On movie sex and movie love...

Tag: Fails Bechdel test (Page 1 of 3)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

  • YEAR: 1961
  • DIRECTOR: Blake Edwards
  • KEY ACTORS: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard
  • CERTIFICATE: PG
  • IMDB SCORE: 7.6
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 88%

SEX SCORE: 1.5/5
❓I can only give this a half for rewatchability. It is rewatchable…but significant parts of it are so racist that it is very uncomfortable watching!
❌ While the 1960s styling is fabulous, I didn’t want to fuck the cast
❌ And it didn’t inspire fantasies. Hepburn is so transcendently beautiful that I can’t even really inspire to be that beautiful!
✔️ The sex positive question is tough, as usual. I’m going to say it is sex positive because of how the main characters date and live free and independent lives at a time when this wasn’t common, but it’s not perfect…
❌ And it does not pass the Bechdel test.  Not many female characters who don’t often have names and, those that do, only talk about men…

As always, this contains spoilers so watch the film before you read on…

STREAMING: Paramount Plus, Amazon Prime (rent £3.49, buy £5.99), YouTube (from £2.49). For a full list of streaming options, check out JustWatch.com

When I was growing up, my mother used to tell me the plot of movies that I wasn’t yet old enough to see surprisingly often. As I write that, I realise how weird it is – especially when she spoiled the ending of Psycho, although I’d argue that the film is creepier when you know – but it did mean that I had an understanding of many classic movies before I ever saw them. And Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of those films. My mother loved Audrey Hepburn and thought that she was one of the most beautiful people who have ever lived, and she used Hepburn’s filmography as proof of how wonderfully versatile she is – she can play everything from a naïve princess in Roman Holiday to a party girl in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

A black and white image of Hepburn, looking impossibly glamorous as Holly Golightly, smoking a cigarette in a long holder

Now, I would argue that Hepburn essentially plays the same character in each movie – a naïve but beautiful waif who is charming and wins over all the men around her as they fall over themselves to help her.  She is a sheltered princess in Roman Holiday, she is similarly elegant in My Fair Lady when she’s ‘smartened up,’ and she may be all grown up in Sabrina but is still innocent to the ways of men and relationships, and her innocence and, dare I use the word again, naivety are her main character traits in Charade and How to Steal a Million, as she works with criminals and con artists. Maybe I’ve just not watched enough Hepburn movies, particularly from her later career, but then again, she only made five movies after 1967 so maybe there wasn’t much more to see…

But I don’t want this to take away from her status as a true Hollywood icon, perhaps even the greatest.  It was this thread of beauty and elegance that followed her through all of her movies that made her a Movie Star rather than just an actor; a presence in the movie that gives more than just the sounds and images.  Just as we now go to see a Tom Cruise movie with certain expectations, we see an Audrey Hepburn movie expecting to see that same grace and charm that we saw last time, in a subtly different framing device perhaps, but with the same joy and fun as she delivers whenever she’s on screen.

Audrey Hepburn is a fascinating woman – and one whose off screen story is probably more interesting than her on-screen persona.  Born in Belgium and moving to the Netherlands during World War Two, she supported the Dutch Resistance against Nazi Germany by donating funds from ballet performances and delivering messages, because who would suspect a child? She has also claimed that her famous slender physique was due to becoming so malnourished when living in the Netherlands during the war.  And, after her stellar career that began with 1954’s Roman Holiday – winning a Best Actress Oscar for her first starring role – through to the mid-1960s, she stepped back from fame to focus on her family, later turning her attention instead to charity work and became a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF in 1988: ‘I can testify to what UNICEF means to children, because I was among those who received food and medical relief after World War II. I have a long-lasting gratitude and trust for what UNICEF does.’

