I wrote earlier this year about the controversy swirling around Lucky McKee’s film The Woman. After a midnight showing at Sundance last January, one angry man in the audience stood up and denounced the film as a “disgusting movie” that “degrades women.” Given McKee’s nuanced treatment of gender issues in his previous films May and The Woods, I suspected that this outraged critic had completely missed the point.
Now I’ve finally gotten to see the film and, yep, he did. The Woman isn’t a misogynist film; it’s a film about misogyny. The Woman revolves around a cheerful , self-satisfied and and superficially charming country lawyer who captures a ferocious feral woman he spots on a hunting trip and chains her in the cellar in what he perversely sees as an attempt to “civilize” her. A patriarchal king of his castle, he introduces her to the rest of the family and assigns them all chores relating to her upkeep.
I don’t really want to give away much more than this; suffice it to say that as the film progresses we learn just how much of an odious psychopath this “family man” really is. But while the film offers a savage critique of his cruelty, and his misogyny, none of the women in the film are unambiguously noble victims, and when they begin to fight back the story is no simple tale of feminist empowerment. It’s a bit more subtle and unsettling than that.
While less overtly violent than, say, your typical Saw film, The Woman is a film that’s often, and by design, hard to take. Yes, there are some grisly deaths, but this isn’t a film that glories in gore for gore’s sake; it’s really about cruelty and complicity and feeling trapped, the ways in which fucked-up families can ensnare even outsiders in their toxic dynamics.
Naturally, the film has drawn sharply mixed reactions from critics. It got a glowing review from Andy Webster in the New York Times, who described the cast as “remarkable” and praised the way McKee invests the film’s “a powerful parable with an abundance of closely observed details.” Marc Holcomb of the Village Voice, meanwhile, dismissed it as “torture porn for people who’d never admit to liking torture porn.” (He also noted sardonically that the feral woman is “apparently tame enough to shave her armpits.” And her legs too, I might add; under the caked-on-grime, she’s what the PUAs would probably rate a HB10. )
But the strangest review I’ve seen so far is one by Rene Rodriguez in the Miami Herald, who perversely describes the film as, er, fun. While acknowledging the film’s feminist themes, she dismisses them as mere window-dressing:
[C]ome on: You want a feminist movie, go rent Norma Rae. The Woman is the sort of horror picture designed to make you throw popcorn at the screen, groan with disgust and shriek out loud when McKee springs a shock on you. … Good times.
Really? Were you throwing popcorn at the screen during Antichrist too?
Of course, it doesn’t exactly help – as Rodriguez and a couple of other reviewers have noted – that the film’s publicists sent out the DVD screener with a barf bag “just in case.” The Woman deserves better than that.
EDITED TO ADD: Regular Man Boobz commenters might want to check out this thread on the IMDb forums, in which a (somewhat oversimplified) discussion of the feminist themes in the film is quickly derailed by a dude who thinks it laughable that a mere woman could possibly overpower the family patriarch:
I feel sorry for you and any other woman who truly believes that they can physically overpower a man.
You know, if women are just as physically capable as men, I’d love to start my own inter-gender boxing league. Sign me up, baby! Equality at its finest. 🙂
And the trailer:
More than 60% of the current US budget goes directly to the military, you crouton.
Ooh, needlepoint? Is that the thing with big pieces of grid stuff that you thread yarn through in various ways to make a picture?
I think my mom used to do that, years ago, and I did it a little when I was a kid. It seems to have fallen out of favor recently, though, and doesn’t seem to have picked up along with the recent knitting resurgence.
I knit, and recently completed a really awesome sweater that I started two or three years ago — the “Manly Sweater” from Stitch and Bitch (I think the original). It is all that I thought it would be when I first started it, although perhaps a bit more clingy than I anticipated. Looks awesome with a binder though, and not half bad without.
I also like sex. And pumpkins. They are both great things. And this:
Also great.
I like rats for pets, guinea pigs for lab animals, and mice for nothing ’cause they’re little assholes. 😀
NWOslave IS A PAWN OF THE ILLUMINATI SPACE LORDS.
Chess metaphor? You misandrist! Don’t you know that the queen is the most powerful piece in chess?? Why do you hate kings???
@Rutee Katreya
“More than 60% of the current US budget goes directly to the military, you crouton.”
