CineWomen: ‘The Fabulous Four’ flubs its lines
Plus director Jocelyn Moorhouse’s debut ‘Proof,’ Caroline Suh & Cara Mones’s documentary ‘Sorry/Not Sorry,’ and my original review of The Wachowskis’ ‘The Matrix’
Last year was a banner one for women directors. The highest-grossing film in the world, with more than $1.4 billion, was Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, setting a new high for a film directed solo by a woman. A record three films directed by women were nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards — Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, and Celine Song’s Past Lives — though only one, Anatomy, was also nominated for best director.
Lots to celebrate, but still lots to do, as women comprised only 16 percent of directors on the top 250 films in 2023, down from 18 percent in 2022, according to research by the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University, which has tracked women’s employment on the top-grossing films for 26 years.
Although this column focuses on women directors, the CSWT&F study found that a rising tide lifts all boats, as films with at least one woman in the director’s chair employed “substantially” more women behind the scenes, including 61 percent of writers, 35 percent of editors, 10 percent of cinematographers, and 26 percent composers. By contrast, on films with men at the helm, women comprised 9 percent of writers, 18 percent of editors, 7 percent of cinematographers, and 11 percent of composers.
I don’t know what else there is to say, other than keep letting it be known we’re interested in films directed by women by watching films directed by women, like these:
‘The Fabulous Four’
There’s a feminist anthem at the heart of director Jocelyn Moorhouse’s The Fabulous Four — to not acting your age, to valuing friendships, to childless cat ladies. Unfortunately, it’s buried under clumsy monologues, cringey special effects, and a pile of tulle.
Bette Midler stars as Marilyn who, mere months after the death of her beloved husband, moves to Key West and meets a silver fox at the DMV. Soon they’re engaged, and her lifelong friends Alice (Megan Mullally) and Kitty (Sheryl Lee Ralph) head south for the wedding with Lou (Susan Sarandon) in tow — though they have to lie to Lou to get her there due to a mysterious beef between her and Marilyn that, frankly, is so egregious and happened so long ago that the whole setup is specious at best.
High jinks ensue.
Look, these are some cool gals. Lou is a surgeon, for goodness sake, with an adorable fascination with Hemingway’s polydactyl (that is, six-toed) cats. Alice is a boho backup singer who’s toured with the Stones. Kitty is a loving grandmother who grows pot. And Marilyn is … well, she’s a lot — I mean, she’s on TikTok LOL — but she’s full of fun surprises. A weekend in Key West with this quartet should be a hoot.
And it is, at times, as well as full of heart thanks to Ralph’s warm and comforting presence. With her, Midler and Mullally above the line, you can’t not end with a tune. Another highlight is Marie Schley’s costuming, from Alice’s free-spirited fashion to Lou’s utilitarian bag (seriously, where can I get one?) to Marilyn’s fluffy princess wedding dress.
But The Fabulous Four also muddles its message of forgiveness and misses an opportunity for some sharp commentary on women’s feelings around aging by shoehorning it in amid tired jokes about older folks and technology.
The Fabulous Four (2024), directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse (theaters)
‘Proof’
The lack of nuance in The Fabulous Four is all the more befuddling when compared with Jocelyn Moorhouse’s feature directorial debut Proof, also a film about friendship and forgiveness but starring a couple of familiar faces early in their careers.
Hugo Weaving stars as Martin, a blind photographer (yes, that’s right) who befriends Andy (a young Russell Crowe), a dishwasher with a knack for succinctly describing Martin’s pictures to him. These descriptions are important to Martin, as they serve as “proof” that what he sensed when he took the photo is what was actually there — he’s a stickler for the truth and despises lies.
Things get tricky, then, when Andy gets entangled with Martin’s housekeeper Celia (Geneviève Picot), a woman Martin apparently loathes, despite which she is obsessed with him, giving the film an undercurrent of psychological thriller.
Before that, though, humorless Martin lightens up under the influence of charming and amiable Andy, going so far as to crack jokes about driving while blind. It’s a relief for a man with social and sexual hangups not entirely — or at all — explained. Something about his mother, how she was ashamed of him, whether she was lying to him about the garden outside their window, whether she faked her death.
Proof’s lack of clarity is its appeal, however: a character study inside an enigma that’s never solved — Martin McGrath’s cinematography makes sure of that, positioning the frame so that we don’t know what’s true and what’s a lie, keeping us in the dark as much as Martin is, and as vulnerable, leaving it up to us to decide what to believe.
