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Adams on Reel Women: The Cannes Sex Scandal

May 25, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Cannes Sex Scandal (by Danny Martindale)’

 (note: I have migrated my column from AMC Filmcritic.com to Yahoo! Movies where I’m Contributing Editor)

Fact: Men directed all 22 films in competition for the Palme d’Or at the 65th Cannes International Film Festival. Fact: The only woman to win that coveted prize was Jane Campion for “The Piano” in 1993 — and that was a joint victory. Cannes, we’ve got a problem — and when I say “we,” I mean women and men who love film.

Four weeks ago, I first raised this controversy in my column “Thelma Adams on Reel Women” at AMC Filmcritic.com, a site that has since folded. At that time, I wrote, “I love David Cronenberg, whose ‘Cosmopolis’ has been welcomed into the competition and who headed the Cannes jury in 1999. I was a champion of his cerebral period drama ‘A Dangerous Method,’ which had a terrific star turn by Keira Knightley. But, really, not a single film by a woman? I’m just gobsmacked.”

Now that I’ve migrated my column to Yahoo! Movies, the world’s most viewed movie site, I want to expand the debate for our larger audience. In Cannes, where the festival opened last Thursday and will run through Sunday, the quotes on the gender controversy have been surprisingly subdued from the country that decapitated Marie Antoinette as part of its revolution.

[Related: Wes Anderson’s ‘Moonlight Kingdom’ earns raves at Cannes]

The head of the boys’ club: The Boys Are All Right

Festival Artistic Director Thierry Fremaux explained: “I don’t select films because the film is directed by a man, a woman, white, black, young, an old man. … It wouldn’t be very nice to select a film because the film is not good but it is directed by a woman.” Fremaux lacks the self-awareness that his lock-hold on selecting the films may impact which movies get rewarded and which get tossed back. In every society, the gatekeepers determine the definition of quality.

The female director on the jury: Could it be Stockholm syndrome?

As the sole female director on the nine-person competition jury, British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“Fish Tank”) got to field the “woman question.” While she decried the “pity” of gender inequality, she told a Cannes press conference, “I would absolutely hate it if my film got selected because I was a woman. I would only want my film to be selected for the right reasons and not out of charity because I’m female.” What she was doing, having achieved her spot in the inner circle (congrats!), was echoing Fremaux’s sentiment about the evils of “positive discrimination.”

The academic apologist: The glass is half-full

Columbia University professor and Cannes fixture Annette Insdorf took a wait-and-see approach: “For me, the question is less ‘How many women filmmakers are selected?’ than ‘Do the films illuminate female experience?'” After mentioning such Cannes projects as Marion Cotillard (“Rust and Bone”), Kristen Stewart (“On the Road”), and Jessica Chastain (“Lawless”), Insdorf continued: “It may turn out that the ‘female auteur’ presence in Cannes this year is the prolific international actress.” Having already seen Chastain in “Lawless,” a strong, well-made testosterone-driven film that showcases Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf, I can say that Chastain plays a runaway dancehall girl with a heart of gold. She’s great, but really, Annette, I’m not pinning any hopes on this role as a gender game changer.

[Related: Cannes’ buzziest movies]

Meanwhile, there has been an outcry from the French feminist group La Barbe (translation: The Beard), which published a satirical letter in the French newspaper Le Monde. The letter and attached petition accused the festival of sexism while joking, “Is it not enough for them [women] to aspire to be mistress of ceremonies someday during the festival’s opening night?” Clearly not, as La Barbe members in bright beards continue to protest on the Cannes red carpet.

Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood took a more straightforward approach in the e-petition she drafted (and which I signed). In part, it stated: “We call for Cannes, and other film festivals worldwide to commit to transparency and equality in the selection process of these films. We judge films as human beings, shaped by our own perspectives and experiences. It is vital, therefore, that there be equality and diversity at the point of selection.” In pushing for transparency in the decision-making process, Silverstein’s petition strikes at the heart of the issue: the gatekeepers.

