52 Films By Women: Boys State (2020)

A24

By Andrea Thompson

Among the many fascinating things about “Boys State,” the documentary that recently debuted among Apple TV+, is that it’s basically a meditation on the state of modern masculinity that’s also co-directed by a woman. 

Every year since 1935, the American Legion runs a civics experiment called Boys State, wherein high school students spend a week building a government from the ground up. Assigned into random political parties, the boys then elect their own officials, with the position of Governor being the top spot. So what exactly does that look like in our current moment, when we’re grappling with how we define masculinity, femininity, and gender itself? Amanda McBaine and her creative partner/husband and co-director Jesse Moss decided to find out by filming what transpired in 2018.

Once you get over the simple fact that all these boys are gathered together free from worries about pandemics, social distancing, and masks, what emerges is a complex portrait that’s not so much about our future as our present. All of these young men are ambitious, driven, and serious about their political aspirations. And why not? Past participants have included politicians as wide-ranging as Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and Cory Booker. High hopes are not unreasonable.

What happens in “Boys State” isn’t too surprising then, even at its most shocking. When those so eager to participate in the political system try to build their own, they’re not going to attempt to build something better than replicate what they’ve learned from us. It isn’t long before some very recognizable, wholly depressing patterns start to emerge, along with some political stars in the making, a few of whom will no doubt regret being so honest about what their adult counterparts smilingly justify and evade. And more than a few made me wonder if they were going to kill me when they grew up.

Ben Feinstein was bound to unsettle me from the moment he brought out his talking Reagan doll, and sure enough, he quickly became the architect behind some of the most vicious political attacks on his opponents, both of whom were young men of color. Others may be channeling Donald Trump in their emphasis on making their state/political position great again, but Feinstein is the one who quickly emerges as a far more masterful manipulator. He may be a more complex type, but losing both his legs at age three to meningitis hasn’t made him compassionate as firmly believing that individual failings are to blame for a disadvantaged position, race, gender, or any other factors be damned. He is the one who comes from a comfortable place, only to prevent others from achieving the same privileges.

A24

The real star that emerges is thankfully someone far different. Steven Garza’s cited inspirations may include the likes of Bernie Sanders, and far more surprisingly, Napoleon Bonaparte, but Obama is probably the leader that will spring to mind when he gives his first jaw-droppingly inspirational speech that leaves his competitors scared stiff and his fellow party members standing and cheering. His backstory is the stuff great biographies are made of. He’s the son of Mexican immigrants, with a mother who was undocumented for a time, and he’s also the first of his siblings to get past his freshman year of high school. And for all his openness about his left-leaning politics in a deeply conservative environment, his political instincts are sharp enough to leave his work as a gun control activist unmentioned until later in his campaign for Governor, the highest office available. 

Much like another, far less effective recent film about politics, “Boys State” has a clear scapegoat for the dysfunction - political parties, even kicking off with a dire warning from no less than George Washington about their unsettling effects on government. But while few would argue that our electoral system is in desperate need of change, political parties are not the primary motivators behind the documentary’s most heartbreaking, and at times shocking, moments. It is us. It’s always us

52 Films By Women: Represent (2020)

Music Box Films

By Andrea Thompson

“Represent” is an exception among the many political documentaries, which have become quite prolific recently. At their best, they tend to reveal unsettling truths, but not much food for thought, at least for the most part. There are exceptions of course, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. Our politics, which tended to comprise various shades of gray, haven’t so much polarized the way everyone believes. Rather, they’ve been stripped to reveal what we’ve become, and how we could deteriorate into something far worse if things continue to unravel.

But “Represent” doesn’t just show the common ground that exists between the various aspiring Midwestern politicians it follows, all of them women, it got me to do something I didn’t think was possible in our current climate: sympathize with a Republican running for office. The documentary could never have made me vote for her even if I could have, but I challenge the most ardent Democrat not to feel some compassion for Julie Cho, who decides to run for state representative in Evanston, a liberal suburb of Chicago.

Cho is certainly the most complex of the three women director Hillary Bachelder follows for her feature debut. Cho is in many ways the ultimate American success story - an immigrant who fled an oppressive country, in her case North Korea, and saw the best of America in the small town she and her family ended up in. Distrust of any state or national authority was already a given for Cho, who soon found herself drawn to the Republican party of the 80s, which advocated for small government.

