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Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
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Reviewed by David James
Rating: 
Who could resist a title like Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself? Written by Bella Heesom (and performed by her and Sara Alexander) the show is about a woman's relationship with her genitals and finds its subject perched on the intersection of biological urges and societal pressure.
The basic structure is an (I assume) semi-autobiographical tale which begins with Heesom's earliest sexual awakenings and takes us to the present day, stopping off along the way at key moments that shaped her sexuality. That's overlaid with a dialogue between her brain and her clitoris, through which we observe how societal conditioning has messed up her capacity to experience true pleasure.
The show wears its heart on its sleeve, at times preaching directly to the audience about feminine empowerment, anger at patriarchal expectations and an often incandescent sense of fury that the centre of a woman's sexual pleasure is stigmatised, mocked and belittled. The rear of the stage is taken up by a gradually evolving projection that sums up the status quo they're battling against, showing slogans like "Female Genitals are Gross", "You Are A Sex Object" and "The Female Orgasm Is A Bonus"
The show is aimed squarely at cis women (at straight Western cis women if you wanted to get precise), with the majority female audience cheering and clapping at the more insightful lines of dialogue. But, and I cannot stress this enough, Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva... is so good that audiences of all genders and sexual preferences can and should check this out.
The quality of the writing is superb, the structure of the show is tuned to perfection, the production values are well above average. Best of all, it's absolutely hilarious. Heesom's cerebral and nervy character is in a classic straight-man/comic partnership with Alexander's innocently and (adorably) upbeat clitoris. The show is funny to a level that the pair often have to wait for the audience to finish laughing before they continue - always a good sign.
Beyond the laughs, the show has an emotional core which transcends a simple polemic against the miseries of the patriarchy and becomes something more universally uplifting. I don't want to diminish the show's laser-precise focus on female sexuality, but no matter who you are you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel a rush of emotions at the show's remarkable climactic scenes.
These theoretically are sex-positive times. Open a glossy lifestyle magazine or Sunday broadsheet and you're likely to find columnists espousing sexual freedom and female emancipation. But though things are undeniably an improvement on the past, there's still a huge culture of prudishness and shame caked on top of the ways we approach sex and specifically female genitalia - I mean, why is a "cunt" the absolute worst thing you can call someone?
Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva... (and other similarly inclined cultural objects) are gradually chipping away at all this. Late in the show, the title is explained: it's a line from a poem about 4000-year-old Mesopotamian sex goddess Inanna, whose vulva was widely revered as a holy place. It's a story reminds us that the stigma we see all around us isn't inevitable. Changes like this don't happen overnight, but this production is contributing to a slow shift in perception for the better.
Perhaps there's an argument that shows like this are preaching to the converted. Judging from the audience when I was there, people attending this will be politically switched on and smart women. The people actively promoting the status quo wouldn't go near a fringe show with a name like Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself in a million years. But, Heesom argues that women must not just defeat the misogynist leering at them from a building site, they must also evict the one society has lodged in their own heads.
I had a great time. Heesom is a genuinely insightful writer (I similarly enjoyed her previous show My World Has Exploded A Little Bit), her partnership with Sara Alexander fizzes with comic chemistry and Donnacadh O’Briain’s direction is fantastic. It's the full package and is a show destined to go far.
Rejoicing At Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself is at Ovalhouse until 25 May. Tickets here.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
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Even just a couple of hours after seeing it, Jasmin Vardimon's Medusa is already becoming a kaleidoscopic tangle of images in my head. Men clutching their collapsing, tubular heads. Women-dolls swept off stage with a broom like trash. A shadow fighting to overthrow its owner. A woman with her head encased in coils of rope. A sunbather in a gas mask reclining under industrial smokestacks.
After many years of reviewing shows I've (perhaps unfairly) developed a slight scepticism about dance theatre. This is partly because the subtleties usually go straight over my head, but also partly because they seem like an open invitation for performers and creators to disappear up their own arses.
Medusa doesn't do that - and even if they did they'd make it look cool. This is presenting a focused, entertaining and chill-inducingly perceptive look at the various manifestations of misogyny in society.
A warning for fans of Greek mythology: this is is in no way a retelling of the story of Medusa. The snake-haired gorgon does appear, but this is more of a meditation on the themes, meaning and legacy of the character. Thematic threads include Medusa's petrifying and transformative gaze, that in many European languages the word for jellyfish is 'medusa', Sartre's notion of Medusa's 'objectifying gaze' and a distinctly contemporary demolition of male entitlement with a distinctly #metoo flavour too it.
