Filmfest och Dyke March i San Francisco | Pride 09 | QX

Filmfest och Dyke March i San Francisco | Pride 09 | QX

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Revisiting Katherine Hepburn in Venice: Summertime

Summertime
UK / 1955

Summertime was shot exclusively in Venice. And for those who have been to Venice, the film is a rare treasure; an historical homage to a city once enamored by tourists, with very few cameras, and mostly well dressed Italians. Today the dress is more casual, and the deluge of international tourists milling around removes a part of this floating museum with every step.

For David Lean, it was his favorite film starring his favorite actress. In her autobiography, Me, Katherine Hepburn remarked, “they called me and said that David Lean was going to direct it. ‘Would I be…’ they didn’t need to finish that sentence.” Hepburn said she first lived on the island of Murano, where the famous Murano glass is made, not Venice proper with its maze of narrow streets and bridges. Together with her entourage, she quickly moved into an apartment near the Grand Canale, the major water route, opposite the famous Gritti hotel where David Lean camped. (She even had her own gondola.) One of the most sought after Venetian tourist items is of course Murano glass: “glass, glass and more glass,” according to the dialogue. Given that Venice footed the entire bill of $36,000 for the film, Summertime is seen as pure tourist promotion.

Summertime is about Jane Hudson (Hepburn), a middle-aged “fancy secretary” from Akron, Ohio who saves up for a three-week dream vacation in Venice. Arriving by train to Piazza Roma via the Orient Express, Paris-Venice, complete with a hand-wound 8-mm camera, she takes the vaporetto, the public water bus rather than a gondola or water taxi. An American couple on board happens to be staying at the same boarding house, Pensioni Fiorini ( a set construction) on the Accademia vaporetta - water bus stop (the Peggy Guggenheim Museum is located here). Jane coyly indicates to the pensioni proprietress that she, like most girls under 50, is searching for something. On her first day out on the Piazza San Marco Jane meets a handsome middle aged man, Renato Di Rossi (Rossano Brazzi), an antique dealer, and enters into a romance which becomes all the more passionate because he is married although separated.

Lean had six shades of red goblets blown especially for the film. In one scene, Jane discovers Renato charged almost the same amount for 18th century glass as fresh imitations, a discovery that produces rage. It becomes quite clear that Jane is losing her rocker, displaying a passion that eclipses the bravura of Brazzi. She is hysterical, insisting people drink with her to quiet her loneliness, and has flash floods of intermittent tears. Hepburn actually had problems with Spencer Tracy and the film crew, despite the glass commercials, and she was considered an irritating obstacle to tourism.

Lean’s intention with the film was to capture a child at play: Jane’s awe of Venice and the excitement of new love. An Italian child becomes her escort, one that she at first rebukes — she is not that desperate, but she and Renato later play with wind up toys at a café. “You are like a hungry child that only wants beefsteak not ravioli. Please take the ravioli,” says Renato when she starts to question the affair. “I’m not that hungry,” says Jane. But Renato convinces her of the need for a Latin approach, “the ravioli approach” to love and sexuality. Her red goblets transform to a pair of sparkling red shoes, noticeably evocative of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, as fireworks fills the sky. The charm of Venice and typical Italian love songs give the film the aura of a melodrama, a woman’s weepie, but the storyline is too thin. The film also prods American and Italian stereotypes, such as the shock of promiscuous Italians to the more pristine Americans. (Keep in mind the film has a British director.) The travelogue veneer and the superficial story make Summertime a corny gem.

Hepburn claims Lean absorbed the city and had a photographic gift for conveying his impressions. Indeed, after every minute of dialogue a breathtaking view of the city is displayed, drawing inspiration from the play The Time of the Cuckoo by Arthur Laurents, which is made to fit his pictures.

In one memorable scene Hepburn falls into the Venetian canal, an action that would be repugnant today in the foul water, filled with industrial pollution from neighboring Mestre. Reportedly, the water temporarily blinded Katherine and today anyone who falls into the canal is advised to take antibiotics. (An urban legend about the incident claims that the fall contributed to Hepburn's Parkinsons illness). Medieval Venice was built on pilings and dead bodies were dropped into the canal to rot. A foreshadowing of the duplicity of the canal occurs when Jane first sets eyes on a gondola floating by, a view tainted by the dumping of sewage from an apartment. It is the also the water that carries her first flower from Renato, a flower that never quite stays in her possession even as she pulls away from the city. “Please help me Renato,” she begs, “let me go.” She has grown up, and if she stays a second longer she will never go. Brazzi actually first interpreted his role as a gigolo, (“another girl will arrive tomorrow”), a portrayal Lean thought too grim.

