"She" The New Voice of the Times: Women under the Lens of Female Directors

　 Since the rise of the concept of genre cinema, the debate over what constitutes a truly "feminist film" has never stopped like the struggle of female figures on the screen to get rid of "being spied on". In 2021, feminist themes swept through the three major European film festivals, and the top film competition entered the "she" era. Two female directors, Giulia di Kouno and Audrey Divan, won the Palme d'Or at the 74th Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Lion at the 78th Venice Film Festival for Titane and L'évènement, respectively. For the first time in film history, both major film festivals awarded best film to a female director in the same year. In recent years, more and more women have come to the camera to become the camera masters, emerging in major film festivals, and constantly updating the female image on the screen with their unique delicate perspective and flexibility.

　　Focus on the trauma of a woman as a mother

　　The American film "The Lost Daughter" (2021) was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 78th Venice Film Festival and won the Best Screenplay Award in the main competition unit. Director Maggie Gyllenhaal has starred in several films with her elegant and intellectual temperament, and "Daughter in the Shadows" is her debut from actress to female director.

　　Adapted from the novel of the same name by Italian writer Elena Ferrante, the film explores the dilemma of a woman as a mother, a character who has been timelessly given a "great" meaning in the traditional context, in the family. At the beginning of the film, middle-aged female scholar Ryda goes to the beach alone for a vacation, sees a young mother with her young daughter, and recalls her experience of raising her daughter when she was young. When Lyda was a little girl, her mother often threatened to abandon her; and when she became a mother, she really abandoned her two daughters because "I loved them so much, and it seemed to me that this love for them prevented me from becoming myself." The film does not deliberately portray the pursuit of the perfect mother's human design, but confronts how parenting deprives women of their freedom and exhausts women's energy, and deeply questions the role of "mother" that women are naturally given in the family. Because the film subverted people's perception of "motherhood", it caused great controversy after its premiere. In fact, Lyda in the film is also contradictory, with her impressive academic achievements, she fell painfully on the beach at the end of the film, as if letting the waves wash away her inner guilt over and over again.

　　The award for "Daughter in the Shadows" seems to have a crosshairs with the opening film of this year's Venice Film Festival, Madres Paralelas (2021). It is also a narrative of women as mothers, with the former flashing back the pains of maternal employment from the perspective of the "experiencer"; the latter focusing on the lives of newborn mothers on a positive temporal trajectory. The two films start from drama and documentary, respectively, and eventually run to the same end point – focusing on the trauma of women as mothers.

　　Although the West has been at the forefront of the women's liberation movement, the same topic has been discussed in East Asia, where women's family identities are more solidified. The Korean movie "Kim Ji-young, born in 82" (2019), tells the 30-year life story of the protagonist Kim Ji-young, and since its release, it has caused a lot of turmoil in South Korea and even Asia. The film is adapted from Zhao Nanzhu's novel of the same name. The novel uses Kim Ji-young's perspective to tell the long-suppressed grievances of Korean women, thus becoming the fuse of the "me-to" movement in this absolutely patriarchal country. Female director Kim Do-young, who is known for directing suspense and thriller themes, resolutely adapted it into a movie. As a mother of two, Kim feels empathy for Kim's despair and the plight of South Korean women in their thirties and forties, so when her film is screened, she is surrounded by women's sobbing. However, in the film, she tries to compromise with social pressure in a gentle way, and arranges a good husband for Jin Zhiying who is willing to help her find herself - the husband played by the well-known actor "Kong Liu" can understand Jin Zhiying's life, can think about why his wife has become like this, and can always be by his side, this setting to some extent beautifies the real male group portrait under the cruel reality. Even so, the film received only a rating of 2.8 among male Audiences in South Korea, while a rating of 9.5 was high among female audiences. Under the pressure of fierce public opinion, "Kim Ji-young, born in 1982", still won the Best Newcomer Director Award at the 56th Baeksang Arts Awards, the Best Actress Award at the 56th Korean Film Grand Bell Awards, the Best Popularity Award at the 41st Korea Blue Dragon Film Awards and a number of nominations.

