Complex Female Characters
Illustration by Mia Dong
In recognition of women’s history month, I've taken the time to highlight three different portrayals of women across film and media. Perhaps these women resemble your friends, your family, yourself, or no one at all. Whatever the case may be, I hope you give them a chance to be understood.
Cleo aka flora- cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) directed by Agnes Varda- France
From iconic French new wave director, Agnes Varda, Cleo offers a portrait of the interior world of women, filled with as much fear and shame as there is melodrama and romance. On the exterior, Cleo could be perceived as vapid and self-centered. Her celebrity persona often overtakes her and her thoughts, squabbling with her appearance as she gazes at her reflection in mirrors and storefronts. In fact, the mirrors even act as a supporting character for Cleo and her journey. Varda uses them in a similar manner to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, reflecting this projection of Cléo in front of her friends, strangers, and above all, men. The image in the mirror is simply an illusion they all wish to see. Even her name, Cléo, is merely the stage name she personifies through her beauty and grace. Cléo is constantly 'gazed' at by the men in the film, not taking her seriously beyond what they percieve. For Cléo, her appearance is both a gift and a burden for her to carry. She fears being perceived as anything other than healthy and beautiful. Varda manages to not fall into the same traps that male directors often do, by not fully articulating the complexities of their female gaze trapped characters. Once we see the glimpses of the real Cléo, who is in fact Flora, do we then begin to see her anxieties and fears captured in a non glamorous life. She worries about how she’ll never find love, her reputation, and about her health, all in a visceral, real way. Varda, perhaps better than Hitchcock, manages to give Cléo a life outside of the men she operates around, allowing for her to not exist as a reflection, but more as Flora, the real her.
The Girl- A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) Directed by Lily Amirpour- Iran
Despite never being named in the film, the titular Girl is not just an ordinary girl, but rather a skateboarding vampire who kills men who wrong her or the other women in her community. The Girl is mostly silent throughout the film, but her emotions (as performed by Sheila Vand) are as complex as ever. She doesn't talk too much, she doesn't need to. She knows her power is being underestimated; whenever she is, she never hesitates to prove someone wrong. Her eyes capture her emotions even in the darkness of the night. If you dare linger on her for a moment longer, you’ll find the sorrow in her soul and the hunger in her mouth for something greater than she has been subjected to. She has succumbed to this nocturnal lifestyle and knows when she flashes her teeth back at anyone who looks, she’ll be left alone again. That is until her hunger grows for something more than flesh, something carnal. She yearns for a life where she doesn’t have to slink through the shadows and skate through the streets. She begins to let herself be free with someone who sees her past the fangs. The character of Arash is not to satisfy a heteronormative patriarchal fantasy, but to give the vampire a sense of emotional development and intelligence. Arash gives The Girl a chance of sharing something together. The Girl is more than capable of living without Arash, but she is deserving of love and a life outside of solitude.
Thelma and Louise - Thelma and Louise (1991) directed by Ridley Scott- USA
“Something's crossed over in me, and I can't go back; I couldn't live."
Although technically two women, Thelma and Louise work together as a collective powerhouse unit across the southern United States through a series of trials and tribulations that test their friendship, and themselves. Thelma and Louise make a lot of very poor decisions in this film; after killing a man, they continue to drive the same car, they rob a convenience store, they pick up a hitchhiker, and continue to clumsily evade the law time and time again. The question is however; why? It becomes increasingly clear with their newfound freedom that they've previously never been allotted the space to make mistakes. Thelma lives an almost neurotic lifestyle as a housewife to a man she doesn’t seem to like, while Louise works as a cog in the American capitalist system, a waitress, day in and day out. Historically, women haven't always been given the space to make mistakes and operate outside of a traditionally domestic feminine space (also see Jeanne Dielman (1975) as an example of this repetitive existence). Thelma and Louise make every single mistake they want to because they finally can. For them it is exhilarating and freeing to operate outside of the crushing weight of both patriarchal and capitalist morality.
Abigail- Triangle of Sadness (2022), directed by Ruben Öslund- Sweden
When you think of a luxury cruise, some of the first things that come to mind are wealth, lavishness, and relaxation. What you might not think of immediately is the people who work behind the scenes to keep the cruise running smoothly. Not the attendants that serve you food and beverages at your will, but the cleaning ladies and maintenance staff, who, often racialized individuals, go overlooked and underappreciated. Enter Abigail. The first half of the film gives us glances at Abigail, but shows us who she is as a character when the ship unexpectedly crashes, marooning several survivors. They immediately attempt to realign themselves into a hierarchy, similarly to one on the ship, but quickly discover that they as the privileged cruise goers have no idea how to survive in the wild, but Abigail does. She manages to catch fish and start a fire, immediately placing her at the top of this hypothetical hierarchy. But, it's not that Abigail is just resourceful, she’s also cunning; she’s never had this kind of advantage for her in her life and she intends to use it. Abigail immediately takes over and controls the system of survivors. She is cutthroat, she is calculative, she is intelligent and she clearly enjoys having power. She begins to control the food and asks another passenger, Carl, for sexual favours in exchange for food. The film very much works as an anti-capitalist critique, and Abigail’s character helps to embody class struggles. Abigail is no more or less evil than the people whose rooms she would clean. She just used to be on the bottom of the ladder and now she’s at the top. In order for her to stay there, she must do whatever it takes.