In the UK, the film was called Summer Madness, a far more appropriate title.

Revisiting Ingrid Bergman in The Visit

The Visit
La Rancune / USA / France / 1964

From start to finish, The Visit is commanded by the presence of Ingrid Bergman. She was scorned by Hollywood for leaving her husband for an Italian director, and is here cast in a role that allows her to address the people that exiled her. As a young woman, Bergman was given virtuous roles that endeared her to the public, which was why her exile angered them. (Ernest Hemingway was prepared to take out a full-page ad in Hollywood Reporter in her defense.) Nevertheless, she had tired of superficial roles and was willing to accept low pay for challenging parts in Rossellini’s realist cinema, as in Stromboli, the first picture he invited her to make in 1949. Bergman received a standing ovation at the Academy Awards when she returned to accept an Oscar for Murder on the Orient Express, years after leaving Hollywood. Bergman’s role in The Visit is an irony, as she plays a woman who returns to face her past.

Bergman plays Karla Zachanassian, who as a young girl was beaten by her schoolmaster. Her father was a hopeless alcoholic and her mother the subject of town gossip. At the age of seventeen, she falls in love with Serge Miller, the local shopkeeper, and eventually becomes pregnant. He denies being the father when she files a paternity suit. Later she loses the child and is forced to leave town. She moves to Trieste, and because of her disgrace is forced to survive through prostitution.

Two decades later she returns, extremely wealthy and with a desire for vengeance from the people of the mythical Pan European village. (It is claimed that here Lord Byron wrote his poetry and Brahms composed his music.) She brings a lawyer and two witnesses who confess Serge bribed them years ago to testify that Karla had slept with them, casting serious doubt on her paternity suit.

Karla claims that with this deceit her spirit died, and offers two million dollars, one for the township and one to be divided among the citizens of the village upon the execution of Serge, Karla’s one condition for payment.

It is triumphant for Karla to witness how morals can be discarded for a price. The townsfolk and elected officials that ran a seventeen-year-old girl out of town equally turn against Serge, who says he was only human, asking forgiveness and understanding. As Karla dines in her apartment over the courtyard adjacent to his shop, she watches the town transform from self-righteous indignation over killing a man in vengeance to a demonstration that everything, even human life, is a commodity that can be bought. As in Casablanca, “human life is very cheap.” Yet, she cannot take comfort in the complicity of the townsfolk.

Karla’s secretary is a young woman named Anya, who might be the same age as her dead child, and who perhaps acts as careless as she had when she was young. Karla counsels her in an effort to prevent the same mistake, bidding Anya to leave the married man she is with and offering to take her on the road after her “visit.” This is perhaps Karla’s saving redemption.

Austrian Bernhard Wicki directed The Visit, a writer as well as actor (Wicki played Doctor Ulmer in Paris, Texas). His film, an international co-production made in Italy at Cinecittà, is embellished with well-constructed scenes, excellent camerawork, and outstanding performances, such as when Karla momentarily rekindles her love for Serge. The scene is shot at sunset on a dock with a delicate light hitting the two actors in an embrace in close-up. Karla marvels at how his hair was so black when he was young, how their whole life was ahead of them. For a moment, she loses herself in the past in a wild and passionate moment only to tragically discover Serge has grayed, recalling the life she was forced into. As she comes to her senses, there is an abrupt end to the lyrical scene.

Ingrid Bergman, at forty-nine, was at the peak of her career in this film, and is powerful and dynamic as Karla. She remarked in letters housed at the “Ingrid Bergman Archives” at Wesleyan College that her mature roles were more interesting than in her earlier (and more renowned) roles, such as in Casablanca. The choice of a property like The Visit demonstrates how well she lived out her conviction to evolve and transform as an actor.

Revisiting Bergman's The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal
Det Sjunde inseglet / Sweden / 1957

The Seventh Seal is, in real time, a thirty-minute reprieve from the “apocalypse.” This is symbolized by the Black plague of the Middle Ages during the 13th century, a disease that spread between victims at eight kilometers a day. The Christian clergy randomly blamed people for its spread, in one case burning a young woman of fourteen at the stake. For Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, the film served as an allegory to the cold war of the 50s and the threat of nuclear warfare. Because the rapid advancement of the plague is abundantly featured in the film, the thirty-minute reprieve becomes an evolutionary and meditative journey.

Fourteen years after a Holy Crusade, Antonius Block returns to the south of Sweden. At that time it encompassed Denmark with the festival of saints at Helsingör and Roskilde as geographical references in the film. The most famous scene of The Seventh Seal opens upon Block at the eastern coast of Sweden. Death suddenly appears, covered in a black cloak from head to toe:

“Who are you”, asks Block.

