Y’see, this is really how you do it. How in the hell did the writer of this go from writing this to writing last year’s Stealth, lol? (I just noticed someone recently posted exactly the same sentiment to his IMDb message board, I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking it)

I just checked the IMDb and it looks like Jodie Foster is once more planning to direct again with a movie called Sugarland. I can only hope … I don’t know what ever happened to “Flora Plum”, and I’m sure there have been other projects of hers that just didn’t come to fruition. Pleeeeeeease, Jodie, come back to directing; cinema needs you badly.

I’m not American, yet I still have a short list of Thanksgiving movies I love and they are this, Pieces of April, and Addams Family Values. I don’t think I’m quite ready to place it as high as I have Pieces of April in my favourite movies lists, but it’s a really close call, and today in particular, this is the movie I was most in the mood for. Like Pieces, it slides magically from goofy comedy to really heart-melting humanity, and the characters are all beautiful in themselves, you could watch this movie at least once per main character and still not tire of it.

And then there’s Aunt Gladys. I can’t get enough of characters like this – from, I guess the original Maude of Harold and Maude up to Aunt Budge in A Guy Thing “Wanna see a really big boil?” “My safety light’s on again, magic!!” lol.

I can’t believe I never realised Anne Bancroft was in this movie. It must be a long time since I saw this last because I must’ve just not known of her or something. She may just be playing the same character she played in Torch Song Trilogy and probably other movies, but she’s still amazing. In fact, the whole cast is amazing – Bancroft, Charles Durning, Holly Hunter, Claire Danes, Cynthia Stevenson, Geraldine Chaplin, David Strathairn, Steve Guttenberg, Robert Downey Jr. (another person I’d totally forgotten was in this!)

Add Mark Isham’s score, playing off “The Very Thought of You” like I think only Isham could, and you have one of the best family gathering movies of all time.

“Remember the fish.”

EXTRA

I found this old college essay of mine (God bless Spotlight :)) – which I’m surprised to find I still think is quite good, lol – that mentions this movie, so I’m including it below. I still feel the same about Cynthia Stevenson’s character, Joanne. Every single shot of her makes me want to bust into tears. You can tell how she tries so hard, but she has it so wrong – there’s just no way of dealing with people like her, but you just can’t help but want to help.

Women in Film – 8th April 1998
Explain why women filmmakers have increasingly moved towards mainstream rather than avant-garde film in order to counteract the marginalisation of women in cinema. Refer to the work of two women directors working within mainstream cinema and discuss how they have challenged the stereotypical representation of women in film.

The first ‘feminist’ films were made by women who wanted to create a counter-cinema: something that challenged what audiences were used to seeing. Hollywood movies tended to portray women as simply objects of desire – the gangster’s moll; the cowboy’s gal; the detective’s femme fatale – in order to grant the predominantly male audience ‘the pleasure of looking’. The problem in this system was that many women felt alienated and misrepresented.

Two films which probably affected these women more than any others were both released in the same year, 1971, and were both directed by men – Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs”? and Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”?. They both contained scenes of extreme violence toward women, seen from a male perspective and filmed in order not to disturb but to entertain. The feminist movement was already in full swing by this time, and only one year later there was a women’s event held at the Edinburgh Film Festival, at which Laura Mulvey and others called for a women’s counter-cinema.

One of the films which was made as a result of this need for a counter-cinema was Sally Potter’s “Thriller”?. The idea of the new counter-cinema was to remove the ‘pleasure of looking’ created by mainstream cinema. “Thriller”?, and other films like it, was seen as avant-garde. There were two problems with these films. The key problem was that the market for them was very small, since few could actually understand them. But a much larger problem was the group of people who, because of the films’ avant-garde nature, misunderstood them, and read the wrong meaning into them. This was particularly a problem with a film called “Women of the Rhondda”? (1972), which consisted of only images with no sound. Clearly, this gave an opportunity to read a variety of meanings into the film, and many of them were not the director’s.