Proof (1991), directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse (Peacock)
‘Sorry/Not Sorry’
There’s a lot of soul-searching in Sorry/Not Sorry: By comedian Jen Kirkman, who revisits an indecent proposal early in her career and regrets how she responded. By television producer Michael Schur (Parks and Recreation), who’d heard the rumors about a celebrity guest star yet didn’t hesitate to bring him back for another episode.
Not, however, by the subject of the documentary itself from directors Caroline Suh and Cara Mones about the fall and rise of comedian Louis C.K. following the publication of a New York Times article in which five women accused him of masturbating in front of them.
Only one of the victims who participated in that story appears here: Abby Schachner, whose encounter with the towering entertainment figure occurred over the phone. The others are Kirkman, whose experience was more of a near-miss, and Megan Koester, a comedian and journalist whose own attempts to break the Louis C.K. story, she says, drove her out of the industry.
Sorry/Not Sorry, then, is less about the inciting incidents than the ripple effects of what was an open secret and the perpetrator’s defiant comeback — a missed opportunity, his once-fans say, to leverage his self-effacing, dare one say feminist, comedy of before.
The documentary, then, serves as a sequel of sorts to She Said, the book and film that detailed the New York Times reporting on Harvey Weinstein co-reported by one of the same journalists on the Louis C.K. story. The allegations against Louis C.K. do not rise to the level of the Weinstein’s crimes, the film’s interviewees agree — perhaps softening Sorry/Not Sorry’s impact — but the personal and professional fallout for the women who agree to speak up continues to reverberate today.
Sorry/Not Sorry (2023), directed by Caroline Suh & Cara Mones (theaters and digital)
‘The Matrix’
I’m at a point in my career now where I reviewed films now celebrating significant milestones — like The Matrix’s twenty-fifth anniversary on March 31 — at the time of their original release. In this case, my original review appeared in the May 1999 issue of Boxoffice magazine. The movie holds up. Does my original take?
This is the Hong Kong movie America’s been waiting for. Really. After repeated attempts to import the likes of Hong Kong heroes Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat, Jet Li, and John Woo, Hollywood has finally successfully captured the Asian city’s action filmmaking style in a star named Keanu Reeves and writer-directors called [The Wachowskis].
In an original plot that rejects the recent trend to blame our demise on hostile aliens, [Lana] and [Lilly] Wachowski (Bound) have imagined a world in which everything we think we know is really a computer-generated construct. The matrix, as it’s called, keeps our minds busy while our bodies are tapped for energy by artificially intelligent beings we created. A small band of rebels, however, have realized the truth and fight day after day to free the rest of the human race. They think they’ve found their savior — “the one” — in a computer geek named Neo (Reeves), but he’s not so sure.
In a sense, “The Matrix” is a kind of filmic comic book. Set against a neo-noir, futuristic backdrop and packed with action, the story’s really about Neo’s rescue, training, and ultimate realization that he is, indeed, “the one.”
That’s not to say this actioner disappoints in the ass-kicking category. You’ve never seen this kind of stylized action — brought stateside by Hong Kong fight coordinator Yuen Wo Ping (Drunken Master) — this side of the pond. After a clever moment in which Neo sets off a metal detector, is asked to remove his watch or any jewelry, and opens his trench coat to reveal no less than four pairs of guns, there’s an extended fight sequence in which he and sidekick Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) single-handedly blast their way through a phalanx of security guards. The matrix, you see, is merely a mental projection of what you think the world should be. Rules like gravity can be bent or broken, if you believe they can.
So Neo and Trinity dodge bullets in slow motion while their enemies shake them off in a blur. They pump out clip after clip of ammunition, the empty shells clattering to the floor like rain. They run up walls. They fly through the air. They use kung fu in hand-to-hand combat. (Yes, Keanu does kung fu. But what’s great about this script is that the Wachowskis knew that Reeves doing kung fu — with Laurence Fishburne, no less — would be funny and went with it anyway, playing it up for comic effect and even plugging in a patented Reeves “Whoa.”) Beneath The Matrix’s comic book artistry, stylized fight choreography, gothic sets, and washed-out green tints, however, lies a classic Christ allegory with a simple mantra: believe in yourself.
Morpheus (Fishburne), the legendary rebel leader, continually encourages Neo to open his mind, to believe that he is “the one” here to save the world. And it’s not until Neo buys this argument that he really starts to bust booty.
The Matrix (1999), directed by The Wachowskis (Netflix)
