Trend this Oscar season: Women reclaiming their sexuality

Shelly Gardner is not going to be anyone’s sex kitty.

The entertainer played by Pamela Anderson in Gia Coppola’s breezy drama The last showgirl she sees herself only as a dancer with stones and feathers in the historic (but final) burlesque in Las Vegas. At a humiliating audition for yet another lascivious fashion show in Las Vegas, the 57-year-old character, a lush blonde dreamer, stands on stage in front of a sleazy producer (Jason Schwartzman) who interrupts her performance.

“Apparently they hired you at Razzle Dazzle because you were beautiful and young a long time ago,” he tells her. “But I mean, let’s be honest. They hired you because you were sexy and young. I don’t know how to help you if… you don’t understand that that’s not what you’re selling anymore, honey. Following.”

Shelly is one of many maturing movie stars this Oscar season who struggles with the pressures of aging in a career that overvalues ​​youth and desirability. Substance, The last showgirl, Girl, night bitch, Maria — all trade in the themes of uncivil aging. And, perhaps for the first time since Diane Lane hinted at what was possible in the smoldering time of 2002. Unfaithfulthey form a body of films that are not afraid to examine the psyche of women over a certain age, assessing their diminishing value on the sex market.

These films feel like a statement, even a movement, by most female filmmakers to tell very personal stories that are nonetheless implicit social critiques, not only embracing the forbidden, but humanizing what has too often been treated with comic disdain. They ask: How do we maintain power when our bodies — our most important resource, at least for those who have power over us — are changing? And is it defeat to try?

It seems no coincidence that these films took shape after the rise of #MeToo, a movement that crystallized the need for such stories in their female directors and perhaps even inspired distributors and financiers, at least the independent ones, to believe in their audience potential. . The Golden Globes’ decision to nominate most of the leading actresses of these films demonstrates the accuracy of these instincts.

Babygirl Cinema films are not afraid to criticize their heroes. Almost all of the examples in this post-Time’s Up lineup feature a pale dynamo staring down the barrel of (subjectively defined) irrelevance. They allowed themselves to be commodified when it suited them, for attention or safety, and now they are resentful that they can no longer draw from the wellspring of their own charm. As their desirability declines, these women may go to extreme lengths to hold on to their once red-hot power.

For some, such a grip is, ironically, the only way to mentally or physically survive sexism. Coralie Fargeat’s wacky body-horror fantasy Substance has Demi Moore playing an ingenue turned aerobics star who is forced to quit her job due to old age. To regain control, she turns to a mysterious drug that allows her to share her life with a younger and prettier version of herself (Margaret Qualley), a behemoth of flesh who rips away at her own blood and bones and increasingly turns Moore’s character into a sort of dilapidated sack. meat as society has already imagined for her.

Little girls Romy (Nicole Kidman), on the other hand, uses pleasurable sex (as opposed to just sexiness) to stave off the fear of a future decline in status as she moves through middle age. In Haline Reijn’s erotic thriller, Kidman’s corporate boss explores her own subversion of power by engaging in taboo submissive sex with a much younger subordinate (Harris Dickinson).

A different kind of youth pervades The last showgirl as Shelly longs for the past when the casino was sold out and she and her fellow dancers flew around the world. Both Maria and night bitch to highlight the struggles of women who also worry that they have passed their artistic prime and yearn for something to bring them back.

Maria — in which Angelina Jolie plays opera icon Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín’s low-key biopic — portrays a woman who was actually forced into sex work by her mother during World War II, and the film painfully examines the scars that remain even at age 53. night bitchdirector Marielle Heller uses careful editing to illustrate how the very act of giving birth made Adams’ character persona non grata in her cosmopolitan art world. As the film progresses, she clumsily clings to her past identity while experiencing bizarre bodily phenomena that document the changes she went through as a mother.

Of course, formerly powerful women attacking impending insignificance have occasionally been a staple of Hollywood cinema; apotheosis is delusional diva Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. But portraying the discussion in purely sexual terms, with a messy and authentic female perspective and protagonist, is a more recent phenomenon as opposed to cuddly tenderness. Harold and Maudetitular grand lady (Ruth Gordon), wife of Sylvia Miles d Midnight cowboy and Lee Grant inside Shampooor even a cleaner arc of Angela Bassett’s empowerment in the How Stella got her rhythm.

It would also be hard to miss that some of the current stars – Moore, Anderson, Jolie, Kidman – were called out in the tabloids for sexual and marital scandals, and in these films you can almost see a reckoning with, and rejection of, this pop cultural bullying.

There is one film that serves as a counterpoint, representing the strength that these older characters strive to revive. Sean Baker Anora follows Ani (Mikey Madison), a 20-year-old stripper and occasional prostitute who uses her greatest resource – her body – as a political tool and economic weapon, wielding it to secure her marriage to the son of a Russian oligarch. Ani sees it as forever sharp. Women from Substance, Maria and night bitch could remind how it would one day turn against her.