning two sequels, also directed by women, with each film subsequently garnering worse reviews.

Not that the reviews for the first installment were exactly glowing. It's easy to see why, since the film is pretty straightforward. There are no twists, the villain's sole defining characteristic is his incredibly phallic weapon of choice, a power drill, which is played up in several shots, as well as much of the marketing. There's none of the gimmicks which define the most famous horror movie monsters, and the fact that this guy even has a name feels like an afterthought. The closest thing he gets to a backstory is revealed in various news reports, which are mostly limited to a newspaper headline and a few radio announcements.

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What it amounts to is that Russ Thorn (Michael Villella) is a mass murderer who has recently escaped from wherever he was being held and is currently at large. His face is shown pretty clearly as the movie goes on, and anything remarkable about it solely due to the deranged energy Villella brings to the role. But just because he's a simplistic villain who's attacking girls in sexy nightwear doesn't mean there's not a whole lot of commentary and outright subversion in “The Slumber Party Massacre.”

In a genre that's often defined by its misogynistic glee in literally tearing apart women and girls who violate traditional standards of behavior, what the movie seems to subvert is the genre itself. As main girl Trish (Michelle Michaels) throws a party with her friends, who mostly interact with each other and actually have personalities, there's also three male characters who turn out to be surprisingly okay, even the pervy high school boys who spy on the girls while they're changing clothes. A very non-creepy neighbor, David Contant (Rigg Kennedy), is far more concerned with the the girls' safety rather than what they're smoking and drinking, while the two high school boys risk their lives to help Trish and her friends once the extent of the danger they're all in becomes clear.

While there are the usual plot holes, such as people seeming to hear weird noises only when the script demands it – so much so that I wondered if their hearing fluctuated throughout – Trish and her friends make several smart decisions. Even before they realize they're being hunted, they stay together, always have one of their friends accompany them when they check if doors are locked, and they arm themselves with knives and stay in a tight circle once they realize what's happening.

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“The Slumber Party Massacre” also has some truly hilarious comedic sensibilities, which include a girl opening a refrigerator door twice without noticing on there's a dead body inside, only for the third time to be the charm. While the massacre is happening, one of the girls even gets hungry and starts eating a pizza right on top of the deceased pizza delivery guy. “Well, life goes on after all!” she states as she sates her hunger.

The most notable thing about “The Slumber Party Massacre” though, is how it knows that a horror movie bad guy doesn't really need to be an unkillable monster to be frightening. He just needs to be a guy intent on murdering women. Practically the only intelligible lines he has speak volumes. As Thorn gazes on his terrified would-be victims, he quietly says, “Takes a lot of love for a person to do this. You know you want it. You love it. Yes.” To this, one of the baffled women responds, “Why? I don't even know you.” It's one of those simple exchanges that's nevertheless chilling for the realities many women must face, both on-screen and off..

Tellingly, it is the outcast, Valerie (Robin Stille), who spends most of the night next door at her home babysitting her little sister Courtney (Jennifer Meyers), who emerges as the movie's true heroine. She doesn't just literally cut Thorn's weapon down to size with a machete she discovers, she is the one who causes Thorn to flee, then mutilates him as she strikes multiple blows, finally killing him. With the help of other women, she and the other survivors manage to triumph over a patriarchal symbol who is brutal, but can eventually be beaten.

52 Films By Women: The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019)

By Andrea Thompson

“The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open” is a long title for a film that seems so simplistic on its face. It consists mostly of a series of conversations, none of which can be called witty or especially explanatory. It’s a good thing, since “The Body Remembers” isn’t trying to be. And in a market full of examples of witty banter, easily quotable quips, such an approach feels novel, even when it isn’t.

The film also uses its relatively toned-down approach to accomplish a complex goal, that of showing the solidarity, then the very real friendship, that develops between two women despite their drastically different situations and backgrounds. Rosie (Violet Nelson) and Áila (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, who co-wrote and co-directed) are Canadian and Indigenous, yet probably wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for a chance encounter.

