Many of the BFI's selection are obviously intended to showcase the talents of female directors – some of them obscure ones who seem to have made one very good film, then disappeared from sight. I guess even in California, and even within the arts, being a woman in a traditional male role is still a challenge.
As so often in movies these days, males – unless they're very young – perform here primarily as threats, or as failures. That aside, Frozen River manages to be a gripping and taut thriller, despite being determinedly realistic and un-romanticising. The heroines bend, and occasionally break, the law, but it's simply in the attempt to stay above the breadline. They try to do the right thing, but sometimes have to tweak it a little while (apparently) wishing they didn't have to.
This contrasts with the seminal Thelma and Louise, the movie which launched the two-women-against-the-world genre, and which conveys a sense of triumph in sticking-it-to-the-guy. Here it's less about indulging one's rage, and more about coping when you're the gender-equivalent of the little guy.
Swimming Pool (spoiler alert) is set in a French villa and surrounds, in the south of France, and is a feast of visuals and atmosphere, with Rampling highly watchable as always. Of course, that can't be all of it, not in a sophisticated modern French movie. We have sex, naturally; sex of the kind that leaves a slightly nasty taste. People using sex to deceive one another, manipulate one another, intentionally hurt one another.
More disturbing is the apparently random murder of a male (the men here, of all ages, are only interested in one thing) whose only 'crime' was to interrupt his own sexual encounter with the nymphet. The murder is casually covered up by the two women, who then bond over the experience. (In 2003, this was probably shocking and provocative; now it seems rather humdrum, given what's come out since in movies and TV.)
This triumphant sense of subverting patriarchy, by making an individual male suffer, sometimes on the flimsiest pretext, seems to have become a standard subtext of both highbrow and popular literature. If the genders had been reversed, everyone would have screamed misogyny, and the film would presumably not have been nominated for numerous awards.
• Once upon a time in cinema, the norm for a female character was to be supportive of a male character. Only a norm, mind; plenty of the most interesting movies of the 40s and 50s feature female characters who deviate from that role. But from permission-to-deviate we seem to have segued to an imperative not to promote the older norm in any way.
The (largely covert) ideology these days seems to go as follows:
- Any tendency for women to play supportive roles in the past was due purely to culture, not genes – or if genes, then only in a bad way, e.g. males who are hardwired to dominate and oppress.
- Any above-average tendency to play supportive roles, among particular social groups, is a sign that those groups are oppressed.
- Any cultural product which shows a woman behaving supportively, and shows it as acceptable or even praiseworthy, amounts to oppressive propaganda.
Women are being subtly encouraged not to be supportive. But men want them to be supportive – don't they? Oh, but that's not an argument in favour of women being supportive, it's an argument against it. Such desires on the part of men are unhealthy and morally wrong. Frustrating such desires is virtuous!
Of course I'm not suggesting that all women should play supportive roles. Just that some of them may actually want to do so, at least in the absence of pressure to the contrary. But there's a strange logic (mirrored in Marxist theory by the idea that any satisfaction experienced by a member of the working class, with their current position, is wrong and needs to be expunged), to the effect that if a woman enjoys playing a traditional female role, there's probably something wrong with her. She has been brainwashed by the patriarchy or is otherwise mentally disturbed, and needs to be re-educated by the sisterhood.
• More tenuous, but arguably present in much contemporary fiction and some movies, is a related idea: that being supportive per se – in the sense of one individual helping another – is somehow intrinsically dodgy, either politically or morally, regardless of the helper's gender or race. Work should be done for the community as a whole, and according to the dictates of the central authority; individual autonomy and initiative in this context are undesirable. (Sound familiar? It's one aspect of the Marxist mindset.)
What are the likely effects of such an ideology? One possible consequence is a reduction of the work ethic. If every time I think about doing a plumbing/carpentry/etc. job for someone, the thought pops into my head (picked up from a sociology lecture, or a Guardian article) that such an act will serve to entrench an unjust class structure, I might find my enthusiasm for doing the work somewhat dampened.