The point is not to assign quotas for women in film — to present films by women because they are by women. The underlying problem is: Why are women so drastically underrepresented among filmmakers, jurors, and entrants? Why do women with a record of success as filmmakers find it so hard to get projects produced, while men, even after significant failures, can still get the green light for their next projects? If there is nothing “special” about women filmmakers and writers, then there should be nothing “special” about either their presence OR their absence.

Unfortunately, it’s their absence that is special.

Again, the answer is not quotas for women. It avoids addressing the real problem. The answer is that, given the absence of any normal distribution in their selection process, the programmers, the selection committees, the gatekeepers are biased, not for quality or talent — since we all agree there’s a pretty good chance that that’s not gender-specific — but on gender.

If we all agree that quality and talent are not gender-specific, and the results of the gatekeepers’ selections is so gender-specific, then it must be the gatekeepers themselves who are at fault. They can’t see past the sex. Lacking any therapeutic insight into their problem, they should be removed and replaced by those who can, in fact, make judgments on talent and quality — and leave gender issues to those situations when gender selection matters. Like “birthin’ babies,” or finding a date.

 

Filed Under: Celebrity, Criticism, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: AMC filmcritic.com, Cannes Film Festival, La Barbe, Melissa Silverstein, Sexism, Women, Yahoo! Movies

Thelma Adams on Reel Women: What Does Cannes Have Against Women?

May 18, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Women directors, Woodstock Film Festival,Nancy Savoca,Mira Sorvino,Susan Seidelman, Debra Granik

Straight shooter Savoca

No one ever claimed that women had bridged the director’s-chair gender gap, but it’s a complete kick in the can that this year’s Cannes Film Festival has not a single female-directed film among the 23 in competition.

I love contenders like David Cronenberg, whose Cosmopolis — starring Robert Pattinson — has been welcomed into the competition, and who headed the Cannes jury in 1999. I was a champion of his cerebral period drama A Dangerous Method, which had a terrific star turn by Keira Knightley. But, really, not a single film by a woman? I’m just gobsmacked.

It is, however, a good year to be a North American male: In addition to Cronenberg, Lee Daniels (The Paperboy), Jeff Nichols (Mud), and Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom) will premiere at what is considered the most prestigious film festival on the planet. The other 51 percent be damned.

There won’t be any shortage of sexy female actresses in evening gowns to attract paparazzi — so why does the female-director shortage matter? To paraphrase: It’s the sexism, stupid. Despite some recent indications to the contrary, women have yet to gain substantial ground in cinema’s most powerful positions. And beyond its inherent prestige, Cannes is significant because it’s at the forefront of the awards season. Last year, for example, The Artist debuted at Cannes, where Jean Dujardin won best actor honors, and went on to sweep the Oscars.

Half-full thinkers can still hope that there will be a bounty of female-helmed movies at the early fall Toronto-Telluride-Venice nexus. Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow has her as-year-unfinished Osama bin Laden film, Zero Dark Thirty (horrible title alert!), slated for the holiday season.

And, in a pleasant surprise, the Tribeca Film Festival, which is currently in full swing, overflows with female-directed films of all stripes. Among the most prominent are Sarah Polley’s quirky dramedy Take This Waltz, featuring Michelle Williams as a straying Toronto wife; Julie Delpy’s shrewd kooky relationship comedy 2 Days in New York, which pairs the actress with Chris Rock; and Lynn Shelton’s sexy sibling rivalry drama with Emily Blunt, Your Sister’s Sister. While not all movies are Oscar-bait, Tribeca presents a bounty of promising women filmmakers, including Tanya Wexler (Hysteria), Malgorzata Szumowska (Elles), Julia Dyer (The Playroom), Sharon Bar-Ziv (Room 514), Lucy Malloy (Una Noche), Kat Cairo (While We Were Here), and Beth Murphy (The List).

