About ten days ago I spoke to a friend who’d seen Bart Freundlich‘s After The Wedding, which was about to open the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
I asked for a brief assessment, and he said, “It’s what they used to call a woman’s picture.”
When I mentioned this remark a couple of days later, a Sundance colleague bristled and shuddered. “That’s a very uncool term today,” he said. “Very perjorative, very demeaning.”
I agreed, of course, but with the understanding that his remark was valid mostly in militant p.c. circles. You probably can’t say “chick flick” either. No female journalist would dare to use either term unironically, but if a male journalist was dumb enough to do so, Film Twitter would skin him alive. This despite the fact that “woman’s film” has its own Wikipedia page as we speak.
It would be almost as bad as when Viggo Mortensen said the “n” word a couple of months ago.
But in reference to violent action flicks or anything directed by Michael Bay, we’re still allowed to say “high testosterone guy movie.” Nobody (least of all guys) will attack you for saying that. Mainly because guys aren’t in the middle of a cultural movement — their identities aren’t being progressively redefined.
Right?