The blue-haired Rosie is short, what the media generally calls plus size, darker skinned, and impoverished. From the moment we meet her, she oozes sadness and pain. During the multiple instances where she provides help to others, whether it’s people on the bus, or the others with whom she shares the depressing apartment she calls home, it’s hard not to wonder if her actions are the result of real kindness, or a conditioning that’s caused her to always put others first.

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Whatever the case, she demands compassion rather than pity, a fact which quickly becomes apparent once her path intersects with Áila, who comforts and aids Rosie after she discovers her barefoot and beaten in the street one rainy day. Áila is tall, thin, light-skinned, and oozes class and status. When she leads Rosie back to her comfortable abode, it’s a far cry from Rosie’s living space. 

Soon after, we discover Rosie is pregnant, and that she was beaten by the abusive boyfriend who was screaming at her off-screen earlier. She is also difficult to like, cursing and insulting Áila multiple times as she’s trying to help, even stealing a bottle of pills from her medicine cabinet so she can sell it to a dealer. Yet “The Body Remembers” never loses its compassion for Rosie,quietly but urgently reminding us that her behavior is a result of her circumstances.

Yet for all their differences, the two of them are also able to casually reference their commonalities while the film emphasizes the wide gulf between their opportunities, and thus, their situations. In other words? Yes, women’s experiences are varied. It’s not always interesting, and the movie’s emphasis on intimacy at all costs means that it can drag at certain points. Unfolding mostly in real time, the camera doesn’t so much film as reveal the layers that are slowly shed as Rosie and Áila allow themselves to be seen by the other.

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Rosie’s vulnerability is also the most heartbreaking, increasing despite her best efforts, especially when Áila is finally able to persuade Rosie to accompany her to a women’s shelter in the hopes that Rosie will choose to leave her abusive boyfriend. As she recounts various incidents of violence while also defending her partner, it’s the kind of realism that’s as horrifying as it is frustrating. It’s difficult not to get invested, or even angry with Rosie as she defends the partner responsible for mistreating her so cruelly.

And for its empathy, “The Body Remembers” also refuses to give us a feel-good ending. Things might improve someday, but the film wants to show us the state of things today, and it’s not good. It’s also, as the film states, normal. Debuting at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, the film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and has been acquired by ARRAY, the film collective founded by filmmaker and all-around goddess Ava DuVernay, with a release planned for later this fall. A film starring and co-directed by Indigenous women shouldn’t be rare, but hopefully this acquisition will allow “The Body Remembers” to be seen by a wider audience that will become a new norm in itself.

52 Films By Women: Hustlers (2019)

STX Films

By Andrea Thompson

Once upon a time, I hit something of a low point. Actually it wasn't something of a low point, it felt like rock bottom, or perilously close to it. I was unemployed, spat out of a city I had moved to in hopes of a fresh start and better career prospects, and struggling to pick up the financial and professional pieces while crashing on a relative's couch. Feeling stuck in a city and situation I was desperate to escape, it didn't much help that I was heading to a job interview waiting tables at a comedy club in a part of town that looked like where dreams go to die.

Much to my fascination, I discovered the venue shared a building with a strip club. Due to a still healthy sense of curiosity and no doubt a desperate desire to make as much money as I could, I decided to head over and check it out. To my untrained eye, it seemed like a less seedy example of the business, which was probably helped by the nonexistent crowd, hardly surprising on a weekday afternoon. To my shock, a fully clothed woman who worked there (or claimed to) spoke of the close-knit bond among her coworkers as well as their artistic endeavors outside of the club, revealing my own preconceptions about the women who earned a living there.

She encouraged me to apply, and I soon found myself discussing the requirements of the job with a male manager, including the seeming lack of complexity there was to the dancing. I wasn't so sure about that, as the stripper I saw working the pole possessed a flexibility it didn't look like I could approach, let alone replicate. The really profound moment was a relatively small one, and it involved the various styles of revealing attire the dancers wore. Whatever their style of dress, the manager referred to their work clothes as a costume.

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Such an insignificant issue of semantics, but it helped me realize why I found stripping so unsettling in spite of my firm commitment to sex positivity. I realized that stripping was only a two-way exchange in terms of services rendered and cash given. Nor was it simply a commodification of sexuality. What it was really selling was male fantasy, and the job of the women was to cater to that above all else. Their desires weren't a part of the equation. A simple conclusion? Perhaps. Yet it allowed me to form my own convictions about an ongoing debate in the feminist community about whether various expressions of female sexuality were demeaning, empowering, or both.

