Andrew Worsdale
Marleen Gorris has become a soft feminist. Or at least, softer than before. Her first two movies A Question of Silence and Broken Mirrors were savage indictments of male- dominated society.
Born in Holland in 1948, Gorris studied theatre and literature before her stunning film debut with A Question of Silence. It tells the story of three “ordinary” women who kill a male shopkeeper – apparently without motive- and their ensuing trial that reveals the extent of patriarchal oppression and the women’s deep solidarity. It was critically well-received but its militant feminist angle divided some audiences.
But it also set the tone for her future work – films that focused on men’s destructive drive and the need for women to stand together. Her second feature, Broken Mirrors, is a kind of Bluebeard horror movie about a well-heeled businessman who imprisons his victims, starves them and documents their deaths with an Instamatic camera. His narrative is intercut with the tale of a woman joining a brothel. Once again Gorris focused on the fact that women suffer at the expense of men’s pleasure.
With Antonia’s Line, for which she won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Gorris was already diluting her stance. The story of four generations of women from the end of World War II to the present day, it was a celebratory mix of humour and tragedy and, although less strident than her earlier work, it still showed that women can survive (and even thrive) without the company of men.
With the box-office and critical success of Antonia’s Line she became hot property and was headhunted by the producers of her latest work, Mrs Dalloway. Based on the stream-of-consciousness novel by Virginia Woolf, the movie is scripted by Eileen Atkins – an authority on Woolf’s work – who had written and performed in the play Vita and Virginia with her close friend Vanessa Redgrave. Evidently she wrote the screenplay expressly for Redgrave.
The film is a story about crossroads, the choices we make in life, centred on Clarissa Dalloway, who is holding a party and who regrets marrying a staid politician instead of a more handsome suitor. It then crosses into flashback and we see the young unmarried woman who spent long summer days courting boys and girls.
The movie, although a very well-worked adaptation of the novel, is not completely successful. It is sometimes too dour for its own good. Set after the shell-shocks of World War I the story also deals with the notions of suicide and community’s never- ending need to both destroy and contain itself. One subtle motif that plays throughout is the image of spikes and railings, something that, like life, one can be impaled upon.
This time Gorris is very unspoken about the lesbianism in Woolf’s story, going instead for a broader picture about the trials between men and women. Nevertheless, by the end of it Redgrave no longer seems like a safe Ivory/ Merchant-type hostess. She is like a caged and remorseful animal. Gorris might have lost her vituperative bite but not her point.
I spoke to her on the phone this week from her Amsterdam home. She was charming, with a Dutch lilt gently baying a kind of low- grade Oxbridge accent. “All three of my early films were plainly feminist, which gave me a label,” she says, “with women as the main characters, and sure, I like to give women some kind of power on the screen.”
When I ask her if she hates men she categorically denies it. Her second English-based film is on the way, an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Defence. “It’s about a chess master,” she laughs. “Would you believe it? Finally I’m making a movie with a man as the main character.” Gorris goes on to say that she loves the Brits.
But it was not all plain sailing with the production of Mrs Dalloway. When she was offered the project she read the novel “which had been sitting in my bookcase for 25 years”. Midway through production the British finances dried up.
“After two weeks of shooting it turned out that the British producer didn’t have any money at all. So everything fell flat on its face. In the end it was the American distributor of Antonia’s Line who managed to get a bank interested in financing the movie. I had to work with three of everything, three cameramen, camera people – you name it.”
The result was that the movie was shot in two parts, that’s why if you scan the credits there seems to be a huge crew. But Mrs Dalloway it still a cheap movie by Hollywood standards. “It was only $4,5- million,” she says. “And you know if an American studio had made the film it probably would have been something like$60- million. So I think in Europe we manage to make quality films for much less money and I hope we continue to.”
She acknowledges that her point of view about male/female relations has calmed. ” I wanted to make my first films because, at that time, they were the most important to me. But I think it has all been a natural progression. Anyway, I make the films I want to make and the audience will see what they do. If they don’t like it, well that’s okay. If they do, then great. But I think you should at least allow the artist the freedom of speech, to do what she or he wants to do.”
Finally I ask her if she is married. “No.” So I foolishly ask, “So do you hate men?” Gorris responds in a candid, humorous and diplomatic way. “I’m for women but not against men.”