“I am Death,” the figure replies.

“Have you come to get me?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Everyone says that.”

“But I don’t grant any reprieves.”

“You play chess don’t you? I’ve seen it in paintings and heard it in songs.”

The game begins with moves on board, which serve as plot changes. A field trip to a church with frescos illustrates the story of the plague as a death ritual. The thirty-minute reprieve Block requests is for him to experience one meaningful deed before he dies. He tries to trick and is tricked by Death, who poses as a confessor at one point while Block reveals his game plan.

Block’s quest is for “vetskap” (knowledge), but he is also aware of his corporeality. At one point he holds up his arm exclaiming, “this is my hand,” as in the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion when the liturgy intones “this is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” The knight meets a circus family: Jof, Mia, and their little two-year-old son Mikael. Jof predicts that Mikael will one day be able to suspend a ball in mid air, such supernatural powers providing allusions to Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph. It is Jof, however, who appears to have mystical powers — his visions indeed serve to save his family from death. Jof sees not only the Virgin Mary but his death, his family’s, and that of others.

Bergman’s films often depict the artist as an outcast and at one point in The Seventh Seal Jof is asked to dance as a bear, awaking superstitions of the people at an inn who need a scapegoat for the plague. Such a mime evokes the medieval custom of sacrificing a bear for atonement. Likewise, processions led by clergy carry not only witches for burning but a parade of flagellates paying for their sins.

The Seventh Seal is not only a medieval drama play. Bergman also manages to instill his film with references to his philosophy on women, elsewhere seen in Monica, The Story of a Bad Girl, Persona, and Cries and Whispers.

At one point an actor from the circus is seduced by Lisa, the wife of blacksmith Plog. They escape into the forest and are later discovered by Plog and Block's squire, Jöns. The forest is feared for bears, wolves and ghosts but primarily Death, symbolized by thunderstorm, lightning, and rain. Jöns and Plog converse about how Lisa should be killed, as all women, for their deception, harking back to the garden of Eden. “Lust is one thing,” says Jöns. He tells a woman he “saves from rape” that he is tired of “that kind of love.” Plog and Lisa are however reunited and cry out that the actor should be killed, shifting the burden to the artist as outcast. Death, like the church, has a thing to say about the adulterer, who fells a tree the actor has scurried up, leaving a squirrel to sniff at the fresh cut of its roots.

ONE HUGE QUESTION ABOUT THIS FILM IS NEVER BROUGHT UP IN FILM CRITICISM:
Upon meeting the young girl condemned to death, Block cannot help but ask why. He means to interfere and prevent the fate, but supposes she is half dead already. There is plenty of time before she is set on fire, so it is curious that he waits until the last minute. (Was that not a good deed?)

Convinced of “tomheten” (emptiness) Block wanders away to the circus family where he has a bowl of “smultron” (wild strawberries, offered to him by Bibbi Andersson as in Wild Strawberries, made the same year). The symbolism of the meal points to one other existential truism, that for the moment daily bread is enough.

When the travelers make their way to Block’s home they are met by his wife, who prepares the last supper. Death is welcomed into their home and we later together with Jof see them led by Death brandishing a scythe in a dance on the hill. The Seventh Seal is riddled with conventional metaphors about death and women, and the artist as outcast, a fate Bergman himself would experience two decades later when accused of not paying his taxes.

NOTE: Criterion features a new digital transfer special edition of The Seventh Seal, with loads of extras!

Revisiting Bergman's Persona

Persona
Sweden / 1966

Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, filmed on Fårö (Sheep Island) where the Swedish octogenarian’s summer home is located, is enigmatic and pulsating. Even after multiple viewings it is persistently compelling, primarily because of its contemplative thematic structure, partially devoid of language that allows the spectator to inscribe meaning. Bergman, in a recent interview and screening of Persona on Swedish Television, said he was weary of all the interpretations. He also revealed that in the beginning shooting the film was extremely problematic.

Persona, the third joint venture between Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist, is renowned for its poignant use of close-ups. In the making of Fanny and Alexander, Bergman admits they had ongoing differences on how to move the camera. A tightly constructed mise-en-scene allowed minute control of rhythm and acting in his later films, in which Nykvist kept the camera still. This style was well suited to the director whose strongest suit is the theater.

