Feminism has had a major influence on film theory. In early 70s, feminist film theorists such as Molly Haskell, Claire Johnston and Laura Mulvey respectively analysed, from different perspectives, dominant cinema’s representations of women. They particularly analysed whether or not women were shown as active or passive and the amount of screen time dedicated to them in films. In From Reverence to Rape, the treatment of women in the movies (1974), Haskell looked at female stereotypes, mostly in Hollywood films of 30s and 40s. Women were portrayed as mothers, virgins or prostitutes.
The notion of counter cinema was first introduced by Peter Wollen in 1972. It aims at breaking away from the expected constructions predominating in most Hollywood narrative and mass production films. Peter Wollen (1972) set and explained seven counter cinema values: narrative intransitivity, estrangement, foregrounding, multiple diegesis, aperture, un-pleasure, and reality.
Feminist counter cinema was inspired by the avant garde (e.g. Godard) which means that feminist films avoided traditional narrative and techniques when portraying women in films and offered an alternative. Friedman (2007) said that “where Hollywood films proposed an active male gaze and a passive female gaze, feminist counter-cinema narrative strategies placed women at the center of narrative cause and effect, rather than having active male and passive female characters (p.140).
An example of early feminist counter cinema is Riddles of the Sphinx (1977) by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen. The film is constructed in three sections and 13 chapters with headings. In the one entitled “Laura talking”, Mulvey directly addresses herself to the audience (a key element of counter cinema). The female protagonist, Louise, is filmed and represented in an attempt to offer an alternative to the conventional narrative structures of women objectification in dominant cinema. The film examines notions such as feminism, motherhood and sexual difference.
Laura Mulvey, in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975) used psychoanalysis to understand the construction of Hollywood cinema. She argued that the cinematic gaze is a male gaze and that films are constructed in a way in which women are to be looked at. She describes this process of viewing with the notion of “scopophilia”, the pleasure of viewing. Freud explained this term as being a fundamental drive, sexual in origin, implying that this is what keeps the audience watching. Mulvey argued that the narrative structure of classical cinema portrays the male character as active and powerful while the female character is passive, powerless and an object of desires.
In her essay "Woman’s Cinema as Counter Cinema" (1979), Johnston looked at women stereotypes in films. She was the first to analyse them from a semiotic point of view by looking at how the female is framed, lit and dressed. Just like Mulvey, she showed that many narratives in mainstream cinema depict the woman as the object of male desire.
Nowadays, there are more women filmmakers and women’s roles and representations in films have evolved. In certain genres, however, women are still objectified and appear passive. Smaill (2011) explained: “the 1980s saw a modest wave of support for female filmmakers, evident in targeted distribution and funding strategies that realized some of the ideals of the second wave feminism of the 1970s. Since the early 1990s this support has lessened while a new industrial terrain for the production of independent features more broadly has emerged. Within this terrain, the career of Coppola and of other (less visible) female directors, such as Lisa Cholodenko, Kimberley Peirce, Rose Troche, Catherine Hardwicke, Nancy Savoca or Debra Granik, has taken shape” (p.154).
An example of contemporary feminist counter cinema is Sofia Coppola. She is an American filmmaker, daughter of well-known director, Francis Ford Coppola. She grew up in the celebrity culture of Hollywood and she made several appearances in her father’s films (The Godfather films, 1972, 1974, 1990; The Outsiders, 1983). Some may say she was predestined to become a filmmaker but this desire only came a few years after graduating from a fine arts program at the California Institute of the Arts, as a way of reuniting her passions: costuming, fashion and photography.
She made her feature writing and directing debut in 1999 with The Virgin Suicides, based on the 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. It relates the story of a group of men looking back from adulthood at their adolescence when they were infatuated with the Lisbon sisters: Cecilia (Hanna Hall), Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Mary (A. J. Cook), Bonnie (Chelse Swain) and Therese (Leslie Hayman), living in their neighbourhood. The film begins with the attempted suicide of the youngest sister, thirteen-year-old Cecilia, and ends with the suicides of them all. The film strongly evokes themes of longing (adolescent sexual longing), nostalgia, and suburbia.
Her second feature, Lost in Translation (2003) relates the story of two American characters in Japan, both respectively going through a life-crisis. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) has recently graduated from Yale in philosophy and has followed her husband, a successful photographer on his business trip to Tokyo. She does not know what she is supposed to do in life and starts to measure how much her husband has changed in the course of their two-year-old marriage. Bob (Bill Murray) used to be a film actor and is in Tokyo to star in a television advertisement endorsing Whisky.
Marie Antoinette (2006) recalls the story of the last Queen of France, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst), born to Austrian aristocracy. At only 14 years old, she is pledged to marry French Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), as a political alliance between the two countries. Marie Antoinette is sent to France and deprived of everything belonging to her former life. After their marriage, Louis seems either unwilling or unable to consummate the marriage despite the pressure of having an heir to the throne. The film follows the spending eccentricities of Marie Antoinette on clothes, shoes and parties while knowing and caring little about the misery France is currently facing.
