Posts from the ‘film’ Category

Who killed the femme fatale? I think they killed the wrong woman off.

Kevin Nance has a great article at Obit about the femme fatale and why we don’t see this character type anymore. Perhaps, he suggest, we’re a little uncomfortable with this possibly retrograde portrayal of women today.

As someone with a lifelong love of noir, I’d side more with his counterargument: the femme fatale is actually a pre-feminism feminist. I grew up watching black and white classics on TV late at night, and it was the simpering softie in the romantic comedies that I couldn’t relate to.  I didn’t tell people I wanted to be like them when I grew up: a mom. I told my teachers I wanted to be a cocktail waitress. I wanted to be hard, like Linda Darnell, lovely and deadly like Lana Turner, the toughest talker in the room like my favorite femme fatale, Barbara Stanwyck.

Sure, they used their looks to get what they needed–but so did the dames in the romantic comedies. So did all the dames back then. That’s what you did if you were a dame, because you didn’t have much other power. If you used that power to get a new kitchen or a wedding ring or a second kid, you were a sucker, I thought as a kid–though not quite in those words. You were building your own gilded cage.

But if you used that power to get something big, something selfish, something just for you–like a husband knocked off or a big heist with a hefty pot of cash at the end–then you were doing it right. Not for the right reasons, maybe even for some really, really wrong reasons–but at least you were focused on you. You were focused on you, alone, free.

And not always but often, femme fatales were a hundred times smarter than anybody else. Even if not book smart, they were street smart and could outsmart any man within ten miles. It wasn’t just that they knew to show some leg. It was that they knew what to do AFTER the leg got shown. They knew the right words to say and the psychology to make a man do just about anything. Again, the means don’t justify the ends, which is why the femme fatale almost always got her comeuppance in the end. But witness the refusal, even at the last, of the femme fatale to be tied down. A lot of times it’s why they die at last. The final refusal. The revenge of the jilted lover who’s killed for her and refuses to be her next victim.  The crash and burn of the gilded cage, smashing to pieces on the floor.

Too bad they killed her off. The femme fatale first taught me to be strong and independent. Not so the rom com queen, who’s acted upon, not the actor and architect of her own fate.  The femme fatale lets nobody craft that fate but her–for good or for ill, and yes, mostly ill. After all, as Nance says, “if the gallows is to be built high, at least she can claim she built it herself.”

Inception and the Strangeness of Other People’s Expectations

So, Chris and I saw Inception last weekend, and just loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. The actors, the photography, the score, the amazing dream within a dream within a dream onion layers script–all fantastic. I also have a soft spot for bang-on action-y thrillers and this was one with brains, a nice change from the usual. Plus Marion Cotillard is so beautiful I could just put her in my living room and look at her and listen to her all day–her and Tom Hardy, with the lovely British accent and the slightly-debauched-James Bond-thing he has going on.  Damn Europeans. I feel so…American in comparison.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the ending, which I figured was going to happen but then I figured not until about the last five minutes. I won’t spoil anything, but I thought it was nicely done. Other people around us clearly did not. They were in fact irate about the ending, because it did not straight up tell you, “Here is what happened.” Kind of like the end of Blade Runner: you kind of know, but really it’s up to you to decide for sure. I love that kind of ending, because it allows me to keep playing the movie in my head, for days and weeks. I can continue the story in my own way, or the way I think they meant, or in any way I want to, really. I can be a creative force within the space of the film. I like when directors give you that freedom, and treat you like the adults that you are supposed to be.

But some people–in fact, many, many people–clearly want to know EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS. GODDAMNIT. Not just in Inception. Not just in films. In books, too, and TV shows, and plays and fables and every other thing with a plot and characters, they NEED TO KNOW HOW IT ENDS. Why? I don’t understand this. Or maybe I do; maybe imagined storylines, for some people, provide the certainty we long for in the real world. Maybe because we don’t know how things will end, because we can’t know, some people feel the need to borrow other plots for a while and sail into carefully explained endings within them. Some people need the last page turned; they need to see The End written in caligraphy on the thin parchment.

I guess I get that. But I’m the other kind of person–the kind who loves mystery, who hates certainty, who likes the thought of not knowing and always wondering and change-at-any-place-at-any-time. So for me, Inception was a perfect movie. Plus I love a good love story, and this was truly one of them.  One of the few I’ve seen in recent years, and one of the most satisfying, in an odd way.

What did you think? Have you seen it yet? Did you love it, hate it, find yourself indifferent? Or what?