Wow you’re stupid. Please show me how you came up with that number?
Please show ME how feminism is particularly sucking up the budget.
“Crouton” is my new favorite insult. That tickled me.
I like mint, too. It grows through the cracks at the bottom of my steps so I brush it every time I go past and smells minty. Nice.
I like spices. And spicey food generally. I love Indian food.
I like music and good books. I like learning new things and new ways to understand things I already know.
I like helping my supervisees to do better work and to feel better about the work they do.
I like my wife and my boys. I like my friends.
@Rutee Katreya
I mean feminists lie like they’re getting paid to lie, which actually, all the ones in power are paid to lie. But you’re not even getting paid to lie. Do they always toss out whoppers like that? Probably used to being able to shame people into silence. That doesn’t work anymore. You’re just an unpaid liar.
NWOslave, I understand that you feel that Holly Pervocracy’s behavior is shameful. I don’t think that you understood that the question people were asking you was, “how have you come to the conclusion that Holly Pervocracy’s behavior is shameful?”
So in the interest of helping you to make yourself understood, I ask simply, how have you come to the conclusion that Holly Pervocracy’s behavior is shameful?
I like (Oy, this is gonna take a while), in no particular order…
Drawing
Doctor Who
Classic-style clothing
Thrifting
Hair
DC superhero comic books, particularly ones that feature Batman
WKRP in Cincinnati
Researching 19th century vampire fiction
The Venture Brothers
Breasts
Gilbert and Sullivan
British comedy
Douglas Adams
Singing (although I’m not very good at it)
My cat
Singin’ in the Rain (the movie)
My dog
Various Internet review shows like The Cinema Snob/Nostalgia Chick/Atop the 4th Wall/etc
Painting
Etymologies of words
Stanley Kubrick
Quentin Tarantino
Community
Mad Men
Caravaggio
Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain/Freakazoid!
The Wire
Classical music (although I’m far from knowledgeable on the subject)
Leonardo Da Vinci
Arrested Development
Classic animation
Doing animation (although I’ve only done a bit – it’s really time-consuming)
Actual beliefs in aliens and UFO conspiracy theories
…
I’ll stop now.
Who pays the feminists to lie?
And I was enjoying discussing vampire novels, but apparently someone had to come along to get his negative attention fix.
I have to say, I like sex too. Almost every time I engage in it, something hilariously slapstick happens — the time I discovered that if a bottle of lube is covered in lube, life will shortly get amusing and possibly acrobatic, for instance. Nobody ever mentioned that bit in sex ed, for some reason. Unfortunate omission.
@zhinxy
“Please show ME how feminism is particularly sucking up the budget.”
Is Title IX free?
Surely I shouldn’t have to list the myriad of agencies that are women specific.
Just so we’re on the same page here. You do realize any State agency costs shitloads of money. You also know the way our Government procures funds is to borrow the money at interest from the fed. The fed, (irs) then collects money from the serfs with the might of the State as it’s private police force.
Rose Tyler is the best Doctor Who companion ever!
…
Nope. No money.
Damn.
Slapstick is about right. Like when you go for a picnic in an isolated place, see no one for hours and decide to have sex on a rock in the middle of the river. Then two cars and a motorbike come over the hill.
Life needs a soundtrack sometimes, Yakety Sax would have been appropriate.
I left redheads out of my list?
What the fuck?!
Nope! All those magical invisible police forces have to be staffed, and all those magical invisible courts have to be built, and all those magical invisible prisons have to be guarded by magical invisible guards, and do you have any idea what fairy dust costs these days?
Do you have even the slightest conception of what Title IX actually is? You talk about it like it’s an agency, or possibly an entire government.
“Who really runs Title IX? Make Title IX accountable to the American public! We should have a public vote for the leaders of Title IX!”
It’s like thinking that the municipal ordinance against public urination has its own secret Thought Police.
The government’s “private police force”? You mean…the police?
I…I can’t stop reading. It’s hypnotic…
Are you talking about, like, something like blackwater?
There are feminist PINKERTONS? ARE THEY ACTUALLY PINK!
Omg, pink feminist private cops! It’s my libertarian feminist totaliatarian DREAM!
Maybe I DO love the government after all! GOD BLESS YOU ILLUMINATI SPACE LORDS
I was playing Skyrim. What I miss?