Coppola directed two further films, Somewhere (2009) and The Bling Ring (to be released in June 2013). She won the prize for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in translation at 2004 Academy Awards. Coppola also became the first American woman to receive a Best Director Oscar nomination, though she lost it to Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Sofia Coppola’s credibility as a filmmaker has often been questioned and attributed to her privileged position and childhood, and her films have been depicted as being empty. If she may have had a certain advantage in life, her films are often low budget and deeply-inspired by her predilection themes and signature as an auteur.
Auteur theory was first introduced by French director Truffaut in his essay "A certain tendancy of the French cinema" (1954). The term was used to characterize the authorship that a filmmaker exercises over his work to the extent that it becomes identifiable in all of his films. They represent and reflect his personal and creative vision. Auteur theory came to America in the 60s through film critic Andrew Sarris. He suggested that “over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature.” The authorship of a director can be recognized in the recurring themes present in his films.
Sofia Coppola’s techniques in film-making have become recognisable to the viewers: slow camera movements, slow moving time, and modern soundtracks (particularly noticeable in Marie Antoinette because it does not match the period it represents). Her personal passions are reflected in her attention to details in room setting, costumes, and the presence of pastel colours. Her recurring themes are the coming of age, moments of transitions in life, isolation, dream, rituals, longing, and nostalgia.
All of the characters in her first three films are caught in moments of transition: the Lisbon sisters and the boys of The Virgin Suicides are going through adolescence and rites of passage (sexuality, move from childhood to adulthood). Charlotte in Lost in Translation does not know where she fits in her husband’s photography career, while Bob is experiencing a mid-life crisis. Marie Antoinette experiences a transition when marrying Louis XVI as she says good-bye to her home, country, belongings and childhood.
Coppola shows a particular interest in representing the uncertainty her characters are going through. Rogers (2007) explained that “her protagonists are unformed characters in crisis at bifurcation points and open to the changeable flux of the world. As a filmmaker, then, her specialty is visually mapping the world of someone who is lost in his environment, who is alienated from those surrounding him and, for want of a better phrase, suffering an existential crisis”.
A sense of ennui is ultimately translated in Coppola’s films. She has a predilection for showing (rather than narrating) the feeling of emptiness people experience. Charlotte, in Lost in Translation is constantly shown lost in her thoughts, sitting by her hotel window, watching the majestic landscape, not being able to sleep, longing for answers she is not able to figure out. After the death of Cecilia, the Lisbon sisters are shown all lying in one of the bedroom, vacantly listening to music, reading magazines.
She also portrays her characters as being isolated even when surrounded by people. The Lisbon sisters become extremely isolated when their mother take them out of school; Charlotte is shown as visiting various places on her own and Marie Antoinette, though constantly surrounded by people, is lonely because of her husband’s coldness towards her. They all have different ways of trying to overcome their isolation: Marie Antoinette by uncontrollable consumption, Charlotte by rationally observing a foreign land and trying to feel something (as she tries to explain during a phone call to a distracted friend) and the Lisbon sisters by listening to their favourite records and reading.
Rituals are an important part of Coppola’s authorship. Instead of portraying a detailed and accurate aspect of history, she focuses on daily rituals in Marie Antoinette: the morning routine of waking and dressing the queen, the meals between Marie and Louis XVI spent in almost silence. In the same way, The Virgin Suicides portrays American high school and adolescent rituals such as the homecoming dance, a first party, a first kiss, and losing one’s virginity.
What is interesting in Coppola’s films is that she does not just focus on women searching for identity and meaning, but also on men (the boys, Bob, and Louis XVI). As a woman filmmaker, Coppola has transformed the male gaze explained by Mulvey. Women are not represented as passive in Coppola’s first three films. Even in The Virgin Suicides, where the Lisbon sisters are represented in an idealised and sometimes sexualised version through the memory of the boys, they are the active cause of their longing. The boys are the ones shown as passive and incapable of understanding why the sisters killed themselves. In Lost in translation, although Charlotte is seen as passive in her marriage, she takes the initiative with Bob by sending a drink to his table through which their relationship begins. As for Marie Antoinette, even if it is based on historical fact, she is portrayed as the one trying in her relationship with Louis (making conversation, pursuing sexual intercourse). The female characters are also dedicated a majority of screen time.
Coppola’s films are strongly displaying a feeling of dream, memory and nostalgia. The Virgin Suicides is the story of the Lisbon sisters told through the memory of the boys. It explores the nostalgia of their adolescence, the dreams of what could have been if the sisters had not died. It therefore does not portray a realistic version of reality. For example, when Lux and Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett) kiss for the first time, it is not clear whether it’s fantasy or reality because Lux seems to appear from thin air and she begins to kiss him fervently which is not in keeping with her behaviour up to this point.
Feminist counter cinema introduced by Mulvey and Wollen in 1977 is still applicable for women filmmaker today whether they intended it or not. Sofia Coppola is an illustration of it as she portrays women as active and sometimes exercising power and fascination over men (e.g. The Virgin Suicides) who themselves seem incapable of action. Her rather small career as a filmmaker is nonetheless significant as she has already managed to develop themes that can be identifiable in her first three films, the focus of this paper. She has a predilection for isolation, longing, coming of age, moments of transitions in life, dream, and rituals.
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