To get a larger audience, to get the correct response from them and to still send out a message favouring women meant that women filmmakers were virtually forced to go into mainstream cinema. They used linear narrative and editing, and all the techniques used in mainstream cinema – but they used these things to their advantage. Sally Potter’s “Orlando”? (1993) is still, for some, difficult to ‘get’ – the main character changes sex half way through and lives for four centuries. It’s not ‘normal’ – but it is easier to get used to than the non-linear previous efforts of Potter, and it certainly reached a much wider market than “Thriller”? and “The Gold Diggers”?. But the director still explored feminist themes.

When Orlando becomes a woman, she says to the camera “No difference – just a different sex.”? This is a very male attitude – seeing no divide between the sexes – but Orlando soon discovers that, as a woman, she is denied the power of self-expression and is not allowed to own the property that, as a man, she was entitled to.

The denial of a woman’s self-expression is also explored in a different way in Jane Campion’s “The Piano”? (1993). Jane Campion came from short films, and before “The Piano”? had made two features, “Sweetie”? (1989) and “An Angel at My Table”? (1990). In “The Piano”? the main character, Ada, deals with this denial of self-expression by simply refusing to talk – her silence upsets her husband (selected for her by her father) more than if she talked. She speaks through her daughter, Flora, and through her piano playing. The neighbour, Baines, hears her piano playing, and unlike Stewart, her husband, he likes what he hears and sets up a situation whereby he can listen to her privately.

“The Piano”? is full of symbolism, and in the film’s intense climactic scene Stewart cuts off Ada’s finger, threatening that if she sees Baines again he will cut off ‘another, then another, then another’. Stewart’s reaction to Ada’s desire to be free is to deny her expression further. By removing her fingers he removes her ability both to sign to her daughter and to play her piano. The ending of the film has Stewart giving in to Ada’s true feelings and allowing her to leave with Baines, with whom she learns to speak and begins to teach piano playing to others (putting her skill to greater use and using her voice to express her feelings).

In “The Piano”?, Jane Campion has created a set of characters very different to those present in, say, a Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino film. Ada is a normal woman who is forced into situations (marriage without choice) which are representative of the treatment of women that upset early feminists. She does not love her husband – he is the ‘typical man’, denying her expression, leaving her piano on the beach before trading it for land – and is unable freely to get to the man she does love. All her decisions are made for her. But, at the end, we see a turnaround particularly in Stewart’s character when he sees Ada’s true will – Ada wins.

Jane Campion and Sally Potter have both made successful mainstream films (“The Piano”? was nominated for several Academy Awards and won three) that do not comply to the ‘rules’ of mainstream filmmaking. Both films are very ‘female’ – the main characters, the attitudes, the humour, the outcomes (happy endings for the women). But there are women filmmakers who never worked in avant-garde filmmaking, who began with mainstream films, whose films are not so obviously directed by women. Amy Heckerling (“Look Who’s Talking”?, “Clueless”?); Penny Marshall (“Big”?, “Awakenings”?); and Jodie Foster.

Although Jodie Foster is better known as an actress, she has also recently directed two films which her production company, Egg Pictures, produced. Both “Little Man Tate”? (1991), in which she also starred, and “Home For the Holidays”? (1995), were both successful on their release. And it is only when one looks more closely at the films that one can see that the female characters in them are more sympathetically dealt with.

“Truth is what I look for in a film, and the truth in female history is that it includes a lot of victimization.”? – Jodie Foster

In the two films Jodie Foster has directed, the female characters all have no particular goals in life. In “Little Man Tate”?, Foster plays single mother Dede who has trouble connecting with her six-year-old son who happens to be a genius and much more clever than she is. She reluctantly agrees to send him to a specialist school in the care of Jane Grierson, a child psychologist. There, he finds comfort with children of similar mental ability, and grows ever more distant from his mother and closer to the psychologist, while longing to be ‘normal’.

As the film goes on, we see Fred not having so much fun in his new surroundings, and wondering why it had to happen to him. While this is going on, we see the Fred’s mother truly missing her son while she is supposed to be enjoying herself in Florida. Dede is not clever, and she knows it – Foster makes sure that after each of her painful encounters with her son, the camera lingers on Dede’s sad, confused face.