　　Reflect on the gender order beyond equal rights for men and women

　　As society moves from the "power age" into the information age and into the knowledge economy era, women's physical disadvantages are slowly diluted, and women are using their innate intuition, understanding and flexibility to fight for their own living space. 2018 is the "Year of Women" in the United States, with record numbers of women running and winning elections during the election period. Against this backdrop, American female directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West were nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards for "Ruth Bader Ginsburg" (2018), all the more intriguing.

　　The film tells the saga of Ruth Budd Ginsburg, the second U.S. Supreme Court justice in U.S. history. The film opens with a quick look back at her early years of teaching gender and law, where she initially realized that someone needed to speak out for institutional inequality, and then spent her life fighting for gender equality and women's rights. The film outputs views through strong lines, from Ginsburg's self-statement that "I never ask for the special status of women, I only hope that the male brothers in society will move their feet away", to the eyes of others, "she makes the male judges in the court experience the taste of being a second-class citizen", which is the brilliance of Ginsburg as a justice; at the same time, the film also focuses on portraying an innocent, interesting, energetic old lady image, whether she is proud and somewhat cute to say "wherever I go, there are people who want to take pictures with me". Whether it is her sincere gratitude to her husband, or her excitement in front of the camera, it shows Ginsburg's unique female personality outside the identity of the justice.

　　The film directly calls for gender equality, but it does not stop at the expression of gender equality. The director uses the eyes of this mild and radical liberal female judge to see the history of the American women's movement, and adopts the structure of the feature film to focus on the glamorous public life of the characters, ignoring the protagonist's personal growth dilemma as a woman to a certain extent. It is only in a group photo with a group of male leaders that her gender identity is so pronounced. "Truth and justice are the preserve of Judge Ruth." The pursuit of gender equality is not just because she is a woman, but because gender equality is eternal justice. "Female" is only a blessing of her gender, not her gender limitations. As a well-known live-action superhero in the United States, as film critic David Firth said, "If one day a young boy and girl pick up a law book and a mallet and gain the courage to raise objections after reading it, the value of this movie is far more than the meaning of our worship."

　　The feature film Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019), directed by Céline Sciamma, won the Best Screenplay Award at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. In previous films that depicted love stories in the classical era, most of them were painted by male painters for women, telling in the field of gender inequality "watching" and "being watched". In the film, the director borrows Mary's identity as a female painter to first jump out of the traditional male gaze, showing the secret struggle and resistance of women under the patriarchal rule of the classical era. While walking by the sea, Mary does not understand why Lois is reluctant to marry into the rich, who replies "precisely because you have the right to choose (and I don't)". When Lois asked Mary if she had ever painted men, Mary said that female painters did not have this right because this society did not allow women the opportunity to paint great works, but she would secretly paint. At the end of the film, when Mary's participation in the exhibition in the name of her father was widely acclaimed, she said unashamedly: "This is my work, just in the name of my father." "As a story of the 18th century classical era, the director borrows the shell of the love story of gender equality to extend the pursuit of gender equality in women's films to a deeper level, clearly sets the theme of class equality, and invisibly forms a thematic echo with the Golden Palm Award-winning Korean film "Parasite" (2019), which not only has a spectacle in the love story of the classical era, but also provides a discussion of love relationships and even interpersonal relationships in the current society.

