The Female Graze

 

BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER (B+) - This expansion of a lecture retains all the assets of a thoughtful polemic and juices it with engaging visuals to string it into a compelling narrative. Nina Menkes, an independent filmmaker for decades, began presenting her lecture around 2018 and turned it into a film release four years later.

Menkes is quite good at conveying some complex concepts, mainly through diagramming scenes from films. She goes beyond just the concerns about the "male gaze" and deepens our understanding of how filmmakers and audiences are the subjects who objectify the objects (female characters). Menkes never gets stuck in a trite academic rut.

We get numerous examples of cinematic tropes -- such as presenting women as disjointed body parts -- and we get to assess these entrenched ideas from a fresh perspective. There is invaluable insight from a host of film scholars (from the likes of UCLA and Dartmouth) and filmmakers, a refreshing mix of women who are not the same old talking heads, such as pioneering director Julie Dash ("Daughters of the Dust") and the young standout Eliza Hittman ("It Felt Like Love," "Never Rarely Sometimes Always"). Stories from the Weinstein-era trenches come from the likes of Rosanna Arquette and comic actor Charlyne Yi.

It does seem odd (even prurient at times) to indulge in so many examples of sexist filmmaking in order to make the case here, but Menkes never slips into voyeurism. She has important points to make, and she is a filmmaker who knows how to tell a compelling story. 

LOVING HIGHSMITH (B-minus) - This leaden documentary tries but fails to bring to life the famous novelist, Patricia Highsmith, as it sketches her biography through her love life. It too often feels like a trudge and glosses over the personality pitfalls of a woman who grew more and more bitter and insular as she aged.

Highsmith is most known for "Strangers on a Train" (brought to the big screen by Alfred Hitchcock) and the '90s cinematic touchstone "The Talented Mr. Ripley." We're more familiar with a novel she wrote under a pen name so as to hide her homosexuality; it became Todd Haynes' touching film "Carol" a few years ago. We get clips from those movies and others as pick-me-ups, though relative newcomer Eva Vitija otherwise dons a wet blanket to slog through Highsmith's love life. 

We visit with a trail of Highsmith's former lovers; she apparently left behind quite a few broken hearts on her path of devastation. (Besides being a diligent worker as a writer, she was a drinker and a smoker and eventually descended into a swamp of racism and antisemitism in her final years. That fact gets swept away with a quick line toward the end of the film.) Vitija also assembles three relatives of the author, but they seem oddly detached and fairly clueless about the subject.

It would be difficult to see this film as being perceived as inspiring to LGBT people. Highsmith isn't very fun to be around. She might have had good reason to be such a pill. But we don't have to wallow in it with her.

BONUS TRACK

The trailer for "Brainwashed":