There's a lot going on besides that, but Vardimon weaves it all into a propulsive, taut and powerfully engaging piece of theatre that has a palpable intellectual depth and anger as its bedrock.
My favourite bits tended to involve vast billowing sheets of plastic spread across the stage. Though physically fragile they end up bearing a hell of a lot of thematic weight - being simultaneously the ocean waves, the body of a jellyfish, an indication of how female sexuality is packaged and commodified, the suffocation and silencing of women, a symbol of ecological damage amidst an increasingly artificial world and... well, you get the picture.
Though not everything in the show achieves this rich depth, most things come pretty damn close. It gives proceedings a fractal element, the closer you peer at what's going on and the harder you think about what you're seeing the more layers of meaning you excavate.
That excavation isn't the walk in the park it might be with some other shows as Medusa fearlessly strides into extreme territory. There's a barely abstracted gang-rape towards the show's conclusion, dramatising the mythological Medusa's rape by Poseidon and her subsequent snakes-for-hair punishment by Athena.
Here a female dancer falls prey to countless spidery male hands that claw at her genitals as she struggles to break free. These hands travel up her body and obscure her face, eventually leaving her face ringed by a halo of shuddering fingers standing in for snakes. It's magnetic stuff and a moment that's destined to float around in my head for some time to come yet.
I'm just scratching the surface of what's in the rest of Medusa. While I don't know that much about dance, it's obvious that these are real top-of-the-line performers (with Joshua Smith's preeningly entitled man an obvious highlight), the show looks absolutely fantastic from start to finish and the soundtrack, which mixes classical with pop (the best song being Yael Naïm's grrrreat New Soul) and electronica (including Aphex Twin - be still my beating heart!), kicks ass.
To be honest, the whole package kicks ass in a sustained and impressively thorough manner. Medusa is billed as a celebration of the company's 20th anniversary - I can't think of a better way they could have showcased their talents.
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
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Reviewed by David James
Rating:
Conquest is full of smart as hell observations, the best being that the cis sexual 'narrative' is centred around the masculine experience. Within the sex 'story' female partner is the sphinx-like enigma to be overcome, a man's ejaculation marks the climax of the story and, signifies the point that she has been conquered. Hence Conquest.
The show is a relatively fast-paced and breezy two-hander written by Katie Caden, directed by Jess Daniels and performed by Lucy Walker-Evans and Colette Eaton. Though each plays a variety of characters, their base performances are as Alice and Jo, two women who meet when Alice is waiting in a pharmacy to be given the morning after pill. Initially, they're diametrically opposed: Jo is an abrasive, outspoken feminist who relishes the opportunity to crush a few toes and Alice is a model of fragility who bursts into tears at the slightest provocation.
The pair proceed to navigate choppy sexual, political and sociological waters, presenting the audience with pointed questions about the complexities of sexual consent, the subtle misogynies ingrained into society and what can be done to change things.
On paper it sounds a bit dry - something the play recognises. Its characters introduce themselves by explaining that they're probably going to annoy you and that they're the type of feminist that makes some women claim that they're "really more of a humanist". This keen sense of self-awareness goes a long way, while the play is confrontational it draws the audience in alongside it and makes us feel as if we're allied with the characters rather than being harangued by them.
Similar smarts are deployed in some impressive ensemble scenes in which Walker-Evans and Eaton play multiple members of a feminist action group. Though they warn us beforehand that things might get a bit confusing, strong physical and vocal work (combined with sensible blocking) ensure that things are always crystal clear. These characters land on just the right side of caricature and are a great satire on awkward group dynamics in protest groups, complete with miniature power struggles and some members dominating the conversation.
The only stumble comes in the finale, where things go off the rails and into broad farce. When much of the play has been set in dingily domestic environments: waiting rooms, paisley wallpapered flats and strange toilets, a sudden dive into a more exotic environment is jarring. It got to the point that I was wondering whether one of the characters would wake up and it'd be revealed that the last few scenes had all been a dream. It's a shame it doesn't stick the landing, because when the play is zeroed in on social interactions and dissecting apparently ordinary situations to reveal the patriarchy lurking within it's pretty amazing.