Persona begins with a montage — what Bergman calls “dream imagery”: The notable rattle of a film projector and illuminated filmstrip moving through its machinery alerts the spectator to the art instrument of filmmaking. (Bergman as a child lived close to a movie theater called ‘Slottsbiograf’ [‘Castle Cinema’], located below the castle where Queen Christina planned her abdication in the 16th century.) There his love of film was cultivated and some of his favorite images are to be found in this montage. A caricature of an erect penis for one eighth of a second, an image typically found in books on ancient Greece, was cut by Swedish censors. (Bergman’s excitement for its reintroduction on the recent Swedish Television broadcast made the old master look pathetically immature.) Other sequences include actors brandishing devils and skeleton suits frightening a sleeping man in pajamas from a silent film. An old cartoon is projected upside down, momentarily caught in the sprocket holes. A spider stretching its deadly appendages, gutted sheep, and a nail hammered into a hand are other, more disturbing images.

A shot of a Swedish forest introduces clips of aging faces and feet, appended with the sound of water from a tap. The telephone rings and a boy lying on a bed covered by a white sheet sits up, puts on his glasses and reads Vår Tids Hjältar (Heroes of our Time) by Sven Ulric Palme. He stretches his hand towards the projection of a woman’s face (Bibi Andersson). As the credits roll, a sequence of a self-immolating monk is shown, followed by the faces of Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann and Jörgen Lindström, the young boy. It is no accident that the images from the montage sequence precede the film and are later revealed visually or metaphorically; Persona is a meditation on martyrdom, heroics, fear, and sacrifice in personal relationship.

Persona is the story of a meeting between an artist (Liv Ullmann) and a nurse (Bibi Andersson). Elisabet Vogler is an actress who, during a theatrical performance of Electra, is suddenly unable to deliver her lines. She excuses herself for being “full of laughter.” This episode sends her into “an hysterical reaction” where she refuses to speak. Elisabet is admitted into the psychiatric ward of a Swedish hospital following three months of self-imposed silence (laced with laughter along with some humming). The psychiatrist brilliantly played by the late Margaretha Crook suggests that nurse Alma travel with Elisabet to her country house and dialogue with the actress for her rehabilitation. She believes that the actress is trying to seal herself hermetically from the world by refusing to speak and requires personal assistance in a natural setting. The stark austerity of the hospital room (a studio of the summer house at Fårö) with only a hospital bed on wheels, a night table, and TV might make anyone come unglued. The invitation is certainly a privileged one that not all Swedes can expect for convalescence. Bergman recalled that Persona was written following convalescence from an inflammatory illness that among other symptoms left him partially paralyzed in one arm.

Before the journey, Elisabet witnesses on her television news footage of the self-immolation of a monk protesting the Vietnam War. Bergman admits this was his first overt usage of politics in his films. Curiously, the footage in English with an American commentator and no subtitles goes against the practice of Swedish Television that must provide Swedish translation to all previously recorded broadcasts.

Bergman, in voice-over, announces how Elisabet and Alma go off to the doctor’s summerhouse. The convalescence on Fårö takes several twists demonstrating how the symbiosis in caretaking is precarious where the roles can suddenly reverse. Alma uses the silence to relate her experiences, flattered by a serious actress taking her to heart. She even envisions Elisabet coming to her bed at night in a homoerotic dream that is timelessly potent. ¹

Eventually, Elisabet sends off Alma with an unsealed envelope to town. Considering it her medical duty to read it, Alma is distressed to find that she is under the microscope of Elisabet and is outraged. Her tale of an orgy with teenagers that led to her pregnancy is first received with empathy and later is patronized by the worldly actress who confides in the letter to her husband that Alma may be infatuated with her. The roles reverse and Alma zeroes in on Elisabet with the acumen of a medical professional. Bergman is didactic with the revelation that neither Alma’s aborted child nor Elisabet’s abandoned boy was wanted. The manner in which Alma confronts her and describes how she probably perceives her boy could be in part a description of her own aborted fetus.

Alma is also visited at night by Elisabet’s husband, less memorable than the dream of the elegant actress flowing into her room with a long white nightgown. She denies being Elisabet to Mr. Vogler but later assumes her identity, perfunctorily exclaiming she is satisfied with their life together. However, by day, Elisabet is no more eager to return to her life with her husband and boy than the day she lost her ability to speak. This seems to send her further into “hysteria.” The discovered letter sets off a chain of events where Alma confronts Elisabet and brings up her neglected little boy that needs attention. During one scene Elisabet examines a photo of a boy being held at gunpoint by Nazi soldiers and looks away with horror.

For Elisabet and Alma alike, the introspection is overwhelmingly painful where shame and tumult are shared and mirrored. In one scene, Alma questions Elisabet, her face shown in close-up, and later the same dialogue is used with Alma in close-up. There are no easy answers to why the two are precariously balanced in complicity, their faces forming an incongruous whole after this scene. There is perhaps something for each of us to project into this unbalance, but Bergman, as in so many other films, believes that failed motherhood contributes to hysteria and that woman is ultimately and inextricably linked to her biology. In the end, we see Alma in her nurse’s uniform coming into the room to help Elisabet. Are they back again in the hospital or did they ever leave?

