Men don't seem to like this movie much, well actually they don't seem to get it. I saw it with a male friend and he really didn't understand why the female characters reacted the way they did.
Why was Meg Ryan's character so cautious yet clearly drawn to the police detective - after all if a female likes a guy in a film she just likes him right? They sleep together and nothing deeper than that is ever portrayed.
Thankfully in this movie that is wrong. This film is one of a very few which actually gets some reality into the constant and conflicting emotions of women who may be drawn to a man, but also fear him.
Set up around a murder case, there is an air of threat in every scene of this film. Women as victim is a clear symbol here of the constant images and onscreen portrayals women are forced to sit through time after time, to see their gender murdered, mutilated, raped or menaced often for nothing more than a plot device.
The fear and longing that this creates in the average female is beautifully rendered in this film, where women, treated like sex toys, like garbage, like meat, have to somehow navigate their way through suspicion, concern and even violence, hoping only to come out the other end unscathed and perhaps loved.
It's a harrowing film to watch. To see the female psyche unadorned up on screen, vunerable and haunting, but ultimately searching for a male they can trust.
It is interesting to me that men don't get this, they don't understand the pulpable tension when the detect ive takes the protagonist out into the woods. SHe's jumpy, but it's more than that - he is unaware of how he is scaring her. It's a power play he is so used to playing that he doesn't even notice it.
When they sit at the bar he tells her he will be anything she wants him to be, she wants him to be trustworthy but she can't trust him because his lips do not speak the truth, after he tells he won't hurt her, he abandons her to the night and a would be rapist/mugger.
As a psychological thriller it is up there with the best. The acting is excellent, with surprisingly good performances from both Meg Ryan and Jennifer Jason Leigh, both of whom manage to leave their stock Hollywood personas thanks to skillful direction by Campion.
ignore the fact that the murder mystery in the film makes little sense, it is there only as a metaphor and a reflection of the role of victim in which women seem to be constantly cast.
Why was Meg Ryan's character so cautious yet clearly drawn to the police detective - after all if a female likes a guy in a film she just likes him right? They sleep together and nothing deeper than that is ever portrayed.
Thankfully in this movie that is wrong. This film is one of a very few which actually gets some reality into the constant and conflicting emotions of women who may be drawn to a man, but also fear him.
Set up around a murder case, there is an air of threat in every scene of this film. Women as victim is a clear symbol here of the constant images and onscreen portrayals women are forced to sit through time after time, to see their gender murdered, mutilated, raped or menaced often for nothing more than a plot device.
The fear and longing that this creates in the average female is beautifully rendered in this film, where women, treated like sex toys, like garbage, like meat, have to somehow navigate their way through suspicion, concern and even violence, hoping only to come out the other end unscathed and perhaps loved.
It's a harrowing film to watch. To see the female psyche unadorned up on screen, vunerable and haunting, but ultimately searching for a male they can trust.
It is interesting to me that men don't get this, they don't understand the pulpable tension when the detect ive takes the protagonist out into the woods. SHe's jumpy, but it's more than that - he is unaware of how he is scaring her. It's a power play he is so used to playing that he doesn't even notice it.
When they sit at the bar he tells her he will be anything she wants him to be, she wants him to be trustworthy but she can't trust him because his lips do not speak the truth, after he tells he won't hurt her, he abandons her to the night and a would be rapist/mugger.
As a psychological thriller it is up there with the best. The acting is excellent, with surprisingly good performances from both Meg Ryan and Jennifer Jason Leigh, both of whom manage to leave their stock Hollywood personas thanks to skillful direction by Campion.
ignore the fact that the murder mystery in the film makes little sense, it is there only as a metaphor and a reflection of the role of victim in which women seem to be constantly cast.
