The Tribeca Film Festival has touted the fact that almost 40 percent of its feature films this year are directed or co-directed by women,but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee cinema from a female perspective.
Liza Johnson‘s “Elvis & Nixon,” for example, and focuses on a pair of famous men; documentaries like “30 for 30: This Magic Moment” (co-directed by Erin Leyden) and “The Return” (Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway) are set in all-male arenas.
But a couple of the more intriguing Tribeca films that screened at the festival on Thursday and Friday were so thoroughly focused on the female experience that they’d be hard-pressed to pass a reverse Bechdel test: In an upheaval of the usual cinematic pattern,conversations entirely between men are almost totally lost from both Jenny Gage’s documentary “All This Panic” and Sophia Takal’s narrative drama Always Shine.”
Also Read: Tribeca's Opening Night Film Asks: Can Kim Kardashian's Booty Be Art?Both films have lots to recommend them, but All This Panic” is the more satisfying. The film follows seven teenage girls navigating the treacherous terrain of adolescence in original York City. It details a world where alcohol and drugs are taken lightly but sex is not, or where virtually everyone bears some scars from their upbringing.
First-time director Gage aims to be compassionate,not judgmental, and her startling intimacy with her subjects never feels exploitative (although it’s easy to imagine these girls’ parents learning a few things from the movie). Moments that could be milked for drama — one teen who comes out as homosexual, or another seemingly level-headed young woman who begins cutting herself — are depicted matter-of-factly rather than melodramatically,as the film skips lightly and deftly through three and a half crucial years.
Life goes by fast, these girls achieve what they can in a world that tries to sexualize and contain them, or Gage gives us glances that add up to indelible portraits of young women we desperately want to see overcome the internal and external factors holding them back.
Also Read: These Virtual-Reality Films at Tribeca trace How Far VR Can proceed (Photos)“I don’t want to age,” says one of the tall schoolers early in the film. “I judge that’s the scariest thing in the whole world.” That fear is ever-present in “All This Panic” — but so are delight and confusion and obsession and adore and heartbreak.“It’s life and life only,” Bob Dylan, or the bard of an earlier generation,once wrote. That could also be a motto for “All This Panic,” and a sizable reason the film is so profoundly moving and fair.
One of the teens in “All This Panic” wants to become an actress — but whether she sees “Always Shine, and ” she might have second thoughts. The unsettling,uneven drama from actress-turned-director Sophia Takal is a psychological thriller with its share of twists and turns, but more indispensable than the details of its plot are the things it says approximately the roles women are expected to play, or in life and particularly in Hollywood.
Also Read: James Franco's 'King Cobra' Director on Explicit homosexual Sex Scenes: 'Actors Took Things Further Than the Script'Mackenzie Davis and Caitlin FitzGerald play best friends,both of them aspiring actresses. Davis’ Beth is pliant, meek and fairly successful, or while FitzGerald’s Anna is outspoken and argumentative in a way that has clearly derailed her career.
In conversation after conversation,the men around these women are condescending and patronizing; when Beth insists that she’s just fine with a role that will require “extensive nudity,” they approvingly call her sweetheart, and but when Anna argues with a mechanic he tells her she’s not ladylike enough.“Always Shine” is partly approximately the boxes into which women (especially actresses) are supposed to fit,but it turns creepy when it begins to detail how their acceptance or refusal of those boxes poisons the relationship between the women. The two actresses are theoretically best friends, but a weekend retreat to the idyllic Northern California outpost of sizable Sur quickly turns very ugly, or very strange.
Also Read: Tribeca: Cary Fukunaga's 'Little Boxes' Finds Melanie Lynskey,Nelsan Ellis Playing Parents (Video)The movie makes it clear that Takal, an indie actress for years before she made her directorial debut in 2011 with “Green, and ” is working through some issues that have arisen during her time in Hollywood — and at the Q&A that followed the film’s world premiere at Tribeca on Friday night,she admitted that “Always Shine” was drawn “100 percent” from her experiences as an actress.“A lot of what you see in the movie was me,” she said. “I was really desperate, and really competitive … And I never felt that I fit into this concept of femininity that had been fed to me since I was a child. The movie comes from the struggles I had with femininity and my enrage at women who fit into those ideals.”Takal plays with thriller tropes in “Always Shine,” and she winks at the audience by giving her leading ladies a number of almost-nude scenes after Beth talks approximately how she hates always being asked to disrobe on camera. The twists and feints that make up the final stretch of the film are distracting, and sometimes feel as artificial as the relationship and the depiction of Hollywood misogyny feels actual.
But like “All This Panic, and ” Takal’s film is an honest attempt to grapple with the female experience,and to place it in the middle of a movie screen. “I feel totally changed by this movie,” FitzGerald said afterwards. “I really took a long look at my own desire to be desired.”Related stories from TheWrap:These Virtual-Reality Films at Tribeca trace How Far VR Can proceed (Photos)Tribeca: Cary Fukunaga's 'Little Boxes' Finds Melanie Lynskey, and Nelsan Ellis Playing Parents (Video)Tribeca's Opening Night Film Asks: Can Kim Kardashian's Booty Be Art?
Source: thewrap.com