¹ – The scene where Elisabet stokes the hair of Alma is reminiscent of a classic scene from Maya Deren’s At Land where a woman strokes the hair of two women, a sequence which was determined "lesbianish" and as such described homophobically by The New Republic film critic Manny Farber.

Queer Women of Color Film Festival, San Francisco June 12-14

The 5th Queer Women of Color Film Festival affectionately referred to simply as QWOCMAP was held at the Brava Theater in San Francisco this past weekend June 12-14. This amazing festival features the films of women who attend a 13 week professional filmmaking program under the tutelage of San Francisco filmmaker Madeline Lim, assisted by Development & Events Manager - Kebo Drew, Festival Manager - Elisa D. Huerta and an amazing staff of volunteers.
Lim spoke about developing a proactive stance rather than a reactive stance to combat the stereotypical depiction of queer women of color. Far too often people of color die in films, which is an all too familiar trope, said Lim. "We need to create out own images, and tell our own stories", she exclaimed and QWOCMAP is living proof of this.
The strong community support for this festival includes Mayor Gavin Newsom and a host of sponsors. The festival is free and there are daily feasts donated by local eateries. But generous donations and community support keep this festival going. Despite budget cuts for culture, QWOCMAP is determined to survive and with the Queer Women of Color Media Project will continue to provide hands on education for filmmakers.
The 353 seat theater was filled to near capacity and the enthusiastic crowd gave artful feedback to the work of these filmmakers. It can only be said that the festival is getting better and better, and the films increase each year in quality as far as camera work, editing, sound and dialogue.
The theme of the festival this year was immigration and an afternoon "Convening Community" panel discussed "Multiple Borders" which was comprised of LGBTQI (Lesbian Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, & Intersex) coalitions in human rights for queer women of color immigrants. On the panel were Noemi Calonje, National Center for Lesbian Rights, Philip Hwang, Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights, Madeleine Lim, Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project and Laura Rivas, National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights. An important area to recognize with the passage of Proposition 8 against gay marriage is the absence of legislation for same sex partners to sponsor their international partners. Prior to the panel there were several screenings of films on this topic including Madeline Lim's Sambal Belacan (1997), a film which is banned in Singapore about three queer Singaporean immigrants.
The filmmakers took the theme of immigration to task with some highly creative work. The poster icon of the festival is a still from Mr and Mrs Singh by Punam S, a film in which a married couple live a double life as a gay man and lesbian.
Other films this year include the animated short Two Embrace by Arizona filmmaker Carrie House. This little documentary presents a narrative that isn’t in the history books about Native Americans and the first immigrants to America, the Europeans.
Jolie Harris takes on the problematic cliché that is makings its way around in Gay is NOT the New Black. Harris said she was saddened by the wedge of disparity driven between what she believes is the white LGBT community and people of color. She believes that the connection which attempts to links Proposition 8 with the minority vote is inherently racist. The passage of Proposition 8 for gay marriage in California was blamed on people of color who supported Obama but not the marriage initiative. This inflated claim had a heyday in the media, which as a far from objective power structure is known to create conflict. But these messages were taken as factual. Harris said that the issues in the LGBT community seem far less radical than before, such as the rights for gays in the military and the right to install the age old institution of marriage. She feels that there are far more important issues that call for activism.
Tera Greene's Queerer Than Thou is a humorous collection of some of current labels in queer culture, from the classic 2.0 gay man to several creative distinctions for different LGBT populations, presented with a brilliant timing. One of the more inventive films of the festival was the scifi comedy with elaborate alien costume design in Dimension of IS: A Spectacular Future by filmmakers Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa and Heather Cox-Carducci.
The brilliant dialogue of (B.K. Williams in What if?, tackles the hidden implications of how outside is an outsider at a dinner party in a explosive standoff between Desiree Rogers and Monica Bhatnagar.
Cruzito’s moving documentary Non-Resident Alien chronicles the activist prose of the queer Afro-Cuban hip-hop trio Las Crudas Cubensi who have been performing since 1995.
The artists who were in the house had never seen the film which is complete with footage from Cuba. The festival concluded with a riveting concert by the group who have recently made the Bay Area their home.