A black and white image of an older Hepburn, standing in a rural African village (I'm afraid I don't know which country) with a smiling child on her back
UNICEF image: UNICEF/UNI40095/Isaac

This later part of her life is as much a part of the legacy of Audrey Hepburn as any of her movies.  It’s possible that she is the first famous person whose death, in 1993, I was aware of in real time as I remember seeing pictures of her in Ethiopia and on other humanitarian missions as often as I saw stills from her movies during the subsequent celebrations of her life.  For me, her life outside of Hollywood added a poignance and fidelity to her light and joyful roles that shone from the screen. She wasn’t just a beautiful woman; she was a woman who had survived and fought and had earned her joy and beauty, and had chosen to share it with us through the screen as an actor and later used her privilege and platform to make genuine changes to other people’s lives to help prevent anyone else from suffering as she had.  Too many people are called icons or legends, but Audrey Hepburn deserved that title.

I was pleased that Breakfast at Tiffany’s won the Hepburn poll last month when picking a movie of hers to explore as it is both exactly who she is and why I love her, and it is the closest that she really gets to something gritty and harder.  Truman Capote, who wrote the original novella, famously tried to veto Hepburn’s casting in favour of Marilyn Monroe who he felt was more like his version of Holly in real life.   Monroe, however, turned it down as she was worried about the impact on her reputation, which is a fascinating revelation about what the film could have been about!

Breakfast at Tiffany’s tells the story of Holly Golightly (Hepburn) and her friendship with upstairs neighbour and struggling author, Paul (Peppard).  Golightly doesn’t seem to have a job or much purpose and instead flits from party to date to party, looking for a rich man to marry.  Paul’s purpose is clearer but still euphemistic – he’s the kept man of a rich woman who supports him while he tries to write a novel.  He forms a friendship with Holly and discovers that Holly isn’t her real name – she’s called Lula Mae and has run away from her husband who she married when she was 14.  Golightly consistently struggles to maintain her independence, claiming that she and her cat, Cat, ‘belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us. We don’t even belong to each other.’  Of course, Paul falls in love with her and tries to rescue her when Golightly’s fragile existence falls apart and, of course, she tries to fight back and run away (as I would to anyone who told me ‘I love you, you belong to me!’) but, of course, she changes her mind and they kiss and the movie ends with a soaring soundtrack that makes you feel like everything will be OK.

An image from Breakfast at Tiffany's of Holly, standing in the middle of a party scene and looking out at the camera

Holly Golightly and Breakfast at Tiffany’s have become an icon or a symbol that is bigger than and entirely separate from the film itself. Guy Lodge in the Guardian described her as ‘more icon than character at this point, her signature little black dress, updo and cigarette holder now a recognised code – and costume – for cosmopolitan urban femininity even among people who have never seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’  She’s a symbol of independence, of young women living a high life of fun in the big city. She is every one of us who has moved to a new place and decided to reinvent ourselves as more glamorous or more mysterious and more interesting.

And there is so much to love about Breakfast at Tiffany’s – I love that Hepburn essentially wears the same dress with different accessories throughout the movie, I love that they could seriously consider buying something at Tiffany’s for $10, I love that there’s a ginger cat, and I love the 1960s glamour and style – but it looks more and more like a horror movie every time I watch it. Seeing it with 2024 eyes and sensibilities, I can’t shake a low thrum of unease and fear for Holly as she tries to stay ahead of the misogyny and danger that constantly threatens to overwhelm her. Is she care-free and a bit selfish as she flits around town, or is she simply surviving?

Who are all of these men and what are they expecting of her?  Why was she hired to be a companion to a mobster in Sing Sing jail? And why does no-one express more shock that she got married at 14?!  I had forgotten that, according to the movie, the problem with Holly’s past was that she was already married and didn’t tell anyone about it, not that she was a victim of a forced marriage to an older man when she was a minor.  It doesn’t matter how often her husband emphasised how it had been her choice or how happy she was. The power dynamics do not allow her to make a truly consensual choice and the fact that she ran away suggests that she wasn’t that fucking happy! 