　　From the screen to reality Look at reality with art

　　The emotional expression of women's films is never single and rigid, it can be a shouting, deafening, or it can be subtle and introverted but undercurrent. The documentary Japan's Secret Shame (2018), directed by BBC director Erica Jenkin, tells the story of a 29-year-old Japanese journalist, Shiori Ito, who fights tenaciously against workplace harassment. Ito was drugged by Kei Yamaguchi, then president and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a working dinner in 2015, but Yamaguchi vehemently denied that claim. When Ito bravely revealed his identity to accuse Yamaguchi, he received numerous publicly humiliating and hateful emails. Some people questioned Ito's motives, and some people accused her of not doing drug tests and not calling the police at the first time. After the incident, ito, who was at a loss for words, called an aid center for help, but was asked to take a car to the city center to solve the problem in person, which caused a huge challenge to Ito, who was bedridden and did not dare to go out. As a victim, Ito almost coincided with the perpetrator Yamaguchi's circle of work, and Yamaguchi's high authority made it almost possible for her to end her career early. In the face of all kinds of mental pressure, Ito insisted on appealing, and endured the pressure of "secondary rape" in the process of continuous evidence collection. The film intertwines Ito's story with the broader social context of Japan, comprehensively and deeply analyzing the difficulties of women's rights protection in a patriarchal society. A few years later, when we look back at the film again, we will still be stunned by some of the spectators who stay out of the film — the cold speech of the female parliamentarian, the same abused woman standing with the man, accusing Ito of not loving himself. It's not just sexual assault that's scary, it's also the "victim guilt theory." It can be said that "The Shame of Japan" is a strong support for a Japanese colleague by a Western female director who works at a news agency. Although the film did not win major awards at international film festivals, it caused great repercussions in Japan and even the international community, and to a certain extent promoted the fair trial of the case. On December 18, 2019, the Tokyo District Court in Japan ruled in favor of Ito, and Keiyuki Yamaguchi was convicted of sexual assault, compensating Ito Shiori 3.3 million yen (about 200,000 yuan). In September 2020, Ito was selected into the list of "2020 Top 100 Most Influential People in the World" by Time magazine in the United States.

　　On May 14, 2019, the Alabama Legislature passed one of the toughest abortion rules in the United States, in which almost all abortions, including the consequences of rape, are prohibited. Obviously, this provision violates the constitutional protection of women's right to abortion and privacy, which for a time triggered strong opposition and widespread demonstrations. Against this backdrop, the Grand Jury Prize at the 70th Berlin Film Festival, as well as the Special Jury Prize in the Sundance Film Festival's American Feature Film Section, were awarded to Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), which focused on the autonomy of women's bodies. The film was inspired by the news that an Indian woman who was 17 weeks pregnant had died in Ireland due to sepsis due to a failed abortion in time. The news sparked a debate about abortion in Ireland at the time, at the heart of which was the choice between women's autonomy over the body and the right to life of the fetus. Research by University of California data analyst Stephanie Herold shows that Hollywood tends to exaggerate the medical risks associated with abortion and downplay the obstacles in seeking abortion surgery, and "Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always" is the alternative. Director Eliza Hittman takes a close but restrained view of the lives and journeys of the two teenage girls, with abortion as the main line, with the obstacles encountered by the teenage girls in the process of seeking surgery as the plot center, excluding the deliberate dog blood plot, truly and meticulously depicting the traffic and financial obstacles in this process, as well as the tough emotional and social support needed to achieve abortion, and the portrayal of the characters is greater than the expression of opinions. The film's exposure to the plight of women is cryptic and neutral, does not show the brilliance of human nature - such as Jasper's help to the two girls, nor does it stand on the female perspective of excessive self-pity - does not ask the reason for Orton's pregnancy and focuses the camera on the abortion itself, through the use of various details such as ubiquitous sexual harassment, sobbing when questioned, lonely looks at family gatherings, etc., to show the inner depression of the characters, selectively rather than panorama, like the tip of the iceberg to guide the audience to self-understanding. As director Hitman said in an interview, "It's no one's business but hers" (it's her own body, nothing to do with others).

　　In the new generation, more and more women have added a different perspective and color to the understanding of feminism through the seventh art. Their and their works have long been no longer limited to the resistance and opposition to male oppression, but also focus on women's own growth, expressing feminism through more and more rich themes and forms, and expressing more and more rich social issues through feminism. When top film competitions increasingly focus on the female films of female directors, it not only means a victory for female artists, but also a tribute to the constant struggle of the entire social group for equal rights.

　　(Author Affilications:College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University)

Source: China Social Science Network - China Social Science Daily Author: Zhang Yufei Daniel Zhang