Women in the films of Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar is always quick to point out that he loves women. Especially his mother. Indeed his films feature women in prominent roles. But taking a closer look at these roles, it is clear that the women he loves are often aesthetic and fetishized constructions.Women's groups in Spain have long protested his films. What Almodóvar loves about women beauty and style. He loves to dress and film women, exemplified by actresses such as Victoria Abril, Penélope Cruz, Cecila Roth and Carmen Maura. But its clear women are often cast in stereotypical and clichéd roles. In addition to playing mothers and daughters in complicated relationships such as in High Heels (1990), Almodóvar's women are often portrayed as prostitutes and junkies or both. The mother/daughter relationships are a little like the ones in Mildred Pierce or All About Eve in which there is identity theft, impersonation of the mother by the daughter or those around her, or stealing the romantic partners of the mother by the daughter. Drag queens, and male to female transgenders are also part of his pantheon of female characters who do a fair amount of female impersonation. The road to his latest film Broken Embraces at Cannes this week has not always been as campy and kitschy and populated by heavenly LGBT creatures, which by now are his trademarks. But divas in some form of captivity have been there from the beginning .
In Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), Victoria Abril plays Marina, a prostitute and drug addict who is abducted by a man (Antonio Banderas) just released from a mental institution. His release in part has to do with having sex with the hospital psychiatrist. Ricky is 23 and determined to be a good father and husband to the woman he captivates and ties up. Ricky breaks Marina's jaw when she protests, which he dismisses as an accident, and later she agrees. Eventually she does fall in love with him after having repeated sex with him, which was part of his original plan. Later even her sister approves because he is such a "nice good looking man" and forgives him for stealing from the dressing room where she and her sister work.
Probably one of Almodóvar's most disturbing films, Talk to Her (2002) is about a repressed male nurse who dreams about having sex with a woman. In real life he sleep with a patient in the hospital who turns out to be a young woman in a coma. He is praised for bringing her back to life when she becomes pregnant and gives birth.
In All About My Mother (1999) there are many female characters, both conventional and stereotypical. A young nun played by Penelope Cruz has sex with a drag queen and dies of aids. Nearly the only clearly identifiable lesbian in his films, Huma Roja (Marisa Paredes), is unhappily in love with a woman who is a drug addict. Fan worship has taken the life of a young boy who was enraptured by her and she tries to atone for that in the end.
Women feel compelled to act out in some kind of earthy depravity either as mothers and daughters or prostitutes and junkies: madonnas and whores. Pedro adores a certain caricature of woman, a certain kind of female trope . Often his women suffer from some liability or have some dark secret that requires atonement or settling of the score. Actresses who love him for his films have been made famous, such as Penélope Cruz. But for nearly two decades there was a conspicuous silence with Carmen Maura after their collaboration in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1987). In Volver (2006) Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) kills her abusive husband and is aided by Regina, a local prostitute. Men have minor roles and Carmen Maura spends most of her time under the bed, playing the dead mother of Raimunda.
Almodóvar has certainly enjoyed the praise of cineastes, and his film creations beyond the stereotypes are cleverly constructed narratives with exquisite art direction, brilliant mis en scene and use of sound and image. His bending of the conventions of melodrama and his sense of farce is extremely engaging. There is no finger pointing when it comes to morality even to the Catholic church. He claims he does not judge rapists, prostitutes, addicts and criminals in his films but gives them humanity. This would explain the compassion given to both the orderly in Talk to Me and the former resident of a psych ward in Tie Me Up Tie Me Down. "The way to humanity" for Pedro is always transmitted through sex, often heterosexual. His films confront and address the repression of sexuality in the Catholic upbringing, but LGBT sex and lifestyle is always implied. Transgenders may have sex with men or women but clearly developed lesbian and gay characters are rare. It would not seem possible that Almodóvar could be so popular in Spain if his LGBT characters were front stage and center, so they enjoy an ambiguous role in the narratives.
Bad Education, (2004) an autobiographical story of the Spanish director's education in a Catholic school, has virtually no women at all nor fully developed gay characters. A priest is seduced by a transvestite who had once abused the brother and the gay film director who had a crush on the brother in school years. Almodóvar says he grew up with frightening men and was raised by women. This partially explains why for a gay men there are few gay men in his films.
In Broken Embraces (2009), Almodóvar's new film in the official competition at Cannes, Penélope Cruz appears more than once as an actress/prostitute in love with the movie business and movie people, in a film about a film, that is an homage to film. She plays three characters: Lena/Magdena/Pina.
Almodóvar says he dislikes gender roles. His films disrupt heteronormativity in specific ways. There is an absence of strong males and the aesthetiziced and fetishized female is created by transgenders and female divas. No one seems to do this quite like Almodóvar. His films are entertaining and life affirming no matter how complicated the roster may be of his colorful characters. If he has succeeded in renewing popular Spanish film after Franco it is because he has given film an enriching iconography of fantastic contrasts, and embodied his films with endearing and tragic characters. There is not only a melody in his melodrama with tears that are tragiccomic but a trajectory for the imaginary in the bizarre and weird that is mesmerizing and enchanting. Though images that are clearly reactionary and often inappropiate may not strike an accord given the historical subordination of women there is a lot of emotional terrain to sift through. This is what makes Almodóvar unique and one of the best international directors today.