It's difficult to parcel out precisely where to ladle on the most praise, but Katie Caden's script is great - studded with moments ranging from the shiver-inducingly intense to laugh-out-loud funny. At one point one of the characters bemoans taking action without understanding the theory, but Caden obviously has a tight grip on the academic thought behind the opinions and a dab hand at transmuting it into effective drama.
Walker-Evans and Colette Eaton are also great, I can't slide a Rizla between them in terms of quality. I loved the way Walker-Evans played Alice like she had a taut violin string running right through her, sitting rigidly upright, moving with bird-like quickness and fighting constant small battles to stay in control. She's so effective at this that it's almost a shock when she switches to another character. It's difficult not to warm to the way Eaton treats Jo, though it's her cynical and even more abrasive mother, forever sat back with her lips sceptically curled around a cigarette, that was the most memorable and funny performance.
It all adds up to a deeply worthwhile hour of theatre that gave me a lot of mental chewing gum to masticate on the way home. It's nice to see a play that manages to be genuinely intellectual, sincere and funny, and Conquest hits a home run on all three.
Conquest is at The Bunker until 9th June. Tickets here.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
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It must be a pretty shitty feeling to have strangers reduce you to a pair of tits. But that's the dull reality that women face: a cacophony of men's voices emerging from building sites, on public transport, out of cars and yelled over pubs. It's tempting to conclude that these transitory acts of rudeness are small fry compared to 'big' social issues, and anyway, just how do you stop it?
Doll's Eye Theatre's Might Never Happen makes the case for immediate action on street harassment: attempting to communicate a variety of arguments around the issue, show us everyday examples and begin to figure out a framework through which we can begin to sort this shit out.
Comprising eleven sketches, the show ranges in tone from light-hearted parody to bonechillingly upsetting realism, stopping along the way for a couple of mono/duologues. The creative team explain that they understand that each instance of harassment is unique, whether it be the actual method used by the perpetrator or the reaction from the victim. To this end they're eager to cram in as many different perspectives as possible. As you'd expect, we hear from people who've suffered street abuse of various stripes, but we also hear from women who consider it a compliment and from men struggling to see how they can realistically assist.
This is all grounded in research by Dr Fiona Vera-Gray and Dr Maria Garner, and I can understand the desire to present as many viewpoints as possible. The sketch format achieves that, though unfortunately results in an uneven experience.
To put it bluntly; when it's good it's very very good, when it's bad it's pretty damn bad. The nadir comes in an early scene where a couple argue over a relatively minor incident of harassment. The dialogue is corny and acting is flat - you sense that the writers are more concerned with hitting talking points than constructing a plausible conversation. It comes so early on that the heart sinks slightly, anticipating a rather painful evening.
Then things take a turn for the better. Set on the top deck of a London bus, we find a wheedlingly annoying arsehole (Ashley Sean Cook) harassing a random woman he happens to sit next to (Vicki Welles). It's so raw it's difficult to watch - I look away to see other audience members averting their gaze too, with one person apparently in floods of tears. It's a perfect, concise demonstration of how something that's often written off as idiotic rudeness (or even misconstrued compliments) can genuinely traumatise.
The rest of the sketches lie somewhere between these two, quality-wise; a scene contrasting a man's and woman's experience in a nightclub is well conceived, performed and effective in demonstrating the hazards of consent, yet eventually sputters out; a parody of Loose Women provides the lion's share of the laughs but goes on a bit; and a duologue between a woman scared of assault and an assault survivor is hamstrung by one side being far more interesting than the other.
It's never good reviewing practice to imagine the show you wanted to see, but I suspect the topic might be better served by a traditional linear narrative that incorporated a smaller but more focussed selection of the source material. When Might Never Happen hits, as in the bus scene, it hits hard. If it could sustain the mood of that scene over the course of an hour it wouldn't be an easy watch but it'd leave an indelible mark in the memory.
Having said all that, I can't deny that the show achieved its aim of educating me about street harassment, which the show treats as a key element of a wider spectrum of misogyny. I consider myself a pretty right-on sort of guy - I'd certainly never dream of yelling stuff at a stranger. Despite that, I admit that when I'm out with a group of friends and someone makes a comment about a woman that makes me wince, I tend to keep my mouth shut for fear of looking like a politically correct killjoy. But the show taught me something important - silence is complicity.
Despite it being a somewhat disjointed theatrical experience, Might Never Happen provides much food for thought. So, a success, albeit a qualified one.
