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Rehovot's Women Film Festival Day 4: Between Expressions of Sexual Desire in Women's Films, and Rape
by Michal Aviad
Sex scenes are one of the temptations that movies have to offer. I imagine that we all share the attraction of watching sexual desire on film. And yet, over the years, a large part of the movies in which I've seen sex scenes, have stimulated in me disappointment, and even insult and a sense of humiliation.
Occasionally, my identification with the intentions and actions of the male protagonist, are frustrated when he realizes his sexual passion. Obeying the laws of cinematic drama, his partner is a secondary character, awarded little attention. Her desire is awarded attention since her dramatic role is merely to serve the central figure (see James Bond movies, Indiana Jones, and many others.)
Often scenes of passion are filmed to meet the market rule that "sex sells tickets." Naked Women, including nudity which derive neither from the story nor from the cinematic language of the film, sell more tickets. But why are breasts, and in recent years female genitalia (for example in Avi Nesher's The Secrets, Israel 2007) exhibited in cinema, while male genitals fail to appear? Why are male sex organs, erected or flaccid, absent from the majority of films – certainly those directed by men? Apparently, in conjunction with those laws of the market, even in the age of "sexual freedom," social conventions preserve for men the role of observers of female organs, and not the roles of those who expose or, God forbid, observe male genitals.
And does the sexual pleasure of women exist in cinema in its own right, as the pleasurable achievement of a goal, as does the sexual pleasure of men? Or is the sexual gratification of women nothing other than one more decoration awarded to the male hero for his victory as a lover? And in what way do sex scenes actually display the director's ability and power to subjugate the actresses to act in accordance with fantasies not their own?
There are films in which the heroines are women. A portion of them allow and celebrate the sexual delight of the heroines (such as Pedro Almodóvar's Live Flesh, Spain 1997, and Frédéric Fonteyne's A Pornographic Affair, France 1999). This said, observing films directed by female directors grants a refreshing and complex view of women's passion and the ways in which female directors choose to express it in their cinema.
Female, as well as male, directors use their authority to fashion both heroes and heroines as they wish. They also take on the role, through the lens of the camera, of the observer, and also possess the power to subject the actors to their own fantasies. What is, however, that world that they ask to describe? And in their films are we able to see female protagonists whose sexual desire we find easier to identify with? Does the range of possibility for sexual desire in their films offer realms never before given expression in cinema?
Watching numerous scenes of passion in films directed by women illuminates various aspects of the representation of sex scenes: the treatment of female and male nudity, what is seen and what is concealed in the filming of sexual intercourse, among others. I would like to point out a matter which the viewing of these films illuminated for me. Various directors, in films dealing with diverse subject matters, address love making sequences in which the strating point of "I want and desire" is broken and turns into "I don't want it any more". In these scenes, passion and pleasure at the starting point of a sexual relationship, carry the danger of being transformed into rape if the male partner does not respond to his female partner's wishes.
In Simone van Dusseldorp's Deep, the heroine yearns for the kiss and touch of a French boy at summer camp, but his attempt to extend sexual contact beyond kissing intimidates her. She becomes confused at the magnitude of her aversion from him, and retreats. With this scene Van Dusseldorp emphasizes that the aversion has nothing to do with the desire that preceded it. Both potently exist, one after the other.
Hilary Brougher's Stephanie Daley also depicts a girl's first sexual experience. Stephanie encourages and awaits the unknown boy's advance. But in the midst of making out with him she recovers her composure and is startled at the possibility that this could lead to intercourse. The boy does not let go.. Here Brougher chooses to cut off. We know that Stephanie did not want the sexual act. In fact, here was a kissing and caressing born of desire but it probably led to rape.