“Home For the Holidays”? is a much lighter film than “Little Man Tate”?, but it still reveals some upsetting truths about life. In its style, it is quite similar to Jane Campion’s “Sweetie”?. They both look at dysfunctional families – in “Sweetie”? the family is dominated by ‘Sweetie’, the spoilt and ever-more unbalanced daughter. Our sympathies lie with the family in general, and in particular with Sweetie’s sister Kay.

Jodie Foster’s film follows another single mother, Claudia, as she visits her family for Thanksgiving, leaving her teenage daughter at home where she will “probably have sex with her boyfriend”?. At the Thanksgiving get-together, various secrets are revealed about the different members of the family, accidents happen, arguments are had and reconciliations made. As she leaves, Claudia says to her father, “I’ll probably come back for Christmas,”? to which he replies, “I know you will.”?

Jodie Foster’s talent lies in observation. What makes us laugh in this film is rarely what is right in front of us, but the ‘other’ thing that is going on in the scene – Aunt Gladys snoring in the background while everybody argues over the turkey; the almost zombie-like cat which seems to be omnipresent; Claudia’s brother Tommy’s car going wild in the background as she tries to explain to an old school friend why she is wearing her mother’s ‘enormous coat’.

Roger Ebert pointed out that what makes “Home For the Holidays”? so unique is the way that whatever happens in the film, the characters act as if it is quite normal – it happens every year, always the same. Tommy’s childish behaviour, Aunt Gladys’ drunken retelling of when she first kissed Claudia’s father (it draws a silence, and Tommy gestures for her to continue; after all, it’s a little entertainment); the point of “Home For the Holidays”? is made in a single line towards the end, as Claudia tries to apologise to her stubborn sister, Joanne. Joanne does not accept her apology, and as Claudia leaves, she says, “We don’t have to like each other, Joanne – we’re family.”?

The character we feel most sympathy for, I think, is Joanne. Just as the camera lingers on Dede’s face in “Little Man Tate”?, it shows us Joanne’s pain, particularly at the end of this scene. Joanne gets on her treadmill (they’re in her ‘gym’ in the basement), stating, “Do you mind? This is the only thing I do all week that I like.”? Claudia leaves, and the camera tracks in onto her face as she slumps over the handlebars before her, then slowly starts her exercise again, looking painfully into the distance.

The women in Sally Potter’s or Jane Campion’s films, I feel, are distinctly there to represent women in general. But in Jodie Foster’s films they are dealt with just as the character deserves. Joanne is annoying – she is so intent upon helping her parents that she doesn’t have time to realise they don’t need her help, and she doesn’t like them for their ‘dependence’ – but she deserves some pity for the life she is stuck in. Claudia needs no pity – she doesn’t care that her daughter is starting out early, that her family is mad, that she’s been fired – because she can just start all over again. Unlike Joanne, she can just throw everything out and start a new life. There is a scene between the two characters where they are framed so that each has a coat-hanger behind them – Joanne’s is full, with a dress on it, while Claudia’s is empty, waiting to have a life hung on it (or not).

In “Little Man Tate”?, we feel for Dede. She is very like Claudia, with no direction in her life. Both are single mothers with children who do not really need them any more, who are finding their own lives. This is a much more contemporary theme than Campion’s or Potter’s freedom of expression. I think that films like “Little Man Tate”?, “Home for the Holidays”? and others such as Susan Seidelman’s “Desperately Seeking Susan”?, rather than trying to represent women ‘correctly’, show women as they are. Sally Potter and Jane Campion are very good directors – but they draw attention to their films being feminist (“Sweetie”? is perhaps an exception). I think that when the issue of sexual equality is ignored altogether, the results can be far more rewarding.

Bibliography

An Introduction to Film Studies edited by Jill Nelmes

Reviews of Little Man Tate, Home For the Holidays, Orlando, Sweetie, and The Piano by Roger Ebert

Foster Child: Biography of Jodie Foster, Buddy Foster and Leon Wagener

This entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 1:56 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.