And this darker tone that I now can’t ignore is much more in line with Capote’s original novella.  Although it’s not explicitly stated, book Holly Golightly isn’t a party girl, she’s a sex worker.  Capote has claimed that she’s more like an escort, calling her ‘a kind of “American geisha” there to entertain men with charm and conversation, not seduction’, but that feels like semantics.  Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s was also not a romantic story.  Peppard’s character, Paul, is simply a narrator and the book ends without their reconciliation as Golightly simply disappears.  Capote wrote her as ‘a symbol of all these girls who come to New York and spin in the sun for a moment like May flies and then disappear,’ which makes it an entirely different movie.  A young girl escaping to the big city from a child marriage and turning to sex work to survive before just disappearing is a tragedy.  That girl is almost certainly dead now.  She’s not the glamorous icon that Hepburn brought to the screen; she’s not aspirational or fun or joyful.  And even though her performance is full of pathos, Hepburn’s Golightly isn’t tragic.  Lost, maybe, but not devastated.  I just don’t know that Hepburn could have played that kind of tragedy at that time in her career: ‘the symbol of Hepburn, an icon of subdued glamour and chic, transferred itself onto the character of Holly when the actor brought her to life in the film adaptation…As Holly, she is at her most desirable to watch – embodying both glamorousness and effortlessness, such as when we see her wake up and throw on an oversized men’s shirt.

Holly, asleep in bed wearing an eye mask, with Cat sitting next to her

And I find it fascinating that Hepburn was able to play this character almost sexlessly.  Her Golightly flirts and dates and does favours for men, but I can never really imagine those as sexual favours.  It’s like she is unable to escape from the naïve and innocent roles that had so far defined her – even when playing an actual sex worker, she manages to make the character seem wholesome and almost chaste.  Watching Golightly dodge danger on her dates, with that low thrum of unease getting louder as she climbs out of windows to escape overly amorous men, I’m afraid for her because jilted and frustrated men are terrifying but, to purposefully use dated and euphemistic language, I’m not afraid for her virtue.  She’s escaping men who want to smother her in kisses and woo her with flowers and marry her and, even though in reality those men don’t really exist without the co-existing danger of sexual violence, there’s no sense of that on screen.  I don’t know that I even noticed the danger when I watched this growing up, only that these men were a nuisance.  It has taken a loss of my innocence and a better understanding of how ubiquitous violence against women can be and how little provocation men can claim as justification for it to really see the darkness in the Golightly character.

An image from Breakfast at Tiffany's of Holly standing outside her apartment with two different gentlemen

So it creates an interesting sliding doors moment to wonder what would have happened if Marilyn Monroe had been cast as Golightly.  As Aimee Farrier wrote for FarOut, ‘if Monroe, who was consistently hyper-sexualised by Hollywood, had been cast, the characterisation of Holly would be completely different.’  And I do quite want to see that film, to see a more sexual and so more vulnerable Golightly. Less free and breezy, floating from an assignation with a convicted gangster to a date with a foreign nobleman without a care in the world, and more manipulative and desperate, perhaps.  Or similarly naive and trusting, but less likely to be believed.  I think that might be the key – I can’t imagine there are many actors who could play a character that regularly visits that mobster in jail and passes on obviously coded messages hidden in weather reports that bare no resemblance to the actual weather and could get away with saying that she didn’t know and she thought she was visiting a friend.  Even though we know that she’s being paid to do it, we still believe that she’s been tricked and exploited, not that she’s party to the crime itself.  Would we have believed Monroe in the same situation? Would we have believed anyone else?

Lodge, for the Guardian again, wrote that Breakfast at Tiffany’s may be ‘one of the great Hollywood examples of good literary adaptation yielding a fresh gift altogether, rather than a faithful, secondary evocation.’  The book and the movie aren’t the same story, and that’s OK.  Capote wrote a sorrowful novella about a girl who burns so brightly and then is lost into the shadows, and Edwards made a poignant movie about a lost girl who needed to find purpose and safety – and, despite the independence that Golightly is famous for, that safety was found in the ‘right’ man.

