Most people remember a part of Promising Young Woman for a long time after the movie is over. A man whispers reassurances to a woman he thinks is helplessly drunk while he does something very predatory. Then she wakes up, is awake, and is very angry. The room moves. He stops moving. It’s likely that the audience, whether they’re in a theater or at home, breathes out something between relief and recognition. What a powerful scene. It’s also a song that you may have heard before.
In the past few years, a certain type of film has been making its way through film festivals, winning awards, and getting the kind of rave reviews that were once only reserved for morally complicated dramas with no clear heroes. Men who are abusive, weak, or just plain useless, and women who survive, outsmart, or outlive them, are a common theme in these movies. Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, Poor Things, Anora, and Triangle of Sadness are some of the titles that are similar in a strange way. It’s worth wondering what that level of consistency says about the industry that rewards it, not about gender.
There are some really powerful movies here. Never Rarely Sometimes Always by Eliza Hittman is about a teenager who is quietly dealing with the effects of a sexual assault. The book shows restraint that feels earned. The men around the main character aren’t evil in a cartoonish way; they’re just harmful, which may be more realistic than a villain with a reason for doing bad things. In one scene, the main character is in counseling and is asked a series of more and more difficult questions until she finally breaks down and can’t speak. Hittman doesn’t reach for it, so it lands. It shows up. No matter what your views are, that is good filmmaking.
The Palme d’Or winner by Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall, on the other hand, is more like a magic trick. The movie gives hints that a wife may have killed her husband, but then it slowly shows that the husband was jealous, depressed, and maybe even violent. At this point, the movie seems to want the viewers to feel bad for ever suspecting the wife. What’s wrong is that the script itself made people suspicious. It’s not ambiguity to point to the viewer’s conclusion and say it’s biased when you made that conclusion up. It’s a magic trick that seems a little condescending.
It seems like some high-end movies have found a good formula and are sticking to it, which makes sense. What people were willing to watch, what critics were willing to support, and what festival juries were willing to give awards changed after #MeToo. There was a reason for that shift. For decades, the industry had praised a certain type of male lead who was flawed in interesting ways and ultimately saved by a satisfying arc. However, the women who appeared in those stories were mostly ignored. It was time for a correction. It is not as clear if correction has quietly turned into template.
Barbie is the best example of how the formula is worn out in the open, almost like a badge. There is a lot of satire in the movie, and Ryan Gosling’s performance as Ken is really funny. He is vain and simple, and he loves patriarchy like a golden retriever loves a tennis ball. But the movie doesn’t really question what it means to be a man; it more or less makes fun of it. The men are stupid, and the women can get around them with almost no work. Have fun with it. It also doesn’t ask much of people who watch it. The shallowness doesn’t feel like a mistake because Greta Gerwig is such a good director. It’s possible that the point is the lightness. But it’s also possible that the movie knew exactly what it was selling and did a good job of it.
The movies Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos and Anora by Sean Baker are more interesting. In both movies, the male characters are truly ridiculous, but they get that way through specific actions rather than moral generalizations. In Poor Things, Duncan Wedderburn brags about how good he is at being sexual, and he does it with the satisfaction of a man who has never been told he’s wrong. In Anora, the son of an oligarch proposes marriage just because he can, but he disappears when things go wrong. These are not archetypes; they are well-known types. The movies work because the women they focus on are shown to be more than just victims. They can be complicated, contradictory, and sometimes wrong.
That line is interesting to watch. When movies use male failure as a setting to look at how women feel on the inside, they usually make something worth watching. It tends to be flat, no matter how well-dressed the films are, when they use it mainly as a way to show the audience that they agree with them.
Award shows have always been more about the mood of the culture than about the quality of the art itself. In a way, that’s not really a criticism; it’s just how institutions organize people’s tastes. It’s interesting how often the moments that go viral, the standing ovations, and the agreement among critics all center around the same type of story. In a sense, one where the script has already been written. At this point, it’s really not clear whether Hollywood is holding up a mirror or just selling one.