★★★
★★★
Might Never Happen is at the King's Head until 16 May. Tickets here.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
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Charlotte Keatley's My Mother Said I Never Should has high ambitions: charting the social, political and emotional trajectory of British women throughout the 20th century. First performed (and instantly lauded) in 1989, it's now a theatrical and education fixture. Yet, astonishingly, Tiny Fire's production marks its first revival on the London stage.
The events of the play span 1900-1987 and follow four generations of women with a jumbled chronology. Matriarch Doris (Maureen Lipman) begins as a stony-faced 1940s Mum trying to deal with the Blitz as best she can, later aging into an appealingly mordant granny. Her daughter Margaret (Caroline Faber) vows that she's going to seize the new employment opportunities for women after the war. In the blink of an eye she's raising her own daughter, Jackie (Katie Brayben), a child of the 60s who butts heads with her mother over sexual politics and heads off to art school. All too soon Jackie herself a single mother grappling with raising her own child, Rosie (Serena Manteghi).
On top of that, it's all set within an abstract framing story where the woman meet as their childhood selves, apparently set in some Lord of the Flies dystopia.
Sound complicated? It is. Fortunately Tiny Fire does an awful lot to keep things straight. Signe Beckman's set is strikingly minimalist, the most eye-catching feature the stacks of vintage television sets. As we transition between the decades they play footage that locks us in time; Thatcher taking office; plummy 1950s fashion ads; and or bleached punks stalking their way down the King's Road. More broadly the lack of complex set allows the play to nimbly skip from, for example, 1959 to 1979 with minimal fuss, aided by some evocative period costuming.
But the main attraction are four clear and distinctive performances that're the equal of anything I've recently seen. Keatley's writing is so good that it all but demands to be done justice; giving the actors the meatily complex job of maintaining consistency as they age from toddler to adulthood. Adults playing children is usually cringeworthy at best and creepy at worst, but somehow each of these women miraculously manages it - perhaps because they go for it with precision and gusto.
All four impress, though it's Serena Manteghi's Rosie and Maureen Lipman's Doris that stand out as particularly fine. Manteghi is a chaotic tangle of elbows and knees as she affectingly plays a childish enthusiasm that gradually morphs into political activism. Her face easily outpaces the stage lights as the brightest thing in the room. Throughout much the play we know secrets that she doesn't, increasing our sympathy and accentuating her vulnerability.
But let's face it, it was always going to be Maureen Lipman's Doris that was going to give that tiny tingle of excitement whenever she stompily enters. Lipman as a cynical yet warm-hearted Lancashire grandmother is such an obvious casting slam-dunk that it almost feels like cheating. Nonetheless, she provides the emotive anchor to everything that proceeds, quickly becoming a kind of universal ur-grandmother. You can almost sense the audience collectively imprinting their own grans onto her; not to mention that (at least to my eyes), she's subtly channelling a bit of the Queen.
As the years tick by it's next to impossible not to become wrapped up in the rhythms of their lives; you genuinely care. It feels a bit like settling down with a really good TV box set and immersing yourself in another world for a couple of hours. By the time the curtain falls the My Mother... has painted a detailed picture of 20th century femininity: the lost opportunities; the rebellions; the betrayals and, most evocatively, the familial bonds.
Above all that there's a hazy, emotive sense of the architecture of history. Each of us is informed by those that came before us - whether it be by genetics, politics or wider historical circumstances. My Mother Said I Never Should is a fantastic bit of theatre, well performed, beautifully directed and staged, and with genuine universal insight into the human condition.
★★★★
My Mother Said I Never Should is at the St James Theatre until 21 May 2016. Tickets here.
Monday, July 20, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
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I've only ever been to one pole dancing club - part of a depressing stag do. The place was a grubby upstairs in Manchester's Chinatown, where damp walls and stained floors were masked by strobes and neon lights. It was awful; zombified women mechanically grinding away to an audience that looked like they'd stepped out of a Daniel Clowes illustration. The experience was about as erotic as feeding time at a hyena enclosure, confirming pretty much everything I'd suspected about these places.
Pole gets elbow deep in the what, why and how of these clubs, as well as exploring the various ways in which pole dancing is perceived. As an exercise class, pole dancing is bordering on de rigueur, a conspicuous and commercially cheeky activity for bored housewives to rekindle some lost spark of sexiness. Then there's the enthusiasm for pole as a gymnastic and dance discipline; an aesthetic appreciation of the impressive human pretzels the best performers contort themselves into. Finally, ominously, comes the salubrious strip clubs where trafficked women are ritually humiliated in front of braying men.