It’s not that Bryn Bird and Myya Jones are less fascinating, they’re just on more predictable paths as Democrats. Bird is a farmer and happily married white mother of two small children who runs for township trustee in her small rural town of Granville, Ohio, and Jones is a 22-year-old Black woman who’s freshly graduated and decides to run for mayor of Detroit, then state representative when her mayoral bid fails.

Bachelder doesn’t need to do much to convey just how much gender plays into all three campaigns, or how much more Jones has to shoulder as a Black woman, a demographic which is the backbone of the Democratic voting block, but doesn’t seem to get much support once they decide to put themselves front and center. 

Not that Cho or Bird have it easy. Cho, who makes gerrymandering and the effect it has on suppressing minority votes the central issue of her platform, doesn’t just encounter open scorn, and even threats of violence when she goes out campaigning, but a complete lack of support from her own party. They become so bent on silencing her they pressure her to drop out, and in one case a top official outright hangs up on her during a phone call. There’s also numerous other macro and microaggressions, including some casual racism at a Republican luncheon.

Bird has her own issues. Her area is heavily Republican and never had a progressive candidate representing them. The trustee board also consists of a very entrenched old boys network who constantly undermine the only (also Republican) woman in the room, whom Bird is angling to replace. So Bird has an uphill fight of her own, even if she does manage to convince quite a few others to get involved in political campaigning for the first time.

Under such circumstances, it can often be difficult to not define subjects by their worst experiences, and Bachelder avoids this by revealing some of their biggest obstacles during the latter half of “Represent,” which include Cho’s past cancer diagnosis, Bird’s mother passing away, and Jones recouting her childhood sexual abuse.

Music Box Films

The fly-on-the-wall approach doesn’t always prove to be the best, given that some of the more minute aspects of their political journeys fall through the cracks. But it just might be a fitting angle for the mostly non-flashy style of campaigning all three candidates embrace. That Myya, who has all the characteristics of a political star on the rise, doesn’t overwhelm the others with her dynamic, intensely charismatic presence that’s a natural fit for the social media she embraces (and eventually includes a viral rap video), is especially impressive, reflecting Bachelder’s commitment to give equal weight to all of her subjects.

The doc is also curiously reluctant to embrace its influences. That “Represent,” which takes place over the course of 2017-8, was partially inspired by the influx of women in politics in 2016 is evident. But as the doc points out in its opening, there have been many cases when the number of female politicians have suddenly seemed to increase. If it’s treated as a lark each time, then the timing of the film’s release, which coincides with Biden’s pick of Kamala Harris as his VP, is impeccable. Who knows? Maybe the normalization of women in office could arrive sooner than any of us would have allowed.

52 Films By Women: The Last Mistress (2007)

IMDB

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. 

IMDB

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.

IMDB

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: Pride and Prejudice: Atlanta (2019)

Mylifetime.com

By Andrea Thompson

Watching “Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta” is a jarring experience at times, because listing the ways it doesn’t do justice to the source material almost seems beside the point. It’s not trying to do anything but be a Lifetime movie, only with less dire stakes than the genre is typically known for.

This only makes sense, given that “Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta” is a Lifetime movie. Lifetime hasn’t taken nearly as much grief since the Hallmark Channel made it look edgy, and “Pride” has them at their lightest. There are no abducted teenage girls, no abused wives, no horrific family secrets unearthed, only the fluffy stakes of the lightest of relationship dramas. 

The movie let us know what we can expect right away, with Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Bennet (Tiffany Hines) rushing late into the church where her pastor father preaches in all her relatable career woman glory, with just the barest of bones of a plot, which involves protesting a planned strip mall in an effort to preserve the Atlanta Lizzie knows and loves. Needless to say, there’s a sense that her problems are going to be solved pretty easily.

Nypost.com

Whether that disappoints mostly  depends on what you love about Jane Austen’s most cherished novel. “Pride” may sand down most of the story’s edges, but it’s one of the only adaptations I’ve seen that successfully modernizes the novel. Part of why that is is due to another reason the movie is so unique: it’s the only adaptation that features an all-Black cast. In their close-knit community, various social niceties feel like they have about as big an impact as they would in Austen’s time. 