For me, that dates Breakfast at Tiffany’s almost as much as the abominable yellow face of Mickey Rooney’s character, Mr Yunioshi. God, that has aged badly and makes this movie almost unwatchable now.  Just disgustingly racist and really, really not funny.  This movie could never be remade, but I would absolutely endorse a new cut that didn’t include him!

An image of Holly and Paul, sitting together in a window and Holly is looking very sad

Breakfast at Tiffany’s makes me a bit sad, all in all, but I don’t think any other actor could have quite created that level of pathos and poignancy – this is Hepburn’s most famous and more iconic role for a reason.  Holly Golightly may have been an inspiration for all young women, finding their place in a new city and seeking a glamorous escape, but she was also a bit of a warning.  A reminder that we can’t really run from our past, can’t really make ourselves a new future. Not if we’re a single girl in the 1960s anyway. We still all need a man to save us, apparently…

NEXT TIME… The Idea of You

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Copyright All stills and photos are sourced from MovieStillsDB and CineMaterial, and are the courtesy of their respective production studios and/or distribution companies. Images are intended for educational or editorial use only.

Challengers

  • YEAR: 2024
  • DIRECTOR: Luca Guadagnino
  • KEY ACTORS: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist
  • CERTIFICATE: 15
  • IMDB SCORE: 7.3
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 88%

SEX SCORE: 4/5
✔️ It is the greatest film of 2024 so far. Of course it’s rewatchable!!
✔️ Do I want to fuck the cast? YES! Absolutely, definitely. Of course!!
✔️ I have wanted to fuck tennis players for a long, long time but this certainly added to those fantasies!
✔️ And while a lot of this film is about the destructive power of sex, I do think it’s sex positive as nothing is judged, none of the sex feels wrong; perhaps dangerous and misguided, but not wrong!
❌ But it doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. There are barely any named female characters and, while Tashi does speak to her named daughter, Lily doesn’t really talk back…

As always, this contains spoilers so watch the film before you read on…

STREAMING: Such is its success that this is still in a few cinemas (last I checked!)! Otherwise, streaming as video-on-demand on Amazon, Apple, Sky and YouTube (buy from £13.99) For a full list of streaming options, check out JustWatch.com

Quick apology for the unscheduled summer holiday! But it’s accidentally worked out pretty well because I released Wimbledon during that tournament and this latest review of another tennis movie is being released during the US Open so lets pretend I planned it this way!

I wrote about Wimbledon in my last review at the beginning of the summer largely because I really, really wanted to write about Challengers. I felt that I ought to write about Wimbledon first as it’s one of my favourite movies and it’s been on my list to write about since the beginning of this blog because I love its sweetness and its warmth…which are not words you would use to describe Challengers! That movie is a RIDE. And it may have supplanted Wimbledon as my go-to tennis movie. Because who really needs sweetness when you can have a dirty fuck?!

Challengers is my favourite type of love triangle movie – one where each side of the triangle wants to fuck the other! This isn’t a two-guys-fighting-for-one girl film; this is a film about three people who have dated and married and fucked (or at least want to fuck), and there are sparks flying all over the place! It tells the story of three junior tennis players – Patrick (O’Connor) and Art (Faist) who are doubles partners and Tashi (Zendaya) who is the next big thing in women’s tennis! All three of them have an…encounter when playing juniors at the US Open, ending in a hot and horny three-way-kiss. Declaring that she will date whichever of them wins the juniors championship, Tashi creates a riff between Patrick and Art as she pits them against each other, and ends up dating Patrick. Sadly, she suffers a career ending injury immediately after they argue and Patrick wasn’t there for her; Art was. So she marries him instead! With Tashi as his coach, Art has been pushed to massive career success but is now stalling and keen to retire. Tashi tries to motivate him with a few match wins and enters him into a challengers tournament – one usually reserved for much lower ranked players. Good plan…except he meets Patrick in the final. And it is fucking electric!!