The three performers, Amy Bellwood, Anais Alvarado and Lyndal Marwick, adopt broadly sketched roles - each of which acts as a vehicle for the various perspectives on pole. As verbatim theatre, we should assume that the stories we hear are, in one way or another, true. This is underlined by three extremely sincere, naturalistic performances that give the show a firm emotional and intellectual core.
I know what you're thinking, right? Sure, a pole dancing show with a firm intellectual core - pull the other one. Well I'm not kidding, Pole really is firmly targeted at the head rather than the crotch. Then again I can't reasonably ignore the intense eroticism throughout. After all, these are three extremely attractive women in revealing skintight outfits pulling sexy poses. I try my best to remain objective, but a shapely butt provocatively wiggling in my general direction bypasses almost all of my critical faculties.
But Pole makes no bones about being erotic - indeed, the company has fashioned eroticism into a weapon with which to needle the audience. Though we begin with the world of fun, naughty pole dancing workouts, we gradually descend into human trafficking, eventually arriving at a hellish world of imprisoned women being gang-raped to keep them in line.
This portion of the show is bleak as hell: the details of the dancer's treatment, environments and mental health soberly laid out in evocative, precise language. These are the dark consequences of 'a bit of cheeky leching'; the endpoint of lust for women objectifying themselves. We come to see the disjunct between audience and performer, one able to enjoy a no strings attached erotic experience, the other locked into personal, financial and often literal bondage.
This is powerful stuff - so powerful that it obscures the stated message of pole dancing being a way for a woman to 'safely and joyfully express her sensuality and femininity'. By the end I couldn't help but see the pole as an enormous metallic phallus; a prison cell composed of a single iron bar. Though the poses are smoothly held with easy smiles, there's an inescapable tinge of submission to them; the dancer in thrall to a symbol of immovable masculinity.
Pole is powerful stuff, perhaps a bit too powerful. There's a thread of evangelism for pole dancing as a fun, empowering pursuit throughout most of the piece - and if you ignore the sex trafficking section this would be a fine advertisement for the art as a fun hobby. Yet dark clouds are never far offstage; a miasma of oppression, dehumanisation and objectification that engulfs the positive aspects we hear.
This theatre, fascinatingly combines social activism, gymnastics and forthright eroticism. All three performers impress, the bandages and plasters that adorn their limbs standing as testament to their skill and commitment. Pole is intelligent, ambitious and exhausting to watch - but don't go if you're after cheap titillation. You'll end up (quite rightly) feeling like shit.
★★★★
Pole is at Cowgate, Edinburgh Fringe from 7-31st August 2015. Tickets here.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
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The Legacy is a bad play. This is, I think, inarguable. From the dull staging to the half-arsed characterisation to the crummy dialogue it stinks pretty bad. Worse, it's one of those bad plays created with good intentions; namely exploring misogyny, gender stereotypes and class conflict. Problem is, it goes about communicating that in the most boneheaded of ways.
Set within a solicitors office, we follow three characters awaiting the reading of their father's will. We first meet Adam and Rebecca Booth (Jim Mannering and Lucinda Westcar). Painted as the epitome of aspirational middle England (he works in the City, she makes hummus), the Harpenden-based duo are a pretty gruesome twosome. Adam constantly objectifies and infantilises his wife, giving her cute nicknames and explaining to her her likes and dislikes. Rebecca bears this with bovine stoicism, apparently having convinced herself that these are the slings and arrows she must suffer in order to maintain her materialist lifestyle.
But hello! Who's this? Why, it's Esther (Claira Watson Parr), crusading feminist art-protester and newspaper columnist fresh off the mean streets of New York City! Having left the UK following a storm of media protest over a radical piece of performance art (not that this really makes a lick of sense but hey ho). Now, after 12 years, she's back. So what happens when this switched on feminist agitator rubs up against regressive conservatism?
Well, to be honest, not much. Esther and Adam are quickly defined as polar opposites. She's liberal, progressive, socially conscious and empathetic, devoting her life to challenging gender norms and battling misogyny. He's Conservative to the marrow of his bones: reactionary, money obsessed and brayingly sexist. This leaves Rebecca as the battleground to fight over; Adam tugging her towards a traditionally wifely 'shut up and look pretty darling' role and Esther urging her to stand up for herself. This process is marked by dramatic revelations - each more shocking and unexpected than the last.
