All The Rage: How angry women pow­ered cin­e­ma in 2017

Fists clenched. Nos­trils flared. Fore­heads bead­ed with sweat. This image accu­rate­ly describes any num­ber of female char­ac­ters in a year where angry women were ubiq­ui­tous and just as like­ly to appall as to appease. The mur­der­ous woman is cinema’s ulti­mate rebel in that she flouts the expec­ta­tion that a female char­ac­ter should be like­able. In 2017 we’ve wit­nessed a num­ber of women rag­ing against their soci­etal or bod­i­ly con­straints. For Alice Lowe, direc­tor, writer and star of Pre­venge, this means turn­ing ​“the fear of vio­lence against my own body out­side of myself.”

Exter­nalised malev­o­lence is also at the heart of Lady Mac­beth (writ­ten by Alice Birch). Mar­ried off to the sullen son of a wealthy mine own­er, Kather­ine (Flo­rence Pugh) is quick­ly ini­ti­at­ed into the abra­sive exis­tence of 19^th cen­tu­ry wed­lock. As her father-in-law intim­i­dat­ing­ly instructs, she must per­form her wife­ly duties ​“with rigour”. The film’s open­ing scenes unflinch­ing­ly detail this. Her skin is scrubbed raw, her hair brushed as though she were a doll unable to feel every vio­lent wrench. She endures the tor­ture of being hemmed in by a corset, and then forced to undress to the tune of her husband’s command.

Katherine’s response is to under­go a tyran­ni­cal trans­for­ma­tion, in which her sen­su­al­i­ty and ven­om rup­tures that bodice and all its con­no­ta­tions of gen­til­i­ty. A lat­er image of her, scram­bling to bury evi­dence – dress blood­ied and mud­died, rifle in hand – is anti­thet­i­cal to the vir­ginal veiled crea­ture we meet in the open­ing shot. And yet these mur­der­ess­es are nev­er mas­culinised. The poster for Pre­venge showed Alice Lowe’s Ruth stand­ing side-on in a flow­ing red dress, her tou­sled brown hair rest­ing on her shoul­ders, reject­ing the mus­cu­lar ath­leti­cism of action heroes such as Ellen Rip­ley or Kat­niss Everdeen. With one hand on her stom­ach, the oth­er clutch­ing a knife, she is at once life-giv­er and slayer.

Her ambiva­lence towards her impend­ing moth­er­hood is man­i­fest­ed in a Machi­avel­lian killing spree and her dead­ly bump (per­son­i­fied via a sweet, infan­tile voiceover) is a potent obsta­cle to the flat­ten­ing out or gloss­ing over of what it means to be a woman. Though the blood is a comedic hue, Pre­venge doesn’t ster­ilise the sav­age. ​“Is she dan­ger­ous?” asks Ruth, before slay­ing her first vic­tim with a knife sliced across his throat. His last word is a resound­ing ​“yes”.

The notion of a woman’s weapon of choice being poi­son is embed­ded in our cul­ture. Phys­i­cal vio­lence is deemed unten­able with a woman’s ​‘diminu­tive stature’ and ​‘weak stom­ach’. That Kather­ine grad­u­ates from foul­ing her first vic­tim with mush­rooms, to blud­geon­ing her hus­band on their bed­room floor and exert­ing her­self with the abom­inable and labour inten­sive task of suf­fo­cat­ing a young boy, desta­bilis­es this stereotype.

Like­wise, in Cat­fight two old col­lege friends, embit­tered by enti­tled mid­dle-class angst, engage in a series of fist­fights. Ash­ley (Anne Heche) is an artist seek­ing the approval of a male deal­er. Her can­vas­es seethe with chaot­ic, gen­der-politi­cised rage that he sus­pects unsuit­able for exhi­bi­tion. It’s too ​“shock­ing” and ​“vul­gar”. Veron­i­ca (San­dra Oh) is a house­wife whose hus­band advis­es she back off the booze for his impor­tant busi­ness event. Amid cock­tail par­ty chat­ter, Veron­i­ca and Ashley’s ver­bal joust­ing esca­lates to pro­fan­i­ty and final­ly full-blown phys­i­cal aggres­sion, replete with jaw-smack­ing­ly good sound effects.

