Upstream Online Film Festival: Certain Women
by Joe Miller
What a difference a year makes. Last year, the nominations for the Academy Awards prompted the hashtag #OscarsSoMale. This year, there are more women nominated in more categories than ever before, and more films about female characters are up for best picture. But the biggest breakthrough came with Rachel Morrison’s nomination for best cinematography, for Dee Rees’s Mudbound (NF). Morrison (who’s also cinematographer on Black Panther) cast this great American epic of two poor families, one black, one white, bound by muddy tract of Mississippi bottomland, in a pale, thin light that enhances the film’s literary heft, making it one 2017’s most poignant and important films.
In another breakthrough, film goddess Agnès Varda received the first nomination of her 60-years, 50-film career, for Faces Places, a documentary she made with French artist J.R. To be fair, she was given an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar last year, but still, it’s about time she got a proper bid. If you’re not familiar with Varda’s ouvre, a good place to start is her early masterpiece, Cleo 5 to 7 (K, FS), a story that unfolds in real time from late afternoon (5), when Cleo learns that she might have cancer, to early evening 7), when she receives the results of her medical tests. Varda makes this brief period in between feel like a fulsome life, as Cleo bides her time on the streets of Paris, casually ending a bad relationship with an aloof boyfriend and beginning a new one with someone better. The visuals are stunning throughout, especially in a scene where Cleo shops in a hat store and her reflection is caught in an array of mirrors just as a military brass band marches by.
Of course, this banner year for women at the Oscars is set against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, with scores of lecherous Hollywood predators finally getting their due. A interesting film for this moment is Sex is Comedy (FS), by France’s Catherine Breillat. This cutting satire imagines what it might be like if Harvey Weinstein were a woman. It’s the story of a mean and uninhibited female filmmaker who’s directing a difficult sex scene. She paws all the men on set and belittles them with cruel insults–especially the lead male actor, who spends much of the film entirely naked except for an enormous prosthetic hard on. Meanwhile, the director treats the lead actress with calm respect. It seems a simple conceit, but in Breillet’s hands it leads to surprisingly profound insights about gender, sex and power–and it’s uproariously funny.
But if there’s one film tailor-made for this moment of comeuppance, it’s Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (K, FS). One of the most daring and influential films in cinema history, it follows a single mother through a day and a half of her life, as she cooks, cleans, lays out clothes for her son, and turns late-afternoon tricks to make ends meet. These chores are played out in real time, with long shots of Dielman scrubbing, chopping, dusting. As we watch, we lock in with the rhythms of her life, so when small variations start creeping in we begin to realize that she’s going mad, and the suspense is so thick that the film’s three and a half hours seem to go by in a flash. And by the time we reach the film’s stunning conclusion we’re on the edge of our seats, ready to race out and tear down the misogynist hegemony.
Abbreviations Key: N=Netflix; K=Kanopy; FS=FilmStruck
Joe Miller is an Associate Professor of English at Columbus State and a certified film freak.