It’s unconscionable that the Cannes selection committee, which received in the neighborhood of 1,800 movie submissions, considers this artistic bias a non-issue. It’s up to bold filmmakers who are part of the boys’ club — Cronenberg, Daniels, and Anderson among them — to squawk about the inequity. We love them; now it’s time for them to return the love.

This column first appeared on AMC Filmcritic.com, and was edited by Nina Hammerling Smith

Filed Under: Essay, Movies & TV Tagged With: AMC filmcritic.com, Cannes Film Festival, David Cronenberg, Emily Blunt, Festivals, Lee Daniels, Thelma Adams on Reel Women, Tribeca International Film Festival, Wes Anderson, Women Directors

What “The Hunger Games” Owes to Milla Jovovich, Kate Beckinsale, and Sigourney Weaver

March 28, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Blame the alien bitch for the bad perm

 

With all the buzz surrounding The Hunger Games and the anticipation for its three sequels to come, there’s been plenty of shock and awe that a female-driven action movie has this kind of box office clout. And while some (like Melissa Silverstein on the must-read Women and Hollywood blog) have asked whether The Hunger Games will be the first real female franchise, I have a definitive answer: No. It can’t be. Because it’s not the first.

Though they’ve been oft-overlooked by the Hollywood establishment — and critics, too — at least three women-driven franchises have commanded the box office: Resident Evil‘s soon-to-be-five installments, anchored by Milla Jovovich, represent the most successful video-game movie series ever; Kate Beckinsale’s leads the four Underworld movies; and the grandma of the bunch, Sigourney Weaver, kicked extraterrestrial butt as Ripley in Alien and its sequels.

Violent Video-Game Vixen –[Read the full column on AMC filmcritic.com via Thelma Adams on Reel Women]

Filed Under: Essay, Movies & TV Tagged With: Alien, AMC filmcritic.com, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Beckinsale, Katniss, Melissa Silverstein, Milla Jovovich, Resident Evil, Sigourney Weaver, Strong Women, The Hunger Games, Thelma Adams on Reel Women, Underworld, Women and Hollywood

Women on Top: Directors Angelina Jolie, Madonna, and Vera Farmiga

February 6, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Madonna, Superbowl, Angelina Jolie, Vera Farmiga

Madonna at the Helm

From Thelma Adams on Reel Women on AMC filmcritic.com:

Being a director means having power. And in the past year, three women already famous for being performers — Angelina Jolie, Vera Farmiga, and Madonna — claimed some of that power for themselves by stepping behind the camera, with varying degrees of success.

With In the Land of Blood and Honey, Higher Ground, and W.E., Jolie, Farmiga and Madonna made three very different movies, for very different audiences. The unifying factor? In all three movies, complex women owned the story arcs — still a far-too-unusual occurrence in Hollywood.

Continued on AMC filmcritic.com…

Filed Under: Celebrity, Essay, Movies & TV Tagged With: AMC filmcritic.com, Angelina Jolie, In the Land of Blood and Honey, Madonna, Vera Farmiga, Wallis Simpson

Unwitting Feminist: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady”

December 29, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Meryl Streep, Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady, Feminism, Women in Politics

Streep raises eyebrows as Thatcher (Miramax)

My latest — and possibly most controversial — column on AMC Filmcritic.com:

Meryl Streep has been raking in awards and nominations for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. But accolades for best picture, best director, or best script? Zip.

That’s the conventional wisdom on The Iron Lady: Streep deserves the Oscar for playing the British Prime Minister, but director Phyllida Lloyd does not craft a movie equal to the performance. That’s typically when someone snorts that Lloyd also directed the critically panned Mamma Mia! Reality check:

Not only did that musical showcase a bold, silly, sexy, singing Streep, it was also her all-time biggest money-maker, grossing $610 million worldwide.

No one expects that kind of global take for Streep’s current biopic. The Oscar winner is consistently so fantastic that when she channels Thatcher, political icon and real woman, audiences tend to be a little jaded about her talent. What can’t this actress do?

