I might have a couple of free hours at the end of tomorrow (i.e., Thursday), depending on how the column goes. Perhaps I can rumble down to the Grove around 5 or 6 pm and pay nearly $20 to see Cathy Yan‘s Birds of Prey? I missed the all-media screening so I have to see it, right? Sounds like a plan.
From Owen Gleiberman’s 2.5 Variety review: “Coming after the stand-alone phenomenon of Joker, Birds of Prey is a comic-book movie that isn’t pretending, for a single moment, to cast a spell of poetic awe. Yet it’s still a compellingly novel popcorn jamboree. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were female-superhero movies that offered the empowerment of earnest fantasy. Birds of Prey offers the empowerment of utter irresponsibility. The women in this movie look badder than those previous heroines did because, for the most part, they just don’t give a fuck.”
Gleiberman finishes this paragraph with one of the saddest declarative statements I’ve read in recent years: “With any luck, that should all translate into a major hit.”
So in other words Birds of Prey (aka The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is about enraged fuck-all nihilism and, in a certain social-undercurrent way, anti-brute-male revenge porn. I don’t know about the HE community, but I think it’s is so cool when this sort of material is delivered with a savage wink, and with ten times the necessary emphasis!
Perhaps one day Birds of Prey will play alongside Emerald Fennell and Carey Mulligan‘s Promising Young Woman, the Sundance ’20 entry which, according to World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, is drawing from the same well.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘restrained’ when describing Promising Young Woman,” he says. “There’s nothing subtle about this movie, and it’s not realism at all. It’s a post-#MeToo fantasy, a feminist version of Death Wish…a justifiably angry woman (Carey Mulligan) punishing filthy men. Mulligan is depicted as heroic without any real-life consequences or police investigations or social media gotchas. It gives you a lot to chew on and talk about post-screening — in a sense it’s right at the forefront of the post-#MeToo conversation — but then again it’s not saying anything new. And it’s definitely a world apart. It charges into extreme realms.”
The possible problem with female revenge porn, it seems, isn’t the justified anger that propels these films, but the broad-brush overkill that’s been deployed. To go by Ruimy and Gleiberman, I mean.
Coralie Fargeat‘s Revenge (’17), a rape-and-revenge action horror flick, was cut from a similar cloth.
In my judgment there’s been only one commendable (if not quite excellent) female-revenge film so far — Jennifer Kent‘s The Nightingale. I believed and admired that 2018 film start to finish, despite Kent allowing the story tension to dissipate during the last 15% or 20%.
I apologize for having not yet seen Kitty Green‘s The Assistant, which, to go by reviews, exists in a much more restrained universe than any of the above. It’s said to be largely inspired by the Harvey Weinstein saga, to wit: “A young female graduate enters a film production company, slowly understanding the shady behaviors and practices in use.”
I also haven’t seen Danielle Krudy & Bridget Savage Cole‘s Blow The Man Down (Amazon Prime, 3.20), another revenge drama about asshole males getting what’s coming to them and women of all ages bonding when the chips are down.
In films of an exceedingly crude calibre (a shoe which may or may not fit as far as Birds of Prey is concerned, as I haven’t yet seen it) I naturally despise the presence of male brutes who deride and degrade women with crude misogynist taunts. And so I’m certain I’ll feel waves of un-delight when the driver of Ewan MacGregor‘s crime lord “tries to lure [Harley] into some vicious flirtation by calling her ‘dumb’ and a ‘slut’,” according to Gleiberman’s synopsis.
“As anyone who knows Harley knows all too well, it’s the dumb part that really stings. So she leaps from a stage, crashing down onto [the driver’s] outstretched legs. Bam!! That’s not just a violent counterattack, it’s a 21st-century feminist moment.”
Why do I not feel aroused or at least intrigued?
On the positive side if there’s one thing I truly relish in life, it’s paying $17 to be emotionally and psychologically suffocated over a two-hour period. Harley Quinn, I’m your guy!