An image from Challengers showing Zendaya sitting on the bed with O'Connor and Faist kissing her neck

Before I talk specifically about Challengers, I want to make a couple of comparisons to Wimbledon as it highlights both why this film is great and why that film suffers in comparison. Because Challengers understands tennis. I really enjoyed the reviews from some of my favourite tennis journalists who all agreed that the tennis play itself was more artistic than accurate, but that the movie absolutely understood the tour. It knows tennis players and their weird habits – such as hanging out at the Applebee’s after the Cincinnati Open.  It understands how isolated players can be on the court but how interconnected their lives have to be on the tour. How personal relationships can spread into the court, for good and bad. And it understood the stakes involved for tennis players, and the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom.  Unless you’re in the top 100, professional tennis is an absolute grind of constant travel to win the prize money necessary to fund that travel and entry fees. The Tennis Podcast ran a great episode in April 2020 where they interviewed Liam Brody, then ranked 211 in the world, about how the tournament cancellations necessary during the pandemic may have meant that he couldn’t afford to start playing again. Without the prize money, he couldn’t afford a coach, a physio, a wider support team, equipment; he couldn’t afford entry fees and plane tickets and hotels… It’s an expensive sport that only rewards success.

And I liked that Challengers emphasised that success, in tennis and perhaps in general, isn’t always related to talent. When playing juniors, Patrick is the better player. It’s why Tashi likes him, and why he won the junior championship! He has more natural talent than Art, but he doesn’t develop it. He doesn’t progress. It’s highlighted (with a sledgehammer) in his strange serve technique – an amusing quirk before he became a professional and now a habit that should have been smoothed out by a high powered coach. In contrast, Art has worked hard. He has battled and learned and become a huge success, even though he perhaps didn’t have the same natural talent!

A sweaty Josh O'Connor smashing his racket against the ground

So it means that the stakes in their challengers level final are very different. Patrick needs to win because he needs the prize money for food and board – by this point, he’s essentially a sex worker on the side as he’s using Tinder dates to find accommodation each night. (Quick aside – am I the only one who gets annoyed by rich people living in poverty because they don’t want to ask Daddy for help? Patrick is clearly from a wealthy family but doesn’t want to ask for help so is living in his car. His reasons for this aren’t nearly explored enough and so it’s just annoying!)  It’s also a tournament for players of Patrick’s ranking – he needs the points to increase his ranking so that he can qualify for other tournaments to earn more money to get into better tournaments etc etc. Whereas Art can qualify for any tournament he wants; he’s here for an easy win against players who aren’t nearly as good as him to boost his confidence. He needs to win because it would be hugely humiliating for a multiple Grand Slam champion to lose a challenger tournament. He doesn’t need the money; he doesn’t need the points. He needs the win!

All of this tennis accuracy and intrigue made the film amazing, but what made it great, what made it a film that I want to watch again and again, and what Wimbledon didn’t understand, is that Challengers knows that tennis is sexy. In fact, in this movie, tennis is sex! For such a hot, erotic movie, there really aren’t many sex scenes. That tension is released on the court instead. And I LOVE it!

An image from Challengers of a close up of O'Connor as he plays

You can probably tell that I am a huge fan of the sport generally so perhaps I’m biased, but I really do think that tennis players have the hottest bodies in sport. I started writing this before the Olympics but I saw nothing that changed my mind! Rugby players might have better thighs, swimmers might have better arms, cyclists might have better calves…but tennis players have it all and exactly the right balance of muscle and tone. They look incredible. All of them! Sadly, this balance isn’t allowed to work as beautifully for the women players – they all look absolutely stunning but too often have had to sacrifice strength to reduce their muscle mass, rather than be criticised and ridiculed for being too muscular, as Serena Williams always was. Goddamn the patriarchy!

