David Macfarlane A second look A woman lies on her back in a chilly-blue hospital
examination room. Her stomach, genitals and legs are bare; her knees are raised and apart. Her facial expression is resigned, vulnerable – yet somehow in control.
Eight or nine white-coated medical interns surround her, and one by one pull on rubber gloves and insert their
forefingers into her vagina. In the background, framed by the V of her raised thighs, two interns chat casually, never glancing in the woman’s direction. The woman’s lush black pubic hair looks stark against their coldly white coats. She is pregnant; and this is a medical check- up. It seems to go on forever; you urgently want it to end. This scene, late in Catherine Breillat’s extraordinary film Romance, trenchantly offers the institution of medicine as yet another of the social edifices the film dissects that are hostile or insensitive – or at best indifferent – to women. It is the most powerful, disturbing and exhilarating film contribution to feminism I can think of.
Not so for the South African movie- reviewing brigade, however, who have received the film with … well, hostility, insensitivity and indifference. Perusing Shaun de Waal (in this newspaper), Phillip Altbeker (Business Day) and Barry Ronge (Sunday Times) on Romance makes for some of the most anger-inducing media writing on the arts I have ever read. A basic point first: anything strike you about the gender of these three reviewers? It’s true that a man might well write an engaged and sympathetic review of a strongly feminist film (though Romance provides potent reasons for why he might not). But when the men in question ooze hostility from every syllable, one has to ask why tact alone did not persuade them to ask a woman friend to review the film. This is not an argument for ghetto reviewing: I don’t think only gay men can legitimately review films about gay men, for example. But if you are so out of sympathy with a film’s basic premises, why review it? De Waal’s indifference to the film’s issues is insultingly clear in the way he chooses to end his review: “Whatever else one takes away from Romance … one takes to heart the reminder that those with poor circulation should probably steer clear of sexual situations that require them to be tied up.” Does he really think this is funny? It’s not; it’s schoolboy facetiousness. For those who haven’t seen the film yet, please be assured that it does not offer the “reminder” that De Waal, for mysterious reasons of his own, has taken to heart. Equally mysterious is Ronge’s conclusion that the film is a “con job”. Since he doesn’t bother to roll up his sleeves and actually argue this point, I won’t bother to say more than that his review is glib and trashy. Altbeker (like De Waal) strays so far from film criticism as to tell us, gruesomely, how sexy he finds the film – that is, not at all. Does anyone other than Altbeker care what turns Altbeker on? Is director Breillat now being adversely judged for not helping Altbeker get his rocks off? Two of these critics are sorely puzzled by what they present as an enigma. Paul has lost all interest in sex with Marie (the film’s protagonist): why? I doubt that any woman would feel the need even to pose this question. Intuitively or intellectually most women know the answer, since they experience what Marie is facing all the time: certain kinds of heterosexual men are actually not interested in women.
To put the point more strongly, as feminist writers have been doing for decades: such men despise women. Sexual conquest is their aim, as is power over women. Emotional intimacy and reciprocal nurturing are, for some men (too many), phrases from a foreign language. Even the most sympathetic male in the film plays the numbers game, claiming nonchalantly to have bedded more than 10E000 women. But you don’t need to come to the film stacked to the eyeballs with feminist theory; you just need to look at the film (which is surely not asking too much of critics getting paid to do exactly that). When Paul is not casually
displaying, to his own lover, how irresistibly attractive he is to any woman he chooses (mothlike, they flutter to his flame), his most vivid commitment is to drinking in bars with a rather camp, dyed-blonde young man. I don’t know whether Paul is “really” gay or not; the film doesn’t say. But it certainly does say that, for men like Paul, their real love affairs are with other men, whether or not that involves sex. Women are handy when you want to stretch your ego to produce a replica of yourself: they conveniently get pregnant. But that’s about it with women: the rest of the time they’re tedious, nagging, over- emotional bores. You can’t have a proper conversation with them; that’s what real men are for. The opening scene of the film provides an orientation that really should have helped these three movie critics (did they arrive late?). The director of a TV commercial is instructing two actors (Paul and an actress) about what images to project: the man must radiate aloofness, control, arrogance, power – and look away from the woman. The woman must be alluring by appearing submissive – and look towards the man. These stereotypical gender roles are ones we’re taught, we’re instructed in them from birth, we’re “directed” to play them – as the actors in the commercial are directed to play them. But they can be challenged – as Marie does, and as the film does – though at a cost. Setting yourself against the entire weight of male-dominated sexist culture involves risks. The harm Marie incurs within the film is clear enough; and the film itself is now the target of the male-dominated sexist culture of arts commentary.
Very shortly after the opening scene, the film announces both the nature and extent of its challenge. Paul is lying on his back in bed (his apartment is as clinically sterile as the hospital examination room), watching TV in a desultory sort of way. Marie is asking why their sex life has dwindled to nothing. Paul appears hardly aware of her; he’s there and not there; his answers are bored and disengaged. Marie tries to arouse him: she puts his limp penis in her mouth; it stays resolutely limp. Paul continues to look aloofly over Marie’s lowered head at the TV.
In one image – a penis in a woman’s mouth remaining limp – Breillat takes on the whole exploitative and discriminatory history of cinematic (and other) modes of representation.
This is a history in which women’s bodies are routinely exposed to prurient male gazing. But the symbolic centre of male power (as men conceive it) is sacrosanct, taboo, protected from scrutiny. Breillat delivers a well-aimed kick at this centre of power – and male howls of outrage and pain predictably follow. The film has much, much more. It’s the most important recent intervention in gender debates I’m aware of. However, I’m also a man, and men with access to the media have been allowed far too much control over readings of Romance (and just about everything else). Let women now be heard, please.