Now, I've got to be fair. There is one aspect of this play that deserves straightforward praise, and I'd be remiss not to mention it. It's just an hour long. This refreshing brevity functions as a lifeline - it quickly becomes apparent that the play is bad - but you can at least take solace in the fact that at least your suffering will be mercifully brief.
The Legacy's fundamental problems are baked into its script: to say these characters are two-dimensional is an insult to dimensions. They should be normal people working through a difficult emotional situation, instead they're flimsy scarecrows written with the sole purpose of having ideology projected upon them.
The most extreme example is Adam, in whom patriarchy is concentrated way beyond believability. I have no doubt that there are people who share his viewpoints, but he's caricatured so far that he ends up as more punching bag than person. This are compounded by the similarly implausible Esther. It is not exactly difficult to get me to root for an outspoken women's rights campaigner, yet Esther's Christlike goodness, wholesome charity and tendency to spout statistics quickly rankle.
That this dynamic feminist is so annoying throws up two possibilities. The first is simply that Esther is poorly written. If we're supposed to be rooting for her the character fails, the end product eerily similar to right-wing fantasies of forthright feminist demagoguery. The second, (more troubling) possibility is that Adam's misogyny and Esther's feminism are being equated as two sides of the same coin - each at fault for trying to define Rebecca according to their politics. This South Park-ish 'maybe the truth is in the middle' argument is straight up intellectually dishonest bullshit. Whatever it is the core problem remains - you don't give a toss about these people.
I should point out that the cast are largely blameless. There isn't an actor alive that could rescue this, but these three do their best, nobly suffering through the overly melodramatic reveals and tin-eared dialogue like the professionals they are.
That's about all I've got to say about The Legacy. I could go on, but frankly this isn't even fun to criticise. It's just a bog standard bad play without even the decency to be particularly interesting in its badness. At least it's short.
Thank god it's short.
★★
The Legacy is at The Hope Theatre until 13th June. Tickets here.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
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Science fiction that ponders whether an artificial mind is truly conscious is hardly breaking new ground. As far back as 1921 Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) explored the idea of lifeforms that are almost human, but not quite. Since then they've been a mainstay in all eras of cinema, from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, through The Day The Earth Stood Still, up the modern day via stone cold classics like 2001, Alien, Blade Runner, The Terminator, The Matrix and Her.
So what new angle does Alex Garland bring to this crowded field? Set in an unspecified near future, our protagonist Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a hotshot programmer working for competition crushing search engine BlueBook. He wins a company lottery, his prize a week long visit to the home of the reclusive genius and company CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac). Nathan lives in isolation with his non-English speaking maid Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) in the beautiful Alaskan wilderness. His mostly underground home is ultra high-tech and tastefully decorated, looking like a nuclear bunker as designed by IKEA.
Soon we learn the reason for such isolation. Nathan has made a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, and her name is Ava (Alicia Vikander). Ava is intelligent, beautiful and ultraperceptive, yet also sheltered, childlike and naive. Nathan quickly confesses that the reason for Caleb's visit isn't a holiday, he's to be part of an quasi-Turing test designed to evaluate Ava to conclude whether she's truly conscious. The rest of the film revolves around a series of interviews between Caleb and Eva, as they open up to each other the film gradually reveals more about Ava, Nathan's ulterior motives and Caleb's true role in the experiment.
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| Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) and Nathan (Oscar Isaac) |
I don't want to spoil too much, so I'm going to leave the plot there. Much of Garland's screenplay is concerned with misdirection, sending both Caleb and ourselves down paranoid trains of thought while keeping 'the truth' in plain sight. With a pared down cast of four (one of whom doesn't speak), the claustrophobic and increasingly sinister surroundings and the precise pace at which the film proceeds, the tension gradually ratchets up scene by scene as the truth is slowly unfurled.
On a basic structural level, Ex Machina is a series of philosophical conversations in confined spaces. Consequently, though the film is beautifully shot by Rob Hardy, boasts deeply impressive production design, a great synth score and seamless special effects, it lives and dies on the quality of the actor's performances. All are excellent, though Isaac's vaguely Steve Jobsian tech guru stands out. The programming geek stereotype is completely absent and with his shaved head and masculine beard he looks a bit like Russell Crowe's Noah, the epitome of the dirt-under-the-fingernails mythic paternal figure. Isaac continually finds some fascinating new angle on Nathan, or fresh mood in each scene, both actor and character taking a sadistic pleasure in constantly pulling the rug out from underneath us.
