One might assume, given the title, that deadCenter’s Femme Fatale Shorts would feature noir ladies smoking cigarettes in chiaroscuro lighting, using her feminine wiles and deviously plotting against a regular Joe, possibly toward persuading him to off her husband. But in actuality, these pictures deal with everyday female characters all grappling with issues women face everyday, everything from misogyny, mansplaining, motherhood, menopause, racism, and the right to choose. The “femme fatale” aspect simply refers to the fact these female directors “are absolutely killing it.” In her introduction to the collection, deadCenter programming director Sara Thompson assured the packed crowd at Friday’s screening that women directors appeared all throughout the festival, but felt these seven films simply went very well together. She is not wrong.
First up, Milena Govich and screenwriter/actress Chelsea Gonzalez treated us with Susanne and the Man. In case you didn’t notice, the title rhymes, and this quality continues on with the film’s dialogue as a rather vile man, Stan, interviews (read: hits on) the titular woman for a job at his company. He thinks he has skills to pay the bills, but the whip-smart Susanne has the last laugh (as does the audience) as she lays down the truth on this overly cocksure pig. Not surprisingly, Gonzalez—who attended Friday’s screening—based the film on real-life encounters with rabid mansplainers, and so Susanne’s slam on Stan serves as an excellent battle anthem for talked-down-to-ladies the world over.
Following the comedy of Susanne and the Man, director Amanda Renee Knox and screenwriter Joseph Sousa give us a sober glimpse into the life of a female cop and single mother patrolling the gang-riddled streets of Inglewood. Though not a documentary, Night Call has the grit and immediacy of one, and while our protagonist Kadera’s evening ostensibly seems like a normal one, the tension leading up to a confrontation with a neighborhood gang member is palpable throughout the proceedings. Rather than exploring the larger issue of violence in America, Night Call focuses on the personal toll such an atmosphere takes on an individual, especially one who, above all else, wants to create a safe world for her children.
The next offering on the Femme Fatale platter makes for a strange pairing against its predecessor Night Call, but a pairing that works nonetheless. An actual documentary this time, Mickey’s Pets follows one Mickey Alice Kwapis, a young taxidermist who tasks herself with immortalizing a peacock in the hopes of placing at the U.S. National Taxidermy Championship. While not overtly feminist in tone, we watch as Kwapis enters a predominantly male competition and, though at times insecure, works her butt off to ensure her peacock is as beautiful in death as it was in life. The only bit of sexism we really see involves a well-meaning older gentlemen theorizing that women are especially adept at taxidermy because they work so hard at applying their makeup evenly—a moment that is uncomfortable, to be sure, but not in an especially “mansplaining” way, as seen in Susanne and the Man. Ultimately, Kwapis’s journey is one of self-discovery and personal accomplishment, and despite its graphic imagery (director Ashley Brandon’s camera does not shy away from the grisly ins and outs of taxidermy) the film serves as one of the most positive and perversely wholesome entries in the collection.
Balancing the scales back toward heavy subject matter, with Ovum, writer/director Cidney Hue paints a dystopian not-so-distant future in which women must endure a “mind-bending procedure” before they can make a life-altering decision about their own bodies. We watch as Rosalyn (Michelle Beck) endures this procedure (conducted, it should be noted, by a sympathetic but obedient male doctor), which horrifies her on multiple levels that are best left unwritten here and witnessed first-hand. This eight minute short pulls the emotional heft of a feature-length film, and should not be missed by fans of feminist sci-fi.
Next comes That Is How Motherhood Works, which roots the audience back in a more recognizable landscape, a suburban home in California, but identical to most suburban homes across the country. A woman (Chrissy Mazzeo, who delivers a powerful performance) gets a surprise visit from her daughter (Hannah Grace Payne), who has recently joined up with a Christian-based commune out in the desert. What at first seems like a tight-knit mother-daughter relationship unravels, dramatically, within the space of about eleven minutes, as the hippie, flighty daughter insists on taking her child, currently being raised by her mother, back to the commune with her. A plethora of questions with no easy answers spring up from this conflict, and writer/director Rivkah Beth Medow leaves the audience to mull the options without any hand-holding.
Hair Wolf comes next, a hilarious send-up of horror films and a biting satire on white appropriation of black culture, especially Instagramming white ladies who covet black women’s hair and styles. Filmmaker Mariama Diallo‘s short is basically if Get Out were actually a comedy (despite what the Golden Globes nominating committee thought). The timing here is fast-paced and impeccable, the film references sly and side-splitting (pasty hipster women tapping on the salon shop’s windows and moaning “Braaaaaaaiiids,” a fantastic recreation of a classic moment from the “Thriller” music video, and so many more). Beyond the laughs, however, the film grapples with a very real issue facing black women in this country—not only the coveting of their style, but the potential erasure of their style’s origins, of their culture and their history, and the possible, assimilative ramifications of this erasure. To say Hair Wolf is on-point is an understatement.
Rounding out the collection is The Winkles, a French film set in a sleepy shoreside town that focuses on Zoé (Tiphaine Daviot), a 30-year-old waitress at her rock-and-rolling father’s dive bar. After receiving alarming news about her health, Zoé begins to examine her life, both in the context of her past (in particular her mother, who died when Zoé was very young), her present, and her future, causing tension between the woman and her father. In many ways, The Winkles is the antithesis of the program’s first film, Susanne and the Man, in that it examines a woman in a patriarchal world whose male antagonist isn’t overtly antagonistic. Zoé’s dad Guy (perhaps aptly named) means well, but he’s out of touch with his daughter, her needs, and even her generation, as he’s too preoccupied reliving his own, free-wheeling heyday. Writer/director Alice Vial and writer Clémence Madeleine-Perdrillat‘s film shows that male expectations on women, even when not malicious and intentional, can be nonetheless taxing on the women who endure it.
If you didn’t catch the Femme Fatale shorts collection at deadCenter 2018, it’s highly recommended you seek these films out on your own. All seven entries present unique voices that handle a wide-range of female-centric topics, each doing so with equal measures of sensitivity and panache. True, these movies are mere glimpses into the large pool of female filmmakers who are “killing it” today, but they all serve—both individually and collectively—as a damn fine starting point for anyone wishing to broaden their knowledge of talented women currently working in the field.