In Adrienne Shelly's Waitress, Shelly sets the heroine's passion for her gynecologist in opposition to the repulsion she feels towards her husband. We witness scenes ripe with fervor in which the protagonist initiates sex with the doctor. As viewers we are filled with satisfaction at seeing our heroine realize her pleasure, since we despise her husband along with her. Other scenes portray her husband sleeping with her while she waits, with eyes empty and open, for the disgusting sex with him to be over. The heroine fears her husband, diligently obeying and lying to him; she cannot refuse his sexual advances. He longs for her and also feels it is his right as her husband to lay her. The sex scenes with her husband waver on the fine line, so familiar to so many women, between disagreeable sex and rape.
The heroine of Carine Adler's Under the Skin desires a man she meets at a movie theatre and with whom she enjoys wild sex in an alleyway. After that she engages in other sexual encounters with strange men. One of these encounters starts with realizing that passion, but when the lover surprises our protagonist with sexual acts not of her choosing, the passion vanishes and the sex becomes revolting.
In her short film, Pathways, Hagar Ben Asher deals precisely with the relationship between passion and rape. Ben Asher amplifies the scope of possibilities for female desire. She depicts a heroine who tempts men and has sex with them, a sex that is casual and different from most cinematic scenes describing female passion. The fact that Ben Asher's protagonist is lonely; that she is, perhaps, attempting to fill other voids with sex, does not undermine her passion. But between sex, even random and partial, and rape, Ben Asher tells us, is an unequivocal difference.
Another short Israeli film, Stain, deals with the distance between the heroine's budding desire for one boy, and the "initiation rite" of rape that is administered by other boys.
In Sex is Comedy Catherine Breillat draws a contrast between the sex illustrated by the actors in the cinematic scene and the sex the actors actually have. In this respect, Breillat creates an additional broken line between passion and rape. What occurs behind the scenes between a man and a woman who are actors, and what we see on the screen as they adorn the forms of their characters. These films stimulate a fascinating cinematic discourse, raising questions of the pleasure and danger of sexual relations. They visually and verbally mark the distinction between passion and rape, and define both with enlightening clarity.
Michal Aviad - Filmmaker, Lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Film and Television Department, and Artistic Consultant to the "Women in the Picture" International Women's Film Festival. Source: iwff.net
Sex scenes are one of the temptations that movies have to offer. I imagine that we all share the attraction of watching sexual desire on film. And yet, over the years, a large part of the movies in which I've seen sex scenes, have stimulated in me disappointment, and even insult and a sense of humiliation.
Occasionally, my identification with the intentions and actions of the male protagonist, are frustrated when he realizes his sexual passion. Obeying the laws of cinematic drama, his partner is a secondary character, awarded little attention. Her desire is awarded attention since her dramatic role is merely to serve the central figure (see James Bond movies, Indiana Jones, and many others.)
Often scenes of passion are filmed to meet the market rule that "sex sells tickets." Naked Women, including nudity which derive neither from the story nor from the cinematic language of the film, sell more tickets. But why are breasts, and in recent years female genitalia (for example in Avi Nesher's The Secrets, Israel 2007) exhibited in cinema, while male genitals fail to appear? Why are male sex organs, erected or flaccid, absent from the majority of films – certainly those directed by men? Apparently, in conjunction with those laws of the market, even in the age of "sexual freedom," social conventions preserve for men the role of observers of female organs, and not the roles of those who expose or, God forbid, observe male genitals.
And does the sexual pleasure of women exist in cinema in its own right, as the pleasurable achievement of a goal, as does the sexual pleasure of men? Or is the sexual gratification of women nothing other than one more decoration awarded to the male hero for his victory as a lover? And in what way do sex scenes actually display the director's ability and power to subjugate the actresses to act in accordance with fantasies not their own?
There are films in which the heroines are women. A portion of them allow and celebrate the sexual delight of the heroines (such as Pedro Almodóvar's Live Flesh, Spain 1997, and Frédéric Fonteyne's A Pornographic Affair, France 1999). This said, observing films directed by female directors grants a refreshing and complex view of women's passion and the ways in which female directors choose to express it in their cinema.