I also think that tennis is the hardest and cruellest sport around – the length of the matches, the physical stamina involved, the periods of explosive energy interspersed with extraordinary precision, and the scoring system that means you can win after losing almost all the points and yet losing one wrong point can ruin everything. Federer recently spoke about how he only won 54% of the points in his matches and yet won over 80% of those matches. It’s a brilliant and fascinating sport, and it relies so heavily on the strength and weaknesses of your opposition, on the person playing with you on the other side of the net.

And Challengers gets it – Tashi even describes tennis as a relationship: ‘For about fifteen seconds there, we were actually playing tennis. And we understood each other completely. So did everyone watching. It’s like we were in love. Or like we didn’t exist. We went somewhere really beautiful together.’ The connection between them is about more than sport. The Queer Movie Podcast described this as Tashi’s kink but I disagree. It’s an intrinsic part of tennis. Of course it’s sex!

A sweaty Faist reaching for a ball

And it’s hot – literally and figuratively. There is just so much sweat! The players are dripping in it, literally glistening with exertion. They’re panting and dripping and wiping their eyes and using their bodies, and having sex with their clothes on.

Other than that teenage three-way kiss, the tennis really is the only sex on screen. (Unless you count some suggesting churros eating, which I absolutely am!) And that kiss is barely on screen for long as the point of the scene is to watch Tashi enjoying watching them. The zoom into her face, and her satisfied smile as she watches what she has created, is so joyful. She’s in control, she’s winning!

But other than that, no one really wins in Challengers.  Not in their relationships – Tashi and Art’s marriage is essentially over, and Patrick isn’t exactly lining up to be a replacement – and not in tennis. The film finishes with an orgasmic shout of ‘come on!’ but no indication of who actually won the point. But winning isn’t the point – it’s the competition, the desire to be challenged and to meet their match that is the attraction: ‘These competitors only feel alive when they’re bound together by the mutual intimacy of being edged to the break points of their desire.’ 

An image from Challengers of Zendaya looking over her sunglasses

I think that’s why I loved this film so much. It keeps drawing us deeper and deeper into their messy lives, while teasing and tempting us with a resolution and release that never comes. It’s sex, but it’s kinky sex. It’s dark and drawn out sex with no guarantee of satisfaction but a promise that keeps us coming back for more! ‘It’s like a tennis movie, but it’s not really about tennis,’ Zendaya told IndieWire. ‘Tennis is really just the outlet these characters use to express their chaos.

Who knows what will happen next, and I don’t really care. Watching that final rally, as Art and Patrick pushed themselves harder and harder, closer and closer, grunting and panting and sweating and building the tension higher and higher, I too became breathless and tense. I too felt caught up in their drama, and I loved it!

Could this movie actually be porn? For me, it definitely definitely is!

An image from Challengers of Patrick and Art looking at each other

NEXT TIME… Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Did you want to read my reviews a few days before they are published here, with some extra recommendations and short reviews of the movies I’ve watched recently? Follow my Substack newsletter by signing up below!!

Copyright All stills and photos are sourced from MovieStillsDB and CineMaterial, and are the courtesy of their respective production studios and/or distribution companies. Images are intended for educational or editorial use only.

Wimbledon

  • YEAR: 2004
  • DIRECTOR: Richard Loncraine
  • KEY ACTORS: Kirsten Dunst, Paul Bettany 
  • CERTIFICATE: 12A
  • IMDB SCORE: 6.3
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 61%

SEX SCORE: 4/5
✔️ I watch this most years so, yes, it is rewatchable!
✔️ And I’d absolutely fuck the cast! Who wouldn’t?!
✔️ It did inspire fantasies, but they’re not that specific to this film – to be inspired by love, to have a whirlwind romance that means I achieve my life’s ambition…
✔️ And I am giving it a point for being sex positive! Sex is fun, sex is joyful, and (at the beginning anyway) sex is just about sex and not about love. Lizzie’s father may not approve…but its the distraction he doesn’t like, not the sex itself!
❌ But it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. There’s a conversation between Lizzie and a female interviewer that isn’t about men…but she isn’t named.