Cinematic Misogyny and Cannes

It is used in film criticism and by film critics today: misogyny: a cinematic trope based on a primal fear of women. The fear expresses itself in the recycling of iconography where women are beaten, sexually assaulted, and service men and their needs and subordinate their own. For if women were truly not to be feared they would be doing all kinds of roles and working in all kinds of capacities in the film industry. There are exceptions and these exceptions are pointed out with godspeed less there be any causal link of misogyny to the auteur. As such, a misogynist film is an artful film. Its creator, an artist. This could describe a fair portion of the films that spectators and critics alike parade up the steps to see at Cannes. The artful arrangement of misogyny in films by auteurs from Jean Luc Godard to Lars Von Trier provokes the scandals of each year's Festival de Cannes. Recall the infamous role given to Chloe Sevigny in Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny (2003). Or Monica Bellucci's physical assault in nonlinear narrative order in Gaspar Noe's Irreversible (2002), a film made by the French director who switched to hard porn at this year's Cannes with The Void (2009). This year Charlotte Gainsbourg endured genital mutilation in Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (2009). After the tragic death of her young son, she reverses her thesis as a women's studies scholar that women have been innocently persecuted through the centuries and instead claims that nature/woman is the church of the Antichrist. When she thereby becomes the Antichrist incarnate she suffers the same fate as thousands of women before her.
Despite such blatant themes in films by so called auteurs it is is a delicate art to bring up the subject of cinematic misogyny and not without repercussions especially "the angry feminists”. When Roger Ebert called The Brown Bunny the worst film in the history of Cannes, director Vincent Gallo called him "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader". This year he was far more diplomatic about The Antichrist. Yet once the film is made it is out of the hands of the creator and owned by the spectator, each spectator with the imaginary of his or her own mind in operation. Expressions of this multifarious mind are usually provocative. Antichrist was given a prize from the ”ecumenical” jury at Cannes as ”the most misogynistic film from the self proclaimed greatest director in the world. The decision irritated many and the jury was accused of censorship for this award - preemptively taking an ax to a film before theatrical release. During the theatrical release of Antichrist scenes will be edited out. This is real censorship.
Many women support misogyny in films, which is presented as art to them, because these demanding roles are a fast lane to stardom. The Brown Bunny is a road movie whose outstanding journey is Sevigny performing fellatio on a fully clothed Gallo. She called him a "genius". Irreversible features the beaten to a pulp Bellucci in a drawn out sexual assault within a Paris tunnel, a film she considered "beautiful". In Antichrist (2009) Gainsbourg is genitally mutilated in a role that she thought twice about taking and which actually scared her. Underneath the projection of the female body where we in turn project our fantasies in the dark is the corporeal female, a malleable dough where filmmakers mould their fantasies of torture, assault and degradation and present them as art. Gainsbourg won the best actress award at Cannes and wanted to share the prize with Lars Von Trier. “I had trust in him and he is a great artist”, she revealed at the press conference following her award. Gainsbourg thanked Cannes for being courageous in taking in a film ”like Antichrist” and said that her role was “the strongest, most painful and most exciting thing she had done in her life. She announced that her father Serge Gainsbourg would have been “proud but shocked” and that her mother Jane Birken was her “confidante” on the set. The film, which was chosen for the official competition, the award bestowed on the film from an actress who wanted to share the prize with the creator and supported by her mother gives a picture of a legitimate seal of approval. And so the question of misogyny must fall. The approval by the actress ultimately "liberates" the director. That is how misogyny becomes invisible.
This “kind of film” made Catherine Deneuve a "star". Polanski's Repulsion (1965), Silver Bear winner at Berlin was the story of a sexually repressed woman that wigs out in her apartment in a nightie. Belle de Jour (1967), Luis Buñuel’s tale of a housewife that becomes a prostitute in order to satisfy her husband was winner of the best film at Venice (1967).
Isabelle Huppert, president of this year's jury has also been cast in roles, which are considered misogynist. She played a prostitute for Jean Luc Godard in Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), a brothel madam in Michael Cimono's Heaven's Gate (1980) and most recently as a sexually repressed self deprecating piano teacher who falls in love with her younger student in Michael Haneke's La pianiste (2002). Also on the jury, Italian actress Asia Argento was sexually assaulted as a cop on more than one occasion by a serial murderer in The Stendahl Syndrome (1994), a film made by her father Dario Argento.
In David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), Isabelle Rossellini is slapped silly by Dennis Hopper and Lynch (Rossellini's partner) was nominated for an Academy Award. It is not uncommon that father and daughter, director and star, husband and wife work in films that are perceived as misogynous, for with the tacit approval of women, misogyny is a matter of opinion.
The Stockholm Film Festival jury voted Irreversible in 2002 for best film. The year before the festival passed out vomit bags when Takeshi Miike's story of a sadomasochistic serial murderer in Ichi the Killer (2001) was screened. Miike took the manga on which the film was based to another level where woman are slapped, mutilated sexually assaulted and beaten. Men are pierced, fried, sliced and gutted. Hong Kong actress Alien Sun says that the film was "tastefully comic". Since so many women have declared so in PR for “these kinds of films”, that misogyny is indeed a subjective chameleon. And that would probably be true if a) we were not so sexually repressed as humans and b) that because we are, misogyny is such a cash cow. But without film critics and film analysis, cinematic misogyny would remain an illusive mysterium. Since many of the films that are equated with it involve glamorous women could it be that beauty must be broken and captivated in order to control it. Often within this equation women are exchanged with other men as a commodity. Count how many times Deneuve is exchanged in Belle de Jour. What better way to do that then through physical and emotional subjugation. Could this be behind Vincent Gallo's projection of the licentious role of "slave trader" onto Roger Ebert?