Good as Isaac is, the true star of Ex Machina is Alicia Vikander's Ava. A trained ballerina, Vikander moves with inhuman grace. She's so subtle in this that it's difficult to pin down individual moments; more that every action is millimetre precise, adding up to a queasy combination of sexuality and uncanny valley 'wrongness'. Ava is intentionally designed to express sexuality, but some dark thing twinges in your brain when you realise you're turned on by a creature whose skin is a metallic lattice and whose robot guts you see whirring away in her belly.
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| Ava (Alicia Vikander) |
Learning to love (and lust) for this bundle of fibre-optics, carbon fibre and rubber skin is at the heart of Ex Machina, which treats its subject matter as a sober examination of what it will mean to live in a world where beings like Ava exist. Thing is, though this is all very well conveyed, it's not exactly breaking fresh ground. It's been more than thirty years since Blade Runner and though the world has seen a quantum leap in technology, the central questions of Ex Machina are almost identical to what Roy Batty and Rick Deckard violently debated on the rainy roof of the Bradbury Building.
Even the aesthetics are a bit familiar; Caradog James' excellent and underrated The Machine did the beautiful translucent robot girl (who, bizarrely, was also named Ava) thing a year ago, and the cosy pastel and natural materials set design is strongly reminiscent of Her. This isn't to say that there's anything remotely lazy here, just that the visual punch of Ava is slightly dulled if you've seen a robot sci-fi film in the last ten years or so.
Ex Machina finally breaks fresh ground when it eventually reveals itself not as a robot philosophy film, but as feminist science fiction. As we explore Ava's humanity, both audience and characters objectify her. As she is an object, this provides a useful path into a thorny subject. As we learn more about her creator, we come to understand Ava as a sex slave; most notably when Nathan proudly explains the myriad features of her robot vagina. Later developments underline the idea the female body as equipment for men to use, the film gradually becoming less about the ethics of artificial intelligence and more about emancipatory feminist ideology.
That Ex Machina looks for all the world like it's about one thing, yet secretly turns out to be about something completely different feels pleasantly appropriate given the film as a whole. I really hope this finds an audience: it's got some really striking images, a bevy of fascinating performative tics and an absolute humdinger of an ending. That intellectual, firmly adult science fiction films like this can be made gives me the warm fuzzies. I hope it does well. It deserves to.
★★★★
Ex Machina is released 23 January in the UK, 10 April in the US.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Sunday, November 30, 2014
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Well with a name like that how I could I resist? I figured if any show was going to get right up in my face with wide-eyed, experimental, angry-as-all-fuck political theatre it was going to be whatever Young Feminist Whores was. As it turned out they were pretty young. And they loudly shouted their 'whore-pride' (as the compère put it "you call us a whore it's a fucking compliment!") but feminist? Well... I dunno.
The evening turned out to be a relatively traditional neo-burlesque show, with the familiar old parade of tassles, sequins, pop music, glitter and elaborate (yet easy to remove) costumes. Our compère was Rubyyy Jones, a self-described "big fat fabulous queer Canadian", who did her best to whip the crowd up into a frenzy and laid out the basic tenets of the burlesque philosophy. Prime among these is the notion that burlesque is an individual performative expression.
From what I can gather, the ideal burlesque performance allows a woman to reclaim her body from patriarchal objectification. In devising a performance that emphasises personal tastes, generally a cocktail of comedy, sexuality and forthright body positivity, you achieve a kind of personal liberation. You're still being objectified, but in burlesque the performer chooses their own objectification, with the audience in the palm of their hand. Elsewhere the power dynamic lies with the audience and their fistfuls of sweaty five pound notes, in burlesque it's entirely with the performer.
Problem is that all too often both boil down to the same thing: a roomful of people hooting and whistling at a woman furiously twirling sparkly nipple tassles. So where does this leave Young Feminist Whores? For long portions its an entertaining, if slightly predictable, burlesque evening. So there's the sexy fan dance, a clown routine and a flamenco-y Spanish routine. All are focussed, talented performers, but we've all seen this before. Give me novelty, dammit!