Continue reading

Fair Play

  • YEAR: 2023
  • DIRECTOR: Chloe Domont
  • KEY ACTORS: Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich
  • CERTIFICATE: 18
  • IMDB SCORE: 6.4
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 86%

SEX SCORE: 2.5/5
✔️ I’ve rarely had such a strong physical reaction to a movie but I do think it is rewatchable.
❓This needs a half mark because I’d absolutely fuck the cast at the beginning and I absolutely would not by the end!
✔️ Yes, it is sex positive. It shows sex at its best and worst, that’s pretty powerful.
❌ But it didn’t really inspire fantasies. It’s kind of awful.
❌ And it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. There are a few other women, some of whom have names, but they tend to only talk about engagements and engagement parties so I don’t think it can count.

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The Power of the Dog

  • YEAR: 2021
  • DIRECTOR: Jane Campion
  • KEY ACTORS: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons
  • CERTIFICATE: 12A
  • IMDB SCORE: 6.9
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 94%

SEX SCORE: 1/5

❌ I’m sad about the low score for this one as it’s a better film that my score will reflect, but I didn’t want to fuck the cast…
…and it didn’t inspire fantasies. It’s an emotionally manipulative and repressed film, and I didn’t really like any of them.
❌ And it also fails the Bechdel Test. There are at least two named women, Rose and Mrs Lewis, but I can’t recall them talking, and the other women don’t have names.
❌ I also can’t give it a mark for sex positivity. The relationships are strained and abusive, and sexuality is repressed and harmful.
✔️ But I think it is rewatchable. I didn’t initially, but I can’t stop thinking about it and now really want to see it again…

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Witness

  • YEAR: 1985
  • DIRECTOR: Peter Weir
  • KEY ACTORS: Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis
  • CERTIFICATE: 15
  • IMDB SCORE: 7.4
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 93%

SEX SCORE: 3.5/5

❌ I’ve made a decision to fail all movies where I have to think about the fine details of the Bechdel Test to determine if it has passed. This is such a low bar that unless it’s a clear pass, it’s going to fail. So this fails the Bechdel Test. There are only two named female characters who have only one verbal exchange. It isn’t explicitly about a man but it does mention a man and, damn, it is not good enough!
✔️ But it is definitely rewatchable! Intense, entertaining and surprisingly excellent.
✔️ And yes, I would fuck the cast. Absolutely. Definitely. Yes.
❓The fantasies question is difficult. Because the fantasies that it did inspire are so vague – letting someone watch you, desiring something you can’t have – that I’m not sure they can really be credited to this movie. Half a point!
✔️And this is definitely sex positive. Consensual, beautiful and hot!

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Casino Royale

  • YEAR: 2006
  • DIRECTOR: Martin Campbell
  • KEY ACTORS: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen
  • CERTIFICATE: 12A
  • IMDB SCORE: 8.0
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 94% 

SEX SCORE: 4/5

✔️ This is an incredibly rewatchable film. Every day, if you wanted
✔️ And I would absolutely fuck the cast. Every day, if you wanted!
✔️ It also did inspire fantasies, although not so much from the main plot but from Vesper and Bond’s whirlwind romance at the end. I wanted to sail to Venice, to run through the woods in the rain and have passionate sex in a shelter. Yup…
✔️ The sex positive question is a tough one but, especially when compared to other Bond movies, this is sex positive. All the sex is consensual and looks pretty fun!
❌ But it can’t get full marks as it does not pass the Bechdel Test. Worryingly few Bond films do – this is a future pub quiz question if ever I saw one. How many Bond movies pass, and which ones? Answers at the end of the post!

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300

  • YEAR: 2006
  • DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder
  • KEY ACTORS: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey
  • CERTIFICATE: 15
  • IMDB SCORE: 7.6
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 61%

SEX SCORE: 2/5

❌ This clearly fails the Bechdel Test – there is only one named female character!
✔️ But it is rewatchable! Even now when I can see how problematic it has become, it is still very enjoyable and very watchable!
✔️ And I would fuck the cast. I’m sure that they’re all absolutely insufferable but they are good to look at…
No fantasies though – I’d like to look at them but I don’t want to actually be in that world.
❌ And it’s not sex positive. There are too many problems, too much objectification and too much toxic masculinity!