Female, as well as male, directors use their authority to fashion both heroes and heroines as they wish. They also take on the role, through the lens of the camera, of the observer, and also possess the power to subject the actors to their own fantasies. What is, however, that world that they ask to describe? And in their films are we able to see female protagonists whose sexual desire we find easier to identify with? Does the range of possibility for sexual desire in their films offer realms never before given expression in cinema?
Watching numerous scenes of passion in films directed by women illuminates various aspects of the representation of sex scenes: the treatment of female and male nudity, what is seen and what is concealed in the filming of sexual intercourse, among others. I would like to point out a matter which the viewing of these films illuminated for me. Various directors, in films dealing with diverse subject matters, address love making sequences in which the strating point of "I want and desire" is broken and turns into "I don't want it any more". In these scenes, passion and pleasure at the starting point of a sexual relationship, carry the danger of being transformed into rape if the male partner does not respond to his female partner's wishes.
In Simone van Dusseldorp's Deep, the heroine yearns for the kiss and touch of a French boy at summer camp, but his attempt to extend sexual contact beyond kissing intimidates her. She becomes confused at the magnitude of her aversion from him, and retreats. With this scene Van Dusseldorp emphasizes that the aversion has nothing to do with the desire that preceded it. Both potently exist, one after the other.
Hilary Brougher's Stephanie Daley also depicts a girl's first sexual experience. Stephanie encourages and awaits the unknown boy's advance. But in the midst of making out with him she recovers her composure and is startled at the possibility that this could lead to intercourse. The boy does not let go.. Here Brougher chooses to cut off. We know that Stephanie did not want the sexual act. In fact, here was a kissing and caressing born of desire but it probably led to rape.
In Adrienne Shelly's Waitress, Shelly sets the heroine's passion for her gynecologist in opposition to the repulsion she feels towards her husband. We witness scenes ripe with fervor in which the protagonist initiates sex with the doctor. As viewers we are filled with satisfaction at seeing our heroine realize her pleasure, since we despise her husband along with her. Other scenes portray her husband sleeping with her while she waits, with eyes empty and open, for the disgusting sex with him to be over. The heroine fears her husband, diligently obeying and lying to him; she cannot refuse his sexual advances. He longs for her and also feels it is his right as her husband to lay her. The sex scenes with her husband waver on the fine line, so familiar to so many women, between disagreeable sex and rape.
The heroine of Carine Adler's Under the Skin desires a man she meets at a movie theatre and with whom she enjoys wild sex in an alleyway. After that she engages in other sexual encounters with strange men. One of these encounters starts with realizing that passion, but when the lover surprises our protagonist with sexual acts not of her choosing, the passion vanishes and the sex becomes revolting.
In her short film, Pathways, Hagar Ben Asher deals precisely with the relationship between passion and rape. Ben Asher amplifies the scope of possibilities for female desire. She depicts a heroine who tempts men and has sex with them, a sex that is casual and different from most cinematic scenes describing female passion. The fact that Ben Asher's protagonist is lonely; that she is, perhaps, attempting to fill other voids with sex, does not undermine her passion. But between sex, even random and partial, and rape, Ben Asher tells us, is an unequivocal difference.
Another short Israeli film, Stain, deals with the distance between the heroine's budding desire for one boy, and the "initiation rite" of rape that is administered by other boys.
In Sex is Comedy Catherine Breillat draws a contrast between the sex illustrated by the actors in the cinematic scene and the sex the actors actually have. In this respect, Breillat creates an additional broken line between passion and rape. What occurs behind the scenes between a man and a woman who are actors, and what we see on the screen as they adorn the forms of their characters. These films stimulate a fascinating cinematic discourse, raising questions of the pleasure and danger of sexual relations. They visually and verbally mark the distinction between passion and rape, and define both with enlightening clarity.
Michal Aviad - Filmmaker, Lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Film and Television Department, and Artistic Consultant to the "Women in the Picture" International Women's Film Festival. Source: iwff.net
Labels: Rehovot Arts and Culture, Rehovot International Women Film Festival
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