The blood­ied teeth, grunt­ing and chop­py cam­er­a­work make it look like The Bourne Iden­ti­ty for the yum­my mum­my crowd. And just when you think exhaus­tion has crip­pled them, the pum­melling pre­vails. An out­pour­ing of repressed fury, Veron­i­ca and Ashley’s fight becomes a rejec­tion of men cur­tail­ing their plea­sures and pas­sions, labelling it exces­sive or embar­rass­ing. Here female vio­lence is depict­ed in all its ugly, undi­lut­ed glo­ry. Every punch thrown and wound inflict­ed is a ral­ly­ing cry for the recon­struc­tion of fem­i­nin­i­ty reverberates.

Rage is the only way for these women to impose their will, as their argu­ments and opin­ions are con­sis­tent­ly met with vio­lence and humil­i­a­tion. Kather­ine finds her­self stripped or slapped when declar­ing a pref­er­ence for the ​“fresh air”, or con­tend­ing that her sex­u­al appetite is noth­ing ​“to be ashamed of”. That she makes the lat­ter procla­ma­tion behind the columned and cage-like ban­nis­ter of a stair­case becomes a visu­al indi­ca­tion of her imprisonment.

Sim­i­lar­ly silenced is Beat­riz (Salma Hayek), the tit­u­lar pro­tag­o­nist in Beat­riz at Din­ner. She’s a holis­tic heal­er and masseuse, reluc­tant­ly invit­ed to dine with a rich client and their guests. How­ev­er, the film’s com­po­si­tion depicts her dif­fi­cul­ty in being seen and heard. Beat­riz lurks at the periph­ery of each frame, traips­ing behind Con­nie Britton’s host and her gag­gle of guests, or hov­er­ing at the edge of con­ver­sa­tions to the extent that real-estate mogul Doug (a Trumpian John Lith­gow) mis­takes her for a caterer.

In a scene of sud­den apoplexy, Beatriz’s spir­i­tu­al sto­icism splin­ters and she com­mands atten­tion. The cam­era flits between the dom­i­nant con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists (read: rich, white guests) as they prat­tle on about hol­i­day plans. Beat­riz is always framed in iso­la­tion, her face a pic­ture of indig­nant still­ness. ​“Hunt­ing is all about patience,” says Doug, regal­ing the room with his poach­ing anec­dote. After see­ing pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence, Beatriz’s takes a stand, emphat­i­cal­ly voic­ing her repug­nance and throw­ing Doug’s phone against a wall. The room turns to look at her, as if to acknowl­edge her pres­ence for the first time.

It’s worth not­ing that white female rage is often asso­ci­at­ed with tran­scen­dence or tri­umph. With her final act of wicked­ness com­plete, Lady Macbeth’s Kather­ine sits on a fad­ed ochre chaise lounge, front and cen­tre of the frame and final­ly free of sub­jec­tion. For Katherine’s maid Anna (Nao­mi Ack­ie), a woman of colour, her own rage against the help­less­ness of her sit­u­a­tion – seen to be tak­en out on the knead­ing of dough or the scrub­bing of her ward’s skin – man­i­fests itself in mute­ness. Her sta­tus does not afford her the devi­ous­ness required to escape. Like­wise, Beatriz’s final act of vio­lence can only be imag­ined and her fan­ta­sy of ret­ri­bu­tion, in all its blood­thirsty fury, is just that.

Female rage at its core is anar­chic. It’s a snarling and sparkling riposte to cen­turies of imposed sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and silence. And for women watch­ing in the audi­ence? Such char­ac­ters pro­vide some much-need­ed cathar­sis. See­ing tem­per replace timid­i­ty, or pas­sion over­ride pas­siv­i­ty, is a far more accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our emo­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the cur­rent social cli­mate. As Rose McGowan, a vocal cru­sad­er in the sex­u­al assault case against Har­vey Wein­stein told Dazed, ​“a lot of peo­ple are ben­e­fit­ting off us being qui­et.” So why not make like the women in these movies (albeit with­out the mur­der) and embrace the rage that’s burn­ing within?