More Dispatches From Grad School: 'Fat Girl,' 'Foxy Brown,' & 'Cemetery of Splendor'
On three movies I watched for class, and their contrasting forms of transgression.
Welcome back to another edition of Dispatches From Grad School! If you read my last blog entry, you know the drill: in an effort to exercise my writing and editing skills as well as update you all on where I’ve been these last couple of months, I’ve gathered some of the discussion posts I wrote for my Film Violence and International Masterworks classes this past semester, tweaked them as needed, and presented them as capsule-sized reviews and reflections for you all to read. Before I continue, I’d like to preface this by saying that this is the second entry in a two-part series, so no worries—I promise a shiny, new write up on a non-grad school-related topic is currently in the works.
As I finished the final edits on this week’s series of dispatches, I couldn’t help but compare them to last week’s, realizing I probably should have shared these first. I’m well aware that the newer blurbs read better, engage more with the material, and make finer comparisons to other works. There’s also a bit of a throughline in these reflections, no matter how different the three films appear at first glance. Cemetery of Splendor is exquisite slow cinema and one of the most beautiful films I watched for International Masterworks while Fat Girl and Foxy Brown formed wildly contrasting entries on our Film Violence syllabus—but all three are oddball movies that transgress the average moviegoer’s sensibilities by offering the palette something different to what we normally gravitate towards. And of course, all three of these offered some of the most memorable viewing experiences I had this entire semester. Read my thoughts on each of them below.
Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)
In a film that features people connecting spiritually with their pasts through nature, depictions of the natural occurrences we’ve come to find repulsive (e.g., erections, defecation, scarred tissue), appear tranquil rather than off-putting—or at least that seems to be director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s intent. Watching Cemetery of Splendor, I wasn’t caught off-guard by any of these things but rather entranced by the film’s relaxing sights and sounds to the point where it took me a second to come to my senses whenever something odd happened. More than anything, this speaks to the immersive quality of Apichatpong’s work, and his talent for crafting atmospheres you can’t help but get lost and feel at peace in.
This reverence for nature and our connection to it as a species is precisely what makes Cemetery of Splendor so refreshing. A common tendency of films dealing with the coexistence between our modern and natural world is the depiction of modernity as a cancer that harms the earth. Often, this is communicated implicitly rather than explicitly: in Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy for example, the cacophony of Portland’s noisy streets upon the characters’ return from a camping trip contrasts starkly with the natural sounds that had previously made their visit to the hot springs so cathartic. When Apichatpong cuts from a darkened forest to the interiors of a quiet, brightly lit mall however, both locations appear equally imposing and beautiful.
The invasion of nature by modern structures and devices (a concrete bench in the grass, old ruins and statues in a forest, etc.), doesn’t have to be a bad thing, necessarily. In fact, they almost feel like deliberate attempts to blur the distinction between the natural and artificial world. Is the abandoned, decaying classroom Jen stands in (now populated with wild insects and fallen leaves) any different from the disintegrated palace that once occupied the forest she visits with Keng? Both are manmade structures that have been overtaken by nature, and both foreshadow a future that harkens back to pre-civilization.
Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)
There’s no doubt that Fat Girl is a difficult watch, but it’s also an intriguing one I’ve pondered since our class screening back in April. Then and now, I felt inclined to give Breillat’s indictment of society’s exploitation of feminine youth more of a pass than some of the other films we viewed throughout the semester because there’s less to take issue with in regards to its filmmaking. As should be the case for any movie that deals heavily with topics like sexual abuse and pedophilia, Fat Girl takes great precaution in its portrayals of this subject matter. (Getting the obvious out of the way, the actress playing 15 year-old Elena was actually of age during production. As for 12 year-old Anaïs, her assault is brutal in both content and context, but not form because Breillat’s shooting and staging of the scene conceal the action that’s being simulated, making it one of the least graphic instances of violence in the entire film.) To compare Fat Girl with another movie from class, this was certainly not the case for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Saló, or the 120 Days of Sodom, which my classmates responded rather well to despite that picture’s sensationalistic1 depictions of rape.
I don’t think it’s anti-intellectual or intolerant to argue that partaking in the viewing of graphic child sex acts is both immoral and perverse, even if they are simulated—and had I known that Saló is said to have starred people as young as 14, I would’ve excused myself from class the day it was shown. This discrepancy made our discussion of Pasolini’s movie (whose screening almost everyone attended) and Breillat’s film (whose screening half the class excused itself from) so head-scratching to me. Was it a surface-level thing, like Saló having more street cred attached to it? Did that movie’s history of controversy render any critique of it redundant in their eyes? Or did its depersonalization of violence make it more palatable, as opposed to Fat Girl’s uncomfortable intimacy? Anyone who preferred Saló to Fat Girl under that last rationale is probably valid in doing so. To me however, Breillat’s rare ability to instill this level of discomfort in her audience is not only impressive, but also crucial to the effectiveness of her critique.
