Author: Stefania Sarrubba
Translator: Iris
Proofreader: Yi Ersan
Source: Little White Lies (December 5, 2022)
This year, two films re-explored the relationship between the observer and the observed in noir narratives and explored strong female characters. Chloë Okuno's "The Watcher" is a taut thriller about a woman who is stalked by a man who lives across the street, a story that continually challenges the relationship between subject and object.
"The Watcher"
Park Chan-wook 's "The Determination of Breaking Up" operates on a similar level, with a male police detective and a female suspect playing a game of cat and mouse.
The protagonists of "The Watcher", Julia (Maika Monroe), and "The Determination"'s Riley (Tang Wei) are both navigating a strange and sometimes hostile environment.
"Determination to Break Up"
One is an American who moved to Romania with her husband Francis ( Karl Grossman ), and the other is a caregiver from China who was recently widowed in Busan . The heterogeneous identities of these two women have a magnetic attraction to the locals. They are a new version of the femme fatale, managing to avoid the image's most troublesome connotations and find strength in their gaze.
"The Watcher"
With both the police and Francis doubting Julia's mental condition, a frightened, alienated Julia wanders the underbelly of Bucharest, stalking the man who has been spying on her. Seorae's narrative line seems to serve the male protagonist to a certain extent, but it also shows the process of carefully weighing his sincerity towards Haejun ( Park Hae-il ).
When Seo-rae realizes that the police are following her to determine if she killed her abusive husband, Seo-rae uses this knowledge - and the perfect mix of Chinese and Korean code - to stay one step ahead and instead becomes Hae-joon's spy.
These two examples of female characters are very different from the film noir of the forties and fifties. While classic film noirs have the advantage of expanding an actress's repertoire of roles, they still serve male-centric narratives.
This is especially true in the way femme fatales are photographed, either by magnifying their presence ( Orson Welles "The Lady from Shanghai") or through a series of voyeuristic details ( Hitchcock Vertigo), emphasizing her as an object worth looking at.
"Miss Shanghai"
Decades later, neo-noir films began to reshape female characters and let them appear on the screen in new ways. Soon after Laura Mulvey applied male gaze theory to film criticism , there were attempts to change convention and reassess the visual relationship between women and men.
However, the new language of critical female storytelling did not quite stick, as evidenced by audience reactions to the 1983 indie noir Erotic Theater. Betty Gordon's film was called "a feminist version of Vertigo" by LA Weekly, reducing its radical aura in simple comparisons to male-centric films.
"Erotic Theater"
"Erotic Theater" is a film noir through and through, telling the story of aspiring writer Christine (played by Sandy MacLeod). She works as a cashier at an adult movie theater in Times Square, and later develops a relationship with Louis (Richard M. Davidson), a prominent customer who may have connections to the local gang.
The lens takes the protagonist as the perspective, monitoring Louis from a distance, and then uses the usual shooting method of dealing with the female body to divide the shots related to this "femme fatale handsome man" into several parts to meet the needs of men to the greatest extent.Gordon's film is intertwined with montages of Louis shaking hands with various business partners, crystallizing Christine's growing obsession. Meanwhile, Gordon reveled in this attraction, projecting her fantasies onto the movie screen to awaken her sexual desire and keep her creative juices flowing.
Jane Campion 's Cut is a similarly dismissed neo-noir, a compelling depiction of the inflated female sexual desire. In this adaptation of Suzanne Moore's novel, Meg Ryan goes in the opposite direction, exchanging her familiar role as America's sweetheart for a less likable one. Ryan Franny, an introverted English teacher living in New York City, becomes entangled with the unsmiling detective Malloy ( Mark Ruffalo ), whom she suspects may be behind the scenes.
Frannie's sexual awareness is first awakened through visual perception. In one of the most shocking scenes in the movie, she spots a woman giving a blowjob to a mystery man behind a bar, and she stands there, mesmerized. Later, she was attracted by Malloy's nonchalant behavior, studying his every move on the street, watching everything that happened in front of her as naturally as she did in the bedroom.
"Nude Cut"
But this is another episode that shows a change in Franny, with her sudden shift in resistance to eye contact. In the backseat of Malloy's police cruiser, she stares closely at Malloy in the rearview mirror as his partner Rodriguez (Nick Dammich) questions her with prying eyes. It's a moment that portends things to come, and Campion's film effectively conveys the horror and overexposure women often face simply by existing in the presence of men, even to those sworn to protect and serve them.
The love story at the heart of Cut Out - which refreshingly prioritizes female pleasure - does not question heterosexuality, while Lana and Lily Wachowski's directorial debut, The Last Night rejects the explicitness of most noir films in favor of gay love.
Violet, played by Jennifer Tilly , is undoubtedly a typical femme fatale, but she only has eyes for Kirk ( Gina Gershon ), a lesbian who works in her building. Violet has also fallen into the quagmire of the local mafia due to her relationship with her boyfriend Caesar ( Joe Pantoliano ), and she knows that her homosexuality is subversive in this toxic male environment.
"Beauty" breaks away from the uneven relationship dynamics between men and women in film noir and presents Violet and Kirk as equals. The film gradually builds a bridge between the two women, their secret bond blossoming through longing glances and beautifully choreographed intimate shots. (The Wachowskis brought in sex educator Suzy Bright for these scenes.)
Vision also takes center stage in this neo-noir. After they are together, the weathered Gorky whispers, "I can see again." In the second act, Violet rushes past Gorky's hideout and is caught by the abnormal Caesar. This is a scene that happened in an instant. Violet silently glanced at the peephole, believing that Gao Qi would be on the other side.
However, reconstructing a female relationship that has been stripped away does not always guarantee a happy ending to the film. Whether it's casual street harassment in "Erotic Theater" or graphic killings in "Nude Cut," the threat of violence against women is omnipresent in these films. Some of the great noir films of the past didn't shy away from gender-based cruelty either. They are simply too focused on "male heroes" - sometimes more attractive than any woman - without examining the roots of these women's subjugation.
Strictly gender-coded visual and power relations may have changed, yet the risks of inhabiting the world as a woman remain very evident in neo-noir, reflecting the macro- and micro-aggressions of real life.
"Breaking Up"
Neo-noir challenged the definition of femme fatale and spawned closer, more raw, and more playful depictions of female identity and sexuality. Within the flesh of these female and gender non-conforming characters is a resilient spirit that disrupts traditional male spaces and roles.
These characters have grown up amid systemic male violence, suggesting that their actions speak to "all men," a feat not all men can accomplish.