It’s one of the major obstacles to transporting pretty much any of Jane Austen’s plots to a modern setting. What seemed enjoyable then becomes frivolous in a time when women can leave the house by themselves, have sex before marriage, and earn their own money. It also doesn’t hurt that the gulf between the middle class and the wealthy seems about as extreme, with the kind of gorgeous palatial homes many of Austen’s characters would probably appreciate.

What’s missing from the “Pride” are flaws, ironically enough. A movie with no villains is generally a good thing, but the men, even Wickham (Phillip Mullings Jr.) reveal themselves to be basically good guys at heart. Even more ironic, it’s the women who aren’t done justice, with many around Lizzie almost seeming embarrassed by her intelligence and single status. The lessons many of them seem to learn involve being good wives, from Lizzie learning to see what a nice guy Darcy (Juan Antonio) really is to Lydia learning to behave better after Wickham gets her pregnant. 

Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta

The real hero of the story is Mrs.Bennet (Jackée Harry, who’s having a ball), who is the author of a self-help book about finding a husband, which makes her rather embarrassed that all of her daughters remain single. She is also the movie’s narrator, and her marriage is founded on real love rather than misunderstanding and resignation. She’s the impetus for much of the plot, from snooping on social media to investigate a prospective suitor’s prospects, to encouraging Jane (Raney Branch) to take an Uber rather than drive so she’ll need a ride back. Her closing narration, which extols the virtues of love and commitment, is even enjoyable.

So while you won’t find a trace of Austen’s trademark wit and irony, but “Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta” might still be fun viewing if you’re looking for mostly harmless, relentlessly upbeat viewing.

Film Girl Film Festival Goes Virtual

It can hardly be a surprise, but this year it’s either go virtual or go home. Or rather, stay home. Remember when we all thought this would be done in a few weeks? Then a few months? Then the fall? Well, those hopes have long since died, and we’ve accepted that there were two routes we could take for our upcoming fifth year…cancel the festival or have it take place online.

So we’ve chosen to go virtual. We’ll have more details later, but much will remain the same. Festival dates are still Nov. 13-15, and most importantly, we're still committed to bringing women's stories to the screens!

We're also still accepting submissions until August 23! To enter a feature or short for consideration, go to https://filmfreeway.com/FilmGirlFilmFestival.

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: And She Could Be Next (2020)

PBS.org

By Andrea Thompson

Watching the two part documentary series “And She Could Be Next” is an interesting experience, especially given the last film I watched that dealt with the state of our national politics. But where so many films about our election process tend to give in to the cynicism of a system that so often favors the white and wealthy, I’ve found people of color tend to take a different view, one that can’t afford to give in to despair.

In “And She Could Be Next,” which aired in two parts this week and follows various women of color running for office, what we see feels like a new coalition in the making, one that is electing women of color to the highest offices for the first time. And they’re actively supported by many young people who say they want to push back against the forces that are dehumanizing them. Many of them see volunteering, and especially voting, as an important component of the change they wish to see, a change to elect someone who could help enact that change. If many think it won’t make a difference, there’s enough pushback and voter suppression throughout “And She Could Be Next” to suggest that those in power disagree.

That pushback also happens to be a strategy of dehumanization that not only the various candidates, but the volunteers who work for them, speak of again and again. From the violent response via text on one campaign, to how canvassers of color are followed around in some neighborhoods they’re assigned, and how many immigrants are constantly questioned about their American identities, which culminates in the militarizing of the border and constant crackdowns on immigrants.

The truly frustrating, yet depressingly predictable thing is how little the women running are allowed to be angry, not just not just about the violent rhetoric they face in campaigns, but about the types of violence they experience in their lives. One of the most blatant examples is Lucy McBath, who discovered that her son’s education and solidly middle class upbringing was unable to shield him from gun violence, but there’s also Rashida Tlaib, who discovered her son felt he should hide that he was Muslim, and rising star Bushra Amiwala, a 19-year-old DePaul student running for Cook County Commissioner, who also discovered how much Islam is feared by many Americans. 