Though I’ve already given some of it away, I won’t dwell on Fat Girl’s controversial ending in order to avoid spoiling it further.2 Instead, I want to talk about the film’s first and second acts, in which Elena gets groomed by her adult boyfriend who eventually coerces her into losing her virginity. Compared to her stocky and awkward sister, Elena is traditionally beautiful and very naive. Having actress Roxane Mesquida pose in her undergarments during a scene where Elena attempts to seduce Fernando is the closest Breillat comes to sexualizing her actors, but it’s obviously played for irony. Elena doesn’t look or act sexy—she looks and acts the way the average teenager thinks is sexy, and watching her flirt with and get ready for Fernando is uncomfortable precisely because of that. Every choice made by Breillat and Mesquida is a conscious reminder that the character is a child being failed by everyone around her (sans Anaïs). That the actors are so convincing in their roles regardless of age makes Fat Girl that much more challenging to watch, and its message that much more compelling.
Foxy Brown (Jack Hill, 1974)
Foxy Brown is a frustrating watch. On one hand, going in with certain expectations may have prohibited me from giving the film a fair chance; considering the advertising and Pam Grier’s legacy as an action star, I figured the titular character would be your typical, empowering stock heroine. Indeed, Grier is a force of nature: she’s both confident and sincere, demanding your admiration from the get-go while also appearing palpable in her vulnerability. Seeing how the film was directed by a man, I was also prepared for the gratuitous sexualization of its protagonist—a trademark of all exploitation genres, and a common procedure that I (like most women, I presume) have trained myself to overlook when it’s warranted by the film’s style or content.
As it turns out, Foxy isn’t a certified badass in the vein of Ellen Ripley or Beatrix Kiddo, but an average, yet cunning (and certainly above average-looking) woman who has no choice but to avenge her boyfriend after he’s brutally murdered by members of an evil drug syndicate. The film also pays lip service to the Black Power movement, as Foxy unites with the Black Panther party in the end and the script addresses both casual and institutional racism throughout. It’s in the film’s second half that Jack Hill’s script shifts to the point of constant degradation of its protagonist, who is forced into prostitution and sexually assaulted multiple times. What makes the violence so disquieting is the dissonance between the tone and content: whereas Foxy’s abusers at the drug manufacturing plant are repulsive and Grier is covered in sweat and bruises, the blocking and framing deliberately fetishize her assault.
As I explained in my previous blurb and as other ‘70s and ‘80s exploitation classics have proven, mindful portrayals of rape don’t strip a film of transgression. For how sexualized the protagonist of Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45 is, the eponymous character’s rape is never fetishized, rightfully rendering the abuse itself as violent and sexless. In contrast, the rape in Foxy Brown feels like one of many excuses for Hill to show Grier topless.
A major figure to emerge from the Blaxploitation genre during the 1970s, Grier broke barriers in sexually liberating roles and has since spoken candidly about the empowerment she felt filming nude scenes at a time when Hollywood rejected Black women as sex symbols due to the industry’s racist and myopic beauty standards. However, Foxy’s sexuality fails to appear empowering in a film that also frames sex as a punishment, and Hill’s script seems to think that cracking self-aware jokes about racial fetishism absolves him from objectifying his Black actresses. Even when Foxy uses her sexuality as an asset (such as the scene where she and Claudia seduce a judge by proposing a threesome), the dialogue and choreography are only sensual as far as lewd content about women made for and by men goes—which makes it difficult to approach this work through an oppositional gaze.
I know that in Saló, sensationalism is part of the point, but this can also be said for most of the things we watched in this class—some of which were met with harsher criticisms from my peers. In any case, Pasolini’s real-life exploitation of the film’s subjects renders Saló’s critique ineffective to me, and that’s putting aside the movie’s many platitudes and redundancies. Maybe I just didn’t find his sluggish, two-hour indulgence of the same repeated transgressions insightful because I already knew what hierarchy and complicity look like under fascism.
I’m aware that this write-up probably won’t encourage anyone who hadn’t previously heard of Fat Girl to seek the movie out, but I truly recommend watching if you can stomach it. Its indictment of our culture is seething, and at risk of dwelling on identity politics I’ll add that having a woman director at the helm also just makes a huge difference for obvious reasons.