The Eclectic 62nd Cannes Jury=Woman Power

On day one of Festival de Cannes, there were the usual "steps", photocall, and press conference rituals. Asia Argento clearly was the happiest camper of the entire lot that gave the most to the press. Her enthusiasm radiated as she bent over backwards to satisfy the cries of the paparazzi. With photographers lined on the left and right she managed to smile for them all. Shu Qi was soft spoken and gave curt answers to questions through her interpreter. Perhaps they were especially short because she was asked by a Cannes fest interviewer if she would pay particular attention to Asian films as a juror.
The word "judge" was bantered around, after all this is a jury that will assess the work of several directors and award prizes. Isabelle Huppert declared, "I don't think we are here to judge. I think we are here to love films, and to see what we love more than others".
Sharmila Tagore , the brilliant actress from Satyajit Ray's films said that she thought Isabelle Huppert would be a tough jury president. Robin Wright Penn seems to not enjoy the limelight at all. She was in an out of her photo shoot in a matter of seconds but she came on strong in the press conference about choosing films from the heart. In her personal life this seems to be a key issue. The men in the jury didn't exude any notable charisma: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hanif Kureishi, and Lee Changdong - all excellent craftsmen. The exception was James Gray who boldly exclaimed that he didn't want to know anything about the films beforehand and go in cold.
In looking at this panel, we have two young actresses, two middle-aged and one almost 60--all extremely beautiful women, now or at one time. This seems to be the standard at Cannes for women jurors. As few are directors, next best are the directors muses: Nanni Moretti, Satyajit Ray, Michael Haneke, Hsiao-hsien Hou, Sean Penn. The men stand on their merits as directors and screenwriters.
President Isabelle Huppert (b: 1953) has an eclectic panel and it will be interesting to see its choices in ten days. After day one, we won't hear anything from the jury members until then.
Festival de Cannes is one of the most ritualized festivals out there, known for brilliant art house films, and scandals, and for sending shockwaves of new iconography down the festival pipelines to smaller venues, distributors and DVD markets. What this 62 Cannes might be most remembered for is this particular Madame la Présidente who has suffered on screen in a number of roles that are typically created for beautiful women on screen: as a young woman who kills her parents in Violette Nozière (1978), a prostitute for Jean Luc Godard in Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), a brothel madam in Michael Cimono's Heaven's Gate (1980) and most recently as a self deprecating piano teacher who falls in love with her younger student in Michael Haneke's La pianiste (2002).
Perhaps her strongest role was as the last woman to be executed in France for performing abortions: Une affaire de femmes (1988).

Madame la Présidente !

Isabelle Huppert, Madame la Présidente ! - 62e Festival de Cannes !
Asia Argento! Cannes official competition jury member 2009! It doesn't get better than this!

Two of cinema's most visceral, outstanding actors will be scrutinizing the work of this year's line up of auteurs including Jane Campion, Quentin Tarantino, Lars Von Trier, Pedro Almodovar and Gaspar Noé.
Let's rock and roll!