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| Pearl Grey at Burlesque Idol 2014 |
By far the best of the traditional performers was Pearl Grey, who just the previous night won Burlesque Idol 2014. Dressed in a dazzling self-made Elizabeth I costume, sporting sky-high cheekbones and the haughtiest of haughty looks she dances to Lorde's Royals. The sight of this sets off all my happy, smiley neurons, reawakening a hitherto forgotten teenage crush on Miranda Richardson in Blackadder II. Just as we're settling into the rhythm of Royals, the act takes a swerve to the cheesy with a transition in Can't Touch This. This is accompanied by a gold bondage vest and ass tassles, which I figure are hard as hell to get to swerve. It's easy to see why Pearl Grey won big the night before.
That was great, but there was one act that stood head and shoulders above the rest, probably because it wasn't really burlesque at all. That was Scarlett O'Whorea, who did a powerfully intense bit of mini-theatre confessional to what I instantly recognised as the supersecret hidden track tucked away at the end of Jagged Little Pill. I was faintly astonished - I haven't heard or thought about this song in years. Scarlett's act, much like Alanis Morrissette's vocal performance, works to strip away layers of performative bullshit and reveal an emotional core.
Cards on the table, the 'art of the tease' doesn't really do much for me. It's an archaic aesthetic, one designed by Victorian men in the late 1800s, deeply conservative and old fashioned in how it presents the female body. Scarlett busted this shit right off the map by quickly stripping down completely naked and staying that way for most of her act. This feels like real body liberation, the raw emotion and matter-of-fact nakedness throwing a harsh light over the chintzy camp of the rest of the show. But then, this wasn't really burlesque - more straight up kickin' rad performance art.
Scarlett's was the only act I'd unquestionably call feminist. At this point you might be wondering: who the fuck does this guy think he is? For me to imperiously march around waving my big review writing pen and saying that X is feminist and Y isn't is a bit rich. If these performers feel liberated who is anybody to tell them they're not?
While I've got no doubt that performing burlesque can be an intensely liberating experience, it doesn't necessarily automatically make it a feminist one. I guess the obvious counter-argument is that allowing women the space to make their own decision to perform how they choose is an intrinsically feminist act. But while the act of choosing indicates autonomy, the actual choice made as a result of that autonomy isn't necessarily feminist. For example, I don't think a Tea Party Republican woman choosing to vote to restrict access to contraception is at all a feminist act.
Maybe I'm arguing in circles here. My real problem stems from the compère angrily explaining that this definitely isn't one of those shows where women take off more clothes the more we cheer. Instead it's one of those shows where the more clothes a woman takes off, the more we cheer. The former is the epitome of misogynistic objectification, the latter is apparently an act of powerful liberation.
Maybe this just isn't my kinda thing.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Sunday, April 6, 2014
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On 12th March 2014 the finest woman to emerge from the short-lived 1960s Czech New Wave of Cinema died. Věra Chytilová wasn't a name tripping off the tongues of those that throng through the doors of multiplexes, but she was a damn good director, and way ahead of her time.
The pinnacle of her achievements in my book is the playful, funny and deeply loveable Daisies. I reviewed it about two years ago and wrote:
"Chytilová's technique is to throw every cinematic technique at the wall and see what sticks. The film stock changes within scenes, coloured tints take over the screen at random, during strong motion motion the colours separate out in an acid-tinged rainbow. At times the film itself seems to be tearing itself apart in the astonishingly beautiful train sequence, and the mindboggling cut-up sequence where the girls first 'cut' each others bodies apart, and then cut apart the very film itself."I mean c'mon, look at this stuff:
If you have any interest in feminism in cinema, film as art or just having a kickin' time with an obscure film that you can impress your friends by knowing about - down to the Hackney Picturehouse next Sunday night! You won't regret it.
TRIBUTE TO VĚRA CHYTILOVÁTICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
The Czech Centre, Dazed & Confused, Picturehouse and Second Run DVD present a double bill of Vera Chytilová’s anarchic and wildly satirical masterpiece and Martin Šulík’s documentary portrait Věra Chytilová from the Golden Sixties series in tribute to director Věra Chytilová (2 February 1929 – 12 March 2014), pioneer of the Czech New Wave. Introduced by Dazed & Confused film critic Carmen Gray.
Date: 13 April 2014, 6 pmVenue: Hackney Picturehouse, 270 Mare St, London E8 1HE
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