I never ended up taking either the serving or stripping job. But this experience came to mind while I was watching and very much enjoying the movie “Hustlers” at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. It's got the usual “inspired by a true story” qualifier, but the movie seems to share a remarkable number of similarities with the article that is its source material. Both tell the story of a group of strippers who came up with a very much illegal scheme to scam their Wall Street clients out of their money.

Much of the enjoyment is due to writer-director Lorene Scafaria embracing the magical ingredient essential to this movie's success: centering the women. Whether their sexuality is empowering or not is almost beside the point, not to mention an oversimplification. It's how they chose to use it which matters. And hey, let's face it, it's also a large part of what makes their story as fun as it is fascinating. Countless movies have at least a scene or two at a strip club, and they often have strippers who function as living set pieces to make the movie sexier, edgier, or a combination of both. Few bother to give them speaking lines, let alone any kind of storyline devoted to them.

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In “Hustlers,” the female gaze is centric from the start, as is control. The first thing we hear as we meet our viewpoint character Destiny (Constance Wu) is Janet Jackson's 1986 hit song “Control.” These women have to fight not just for money, but power over their lives and bodies, and Destiny is still getting accustomed to this world and how to make a living in it. At first at least. Once she meets Ramona, gloriously played by Jennifer Lopez in full diva mode, she thrives as Ramona decides to take her under her wing. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say, under her fur coat as she purrs, “Climb in my fur.” Their friendship is the gateway into the supportive world they and the other women create for themselves, and we see their camaraderie, and how playing sex objects affects their personal lives. Although any music fans will be disappointed, since Cardi B and Lizzo don't have roles as much as extended cameos. And since it's 2007, there's no need for schemes. The Wall Street types they cater to are able and willing to spend the money that allows Destiny and the others to live the good life.

Then the financial crisis hits, and both Destiny and the country are thrown into disarray. She becomes pregnant by her boyfriend, and the two part ways a few years after their daughter is born. Once Destiny exhausts her meager options, she returns to stripping, only to find that her former workplace has become a far harsher place that's mostly populated by Russians who are willing to give the men blow jobs. Most of the women she knew have moved on, but Ramona still frequents the club and recruits her for her new hustle. She and the others she works with lavish suitably wealthy men with attention and drinks, drug them to encourage higher spending habits, take them to the club where they worked, and take a percentage from what they spend there.

And it actually works for quite a long time, with Ramona and Destiny relishing the money and the power they find scamming the scammers. It's hard to blame them, as it was painfully clear just how disposable these women were when they were doing legit work. Before, the top CEO clients, whom Ramona referred to as “axe murderers,” were given free reign and never faced any consequences for their actions because everyone wanted what they had, whether it was their privilege, status or wealth. I've never seen “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but I'm willing to bet this one sentence is a better analysis of this world than the entire three hour runtime of “Wolf.”

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Women are a rarity in this world, often limited to a select few who managed to fight through the bro culture and somehow get to the top, or more commonly, as wives, mothers, and mistresses. So the deeply feminine perspective is what makes this story feel so refreshing, despite its familiarity. If you've seen any kind of gangster or mafia movie, you know how this goes. Destiny and her friends make money and they simply don't know when or how to stop. They then make the mistakes that will bring them down. As Destiny puts it, hurt people hurt people.

While the pain they caused is acknowledged, but most of the men don't earn our sympathy, from the main characters or the female journalist they recount the story to years later. These men stole from others with no consequences in a game rigged in their favor, and the movie makes most of them as expendable as Destiny and her cohorts generally are. It wasn't just that these women were dishing out the pain so routinely heaped on them, it was the vicious cycle of exploitation they were perpetuating. Even the drugging seemed normal to them, given how much illicit substances were already a part of their world. “Hustlers” merely shows us a world where our most common beliefs about money, beauty, and power are taken to an extreme that ultimately devalues everyone, even those who initially appear to benefit from it most.