Tag Archives: Griffin Dunne

Mansplaining About Women and Film

TV, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

A fantastic dramatisation of some of the debates around women and film which many of you will recognise. Kathryn Hahn as Chris is a filmmaker whose latest film has just been rejected from the Venice film festival because she hadn’t secured rights to the music. Dick (Kevin Bacon) asks what it’s about and Chris explains that her film is about a woman — all women — and society’s crushing expectations. ‘Sounds horrible’ says Dick and then goes on to comment how it sounds like she’s crushed by something. Dick then behaves like a dick , talks through her to her husband (Griffin Dunne) and proceeds to mansplain why women filmmakers don’t make good movies. It’s a fantastic scene — Sally Potter, Jane Campion and Chantal Ackerman — get trotted out in defence. I also love the husband’s tokenistic inclusion of Susan Sontag as a coda to the conversation. Chris, torn between outrage at the ideas expressed and desire for the Dick doing the mansplaining, is something to see. I love ‘I Love Dick’.  It’s terrific.

 

José Arroyo

Last Night (Massy Tadjedin, USA, 2010)

Female Directors, , , , , , , ,

Image

Kiera Knightley and Sam Worthington play a well-to-do couple tempted into adultery. She’s a journalist. He works for a property company. His rival is Gullaume Canet, a writer. Eva Mendes is the alluring femme fatale who does indeed  lure. The film aims for maturity and complexity but fails and feels rather inept. Worthington is charmless. Knightley is almost good but not quite. The film seems prudish both in what it shows physically and what it depicts psychologically and verges on the dishonest. It doesn’t look good enough either and Mendes and Knightley are sometimes shot in what seem to be their worst angles: Mendes with a bottom-heavy face, all round cheeks; and Knightley with an almost masculine, heavily delineated jaw-bone. Last Night aims for louche glamour but just feels a bit cheap.

José Arroyo