Whip It and An Education both have much to offer – especially to us women. I’m reviewing them together because I happened to see them both within a week of each other, and the parallels are striking.
An Education takes place in middle-class London in the sixties and Whip It takes place in present day rural Texas, which eerily looks to be the same as middle-class London in the sixties. (It’s not about me and George Bush, I promise.) It’s about the backward approach to women in Texas that clearly still prevails. They both could have been shot in black and white, rather than color; they are so bleak in their presentation of day-to-day life.
They each focus on the struggles of smart girls getting out of the middle-class lives into which they were born. The parental influence planning that strategy is executed as rigidly as the most complex M&A deal out of Wall Street. Each girl’s response is convincingly full of the ambivalence that lives within each of us long past our parents’ ability to rule our day-to-day lives. Both movies are about finding the voice that speaks within and listening to it – traveling the road that moves you rather than the design of the parental influences around you when you were beginning it.
The women starring in the films? Let us all get very, very excited with the thought that successful films are starting to star women who can act and who, while compelling in their ‘look,’ are more about the presentation of the feelings without words than the ‘star quality’ of the nineties which was about not taking your eyes off the woman when she was on camera. The tale is told with what they don’t say. It’s the close-up unsaid truths written on their faces that sear the insides of those in the audience. I get it, and I love that it isn’t said out loud.
Both the women in the films are let down by men we actually hope will win in the end. Silly us, as usual. It’s no surprise that women directed these films. The point of view toward the other side of the gender pool is less than flattering in the end, but more importantly, for the first time in a long time, we understand why we are drawn into their webs. Don’t talk to me of Black Widow spiders again. It’s not us.
The directors are very different, and if one film has a flaw, this is where it shows its face. An Education is directed by a Danish woman, who got the script from her agent who happens to represent the writer as well as her. She is brilliant; uses close-ups well – not as much as Drew Barrymore, who directs Whip It tends to use the close-up as an easy way out of the fact that the actors can’t skate.
Drew. Drew. Drew. This is the first time you directed and you felt you needed to be in the film as well? What is that about? Truth is, it’s an insult to directing when actors turn directors and think they can be directing themselves. This is such a good example. You should have focused on directing and left yourself out of the film. Truth is, you are not a tough girl and are the only one poorly cast. Such a shame because it does affect the outcome of the film overall. And, shouldn’t all you directors in the world start to unite against this mixing of acting and directing? It’s such an insult to your craft.
Go see these films. If you are over 45, you will see some of that which you grew up with but have started to forget. If you are under 45, this is what we got rid of when you women came along. Either way, the lessons are for us all. Great films. And, did I mention they were made on the cheap? Just goes to show one more time that the decadence of the nineties just might give way to a more cost effective, sane approach moving forward.