Still, as Thatcher, Streep faces steep resistance: Few liked Maggie — at least not publicly. She was the cod liver oil of politicians, nasty but effective. Working with Lloyd, Meryl creates a monumental woman in sensible shoes, from early ambition to late dementia. She takes this Tory tyrant and creates if not a feminist role model then a formidable woman who refused to wash the teacups of the lesser men around her, and boldly went where no Englishwoman had gone before: 10 Downing Street.

Streep herself defined the challenge inherent in playing a powerful woman onscreen: “There’s no part like this because there’s no woman like this. I’m going to turn that down because I don’t like her politics? My God,” Streep told Donna Freydkin of USA Today, “Part of what interested me about this whole thing was seeing why we are so uncomfortable on a certain level with women leaders and with their male partners feeling diminished. It’s an interesting thing for us to contemplate.”

More than 20 years after her political reign, Thatcher’s detractors remain impassioned. And her legacy is controversial. In 2009, Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of the liberal Labour government, released a fact sheet celebrating “Women in Power: Milestones.” Oops! The list omitted Thatcher’s name. Another reality check: Maggie was the longest-presiding British P.M. in the twentieth century, winning three general elections, as well as being the first woman to lead the Conservative Party and to become Prime Minister.

What we have here is a controversial woman in power (and a meaty character onscreen) whose rise was all the more remarkable because she was a grocer’s daughter who attended Oxford University, where she got an incredible education in both academics and class snobbery. Thatcher as written (and in reality) was a woman, wife, mother, and leader who drove her own destiny. She was a women’s libber role model without embracing the feminist movement.

Sophisticated audiences of both sexes would like to believe that they are undeterred by the prospect of a powerful woman. However, the cries that this movie should confront Thatcherite politics and her ideology miss the point. It’s a telling sign of resistance to a movie where a woman is unabashedly carrying the narrative.

Much like Stephen Frears’s 2006 Oscar-nominated The Queen, which delivered Helen Mirren a best actress Oscar, The Iron Lady constructs a very personal look back at a living legend’s private life and public career. In this case, it’s seen through the lens of a widowed, out-of-power Thatcher recalling the past subjectively through the lens of dementia. Nothing could make this chosen point-of-view clearer than the opening scene, when the elderly, anonymous Thatcher wanders out to buy milk and is shocked by the current price of a pint — and her disrespectful treatment by fellow customers. We meet this once-powerful character at a point of intense yet mundane vulnerability, and we empathize. The scene succeeds because Streep, too, seeks anonymity within the role. She disappears, humanizing the public figure in these private moments.

A parallel situation was the reception to Oliver Stone’s 2008 W. Critical reaction to this brilliant film with a terrific title performance by Josh Brolin as George W. Bush was filtered through writers’ understandable resistance to embrace the man and sacrifice political pieties. At Filmcritic.com, the DVD review led with politics: “As President Bush’s second term winds down and the race for 2008 spins at fevered pace, now is the time to make a statement — reflecting on the failures of the current administration and projecting our hopes for the next. Oliver Stone’s W. is not that statement.” The truth was: Stone wanted to give us the man and his psychology, not the straw man or the messiah. No Oscar there, but plenty of critical censure.

Resistance to The Iron Lady as a whole, rather than simply a single Streep performance, reflects
unspoken but existing conflicts. Liberal viewers are not supposed to like this woman, but if we get wrapped up in the story as we should, then we do. If we deny her humanity, what does that say about our own politics? If women can’t recognize her struggle to make a difference outside the home simply because her beliefs are at odds with ours, what does that say about our notions of inclusiveness? Love her or hate her, Thatcher was the rare decisive woman in power who fearlessly took unpopular and difficult stands that she thought right, darn the costs of popularity among voters, the media, and her colleagues.

In light of Stone’s W., it may also suffer from a gender-neutral problem in American politics, where we have become so polarized, and self-centered, that we lose sight of the humanity of the opposition — male or female — when they fail to confirm our own convictions.

Filed Under: Criticism, Essay, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: AMC filmcritic.com, feminism, Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep, Mothers, The Iron Lady, Women in Film

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