The real star though, is Stacey Abrams, and not just because she’s become known outside of the usual political junkie circles. It’s because what happened to her is appalling. She didn’t just run for governor in Georgia, a state which apparently has the most voter suppression laws in the country, she was up against Brian Kemp, who is so cartoonishly regressive his campaign ads are like SNL sketches of Republican messages. And we get to see how Abrams was robbed, on the ground, and in real time, even though she more than had the votes, the coalition, and all the volunteers at the polling locations to not only had out water and food to voters waiting for hours, but to ensure they had the right information in an election where that information changed at the last minute. 

And She Could Be Next

Abrams also calmly responded to Kemp’s various accusations even as he was responsible for all the obstacles and suppression her campaign was facing, as Kemp was also the chief elections officer, and someone who took pride in making it more difficult to get people to vote, or removing their votes entirely. Just as Abrams refuses to concede to a process that was so overtly rigged against her, “And She Could Be Next” isn’t much interested in giving fuel to the arguments against them, and the documentary is all the better for it. There’s no call to “understand” people trying to build the wall, who demonize a religion, and who advocate violent rhetoric. It merely calls for change, a message that is more needed than it should be.

The two part documentary is streaming for free here.

52 Films By Women: Appropriate Behavior (2014)

Appropriate Behavior

By Andrea Thompson

Can a film not be groundbreaking but still do something new? Take the 2014 film “Appropriate Behavior,” which follows another aimless twentysomething who finds herself completely adrift after a breakup. Such a plot couldn’t be called anything close to original, but the aimless young woman in question just happens to be Shirin, played by Desiree Akhavan, who also writes and directs. 

Shirin isn’t just a bisexual woman who couldn’t even bring herself to tell her parents that she and her ex Maxine (Rebecca Henderson) were dating in the first place, said parents are also Persian immigrants, and while they’re far more liberal and open-minded than on-screen immigrant parents typically are, they also have clear expectations for Shirin. Ones that aren’t up for discussion even after they visit the apartment where their daughter and Maxine are cohabitating and note that it only has one bed.

Bisexual representation isn’t just woefully lacking, it’s also extremely misrepresented, or more often, ignored in favor of characters whose sexuality could be firmly placed in the far less complicated category of gay or straight. But Akhavan, who identifies as bisexual herself, ensures that Shirin’s journey never veers into territory that cold be called stereotypical or exploitative, which is even more impressive given that it also consists of a series of graphic sexual (mis)adventures with both men and women in a Brooklyn now firmly hipster and gentrified.

If you can get past that, “Appropriate Behavior” is a damn delight as Shirin physically and emotionally gropes for some sort of solid ground, following Maxine around in an attempt to reconnect, and teaching a class of five-year-olds how to make films, in spite of the fact that she has no experience whatsoever in filmmaking. You’d think that her unused journalism degree would practically mandate at least an interest, but there clearly are exceptions. Luckily for Shirin, the parents clearly don’t care much about their kids’ education. In an age of helicoptery overparenting, it’s actually kind of sweet.

If “Appropriate Behavior” ever does risk veering into the stereotypical, it’s ironically when exploring Shrin and Maxine’s relationship, which is delved into in a nonlinear fashion. At first it’s hard to see just what drew these two together in the first place, and why Shirin is so eager to reunite with a woman who comes off as another uptight, pretentious hipster who is so humorless that when Shirin tells her about an encounter with a guy that involved a soft dick (when they first meet no less), Maxine makes a snide remark...in the guy’s favor. If that isn’t a violation of the girl code, I don’t know what is.

Thankfully, Maxine doesn’t deteriorate into a shrew or a symbol of all the wrong choices Shirin has made in her life. She actually becomes human (eventually), and their time together quickly seems less like a waste than well spent, only to curdle in large part due to Shirin’s refusal to be honest with her parents. Or at least, completely open with them, as their denial seems clear enough.

Humanization has always been the gift that keeps on giving, so when Shirin finally starts to get it together, we actively root for her. Yeah, there’s the usual results, such as a friendlier state of coexistence with Maxine, and actually being honest with her family, some of whom are supportive, some not. One achievement though, will remain uniquely her own, as she decides to take the lead from the kids in her class and help them make a short, uplifting film about...zombie farts. Between this and “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” I hope Akhavan continues to make films that are so truly, uniquely, her own.