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Casablanca

  • YEAR: 1942
  • DIRECTOR: Michael Curtiz
  • KEY ACTORS: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid
  • CERTIFICATE: U
  • IMDB SCORE: 8.5
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 99%

SEX SCORE: 3.5/5

✔️ This is definitely rewatchable. From any point in the film, at any time.
✔️ And I definitely want to fuck the cast. Doesn’t everyone?
❓ I’m giving it a half mark for inspiring fantasies because it didn’t inspire anything directly, but it could be the source of so many other doomed romance/love triangle/being fought over by two men fantasies…
❌ Sadly, it fails the Bechdel Test. There are only three named female characters and they never speak, let alone talk about something other than a man.
✔️ I had to think about it, but I think Casablanca is sex positive. Sex seems to be both ever present and never spoken about, but I don’t recall any particularly negative moments so I’m giving it the mark!

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Crash

  • YEAR: 1996
  • DIRECTOR: David Cronenberg
  • KEY ACTORS: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arquette, Elias Koteas
  • CERTIFICATE: 18
  • IMDB SCORE: 6.4
  • ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 63%

SEX SCORE: 2.5/5

❌ Not only does Crash not pass the Bechdel test, it fails it spectacularly. While there are named women in the film at no point in the entire film do any of them talk to each other. There’s not a huge amount of dialogue in Crash, so when I rewatched it with the Bechdel test in mind, I was kind of imagining there might at least be a passing conversation about Ballard between his wife and Doctor Helen that I’d forgotten, but no; not a dicky bird.

But it is rewatchable? I’ve now seen Crash three times; once in 1997 when it (finally) came out in the UK, once when it was re-released on 4K in 2020, and once for this review. I think it’s an astonishing, bewildering film and I can see myself rewatching it again in future. However, it is very strong stuff, and while I can imagine watching it multiple times, there are many people out there who might not be able to stomach an entire first viewing. That’s entirely understandable – it’s creepy, the characters are on the surface unsympathetic and often repellent, and it’s all-round just very fucking weird. However, if you are a weirdo who likes weird things it may be entirely up your alley. 

✔️ I did want to fuck the cast! Okay, have you seen the cast of Crash? Firstly, James Spader. If you are at all into pervy men in real life then you are in all likelihood into James Spader: I don’t make the rules. However, those of us perverts who also fancy women are extremely well- catered to by this film, which features Holly Hunter with a sleek brown bob glacially smoking cigarettes, Deborah Kara Unger bending over a railing to show off her bare arse, stockings and suspenders and, famously, Rosanna Arquette in leg braces and black leather. I am not even into women smoking or wearing leg braces except for the duration of this film! But for those 100 minutes I absolutely am. And actually, even Elias Koteas performs the role of Vaughan – easily the creepiest character in the movie – with a degree of ‘strange, perverse sensuality’ (Cronenberg’s own words) that I’m… kinda into. I’m not proud of it!

But it did not inspire fantasies. Nooooo. Or… not on this viewing.

✔️ Yes, it is sex positive, almost to a fault. If we take as our definition of sex positivity as being anything that ‘affirm(s) the choices others make regarding sex, even if those choices are different from the ones we would make (as long as those choices are consensual)’ Although that said, some of the sex in Crash is a bit dodgy consent- wise: there’s one scene of open public fucking without regard for whether others on the roads have consented to seeing, and another where Vaughan and the Ballards are wandering around the scene of a multi- car pileup taking photos, posing next to injured bodies and generally being grossly intrusive. The scene is as disturbing as it sounds but the film and its director do not see fit to moralise and trust the audience to make their own decisions about that. 

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