So many times, it seems, films where women are the central characters seem to treat those women as rather monolithic
That may not be quite the right word; let me amend that to say that they’re often treated the same way. Too many of them fail the Bechdel Test*, and that’s a pity.
In our continued journey Around the World in Twenty Films, the women in this film fail as well, but there’s a different dynamic involved so it’s not as glaringly obvious.
We start with 1960’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, a Japanese film directed by Mikio Naruse. It’s a look at the Geisha life that follows one of the veterans of the craft and her struggle to achieve a specific dream.
From there it’s a jump to Spain and 1988, for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, directed by Pedro Almodóvar. It’s a rather dark story played as a comedy, and you’ll have a bunch of fun following all the odd coincidences that allow this story to unfold the way it does.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Our journey takes us back to Asia, with 2018’s Shoplifters, a Japanese film that manages to re-define family ties in a way you won’t necessarily argue with. And then it’s off to Korea and 2019’s Parasite, a film that won four Oscar awards—three of them in the big categories.
*for those not in the know, the Bechdel Test is defined as: a way of evaluating whether or not a film or other work of fiction portrays women in a way that is sexist or characterized by gender stereotyping. To pass the Bechdel test a work must feature at least two women, these women must talk to each other, and their conversation must concern something other than a man. It gets its name from the US cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who formulated the criteria in 1985 in a comic strip “The Rule “, part of the series Dykes To Watch Out For (1983–2008).