Women look back: cel­e­brat­ing the advent of the mod­ern neo-noir

This year, two films have rene­go­ti­at­ed the terms between observers and observed in noir-tinged nar­ra­tives, explor­ing the fight for female agency. Chloe Okuno’s Watch­er is a tight thriller about a woman stalked by a man liv­ing across the street, a sto­ry that con­tin­u­ous­ly chal­lenges the rela­tion­ship between sub­ject and object. Park Chan-wook’s Deci­sion To Leave oper­ates on a sim­i­lar lev­el, with a male detec­tive and a female mur­der sus­pect play­ing a game of cat and mouse.

Both Julia (Mai­ka Mon­roe) and Seo-rae (Tang Wei) nav­i­gate a for­eign, some­times hos­tile envi­ron­ment. An Amer­i­can who has relo­cat­ed to Roma­nia with her hus­band Fran­cis (Karl Glus­man) and a recent­ly wid­owed Chi­nese car­er in Busan, these women’s oth­er­ness exerts a mag­net­ic fas­ci­na­tion on locals. New iter­a­tions of the femme fatale arche­type, they man­age to elude the role’s most prob­lem­at­ic impli­ca­tions and find strength in their gaze.

With the police and Fran­cis doubt­ing her san­i­ty, a ter­ri­fied, alien­at­ed Julia cruis­es Bucharest’s under­bel­ly, fol­low­ing the man who’s been leer­ing at her. Seo-rae’s descend­ing tra­jec­to­ry may serve the male pro­tag­o­nist to an extent, but also reveals a woman who care­ful­ly dos­es how much of her­self she’s will­ing to give to Hae-jun (Park Hae-il). Aware the cop is tail­ing her to deter­mine whether she killed her abu­sive hus­band, Seo-rae uses this knowl­edge — and a per­fect­ly timed code-mix­ing of Chi­nese and Kore­an — to stay one step ahead and spy on him instead.

These two exam­ples of female agency are dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from those of the 1940s and 1950s noir. While these clas­sics of the gebre have the mer­it of hav­ing expand­ed the pool of roles for actress­es, they would still fea­ture char­ac­ters inscribed with­in a male-cen­tered nar­ra­tive. This is appar­ent in the way the cam­era framed this sup­pos­ed­ly dead­ly woman, either intro­duced by zoom­ing in on her fig­ure (Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shangai) or through a series of voyeuris­tic details (Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go), under­lin­ing she’s a sight to behold before any­thing else.

Fast for­ward sev­er­al decades and the neo-noir genre now allows female leads to emerge in a new light. Not long after Lau­ra Mul­vey applied the male gaze the­o­ry to film crit­i­cism, there have been attempts to flip the script, reeval­u­at­ing the visu­al rela­tion­ship between women and men.

How­ev­er, the reac­tion to 1983’s indie noir Vari­ety proved the new lan­guage to cri­tique female sto­ries hadn’t stuck quite yet. Bette Gordon’s movie was dubbed ​“a fem­i­nist Ver­ti­go” by LA Week­ly, reduc­ing its rad­i­cal aura in an easy com­par­i­son with a male-focused movie.

A noir in its own right, Vari­ety fol­lows aspir­ing writer Chris­tine (Sandy McLeod). A cashier at an adult cin­e­ma in Times Square, she becomes involved with dis­tin­guished patron Louie (Richard M. David­son), who may have ties with the local mob.

The cam­era lingers on the pro­tag­o­nist watch­ing Louie from afar, sub­se­quent­ly giv­ing this homme fatale the com­part­men­tal­is­ing treat­ment nor­mal­ly reserved for women’s bod­ies, bro­ken into chunks to max­imise male grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Gordon’s film includes a mon­tage of Louie’s hand shak­ing those of var­i­ous busi­ness asso­ciates, mate­ri­al­is­ing Christine’s increas­ing fix­a­tion. Mean­while, she rev­els in this attrac­tion, pro­ject­ing her fan­tasies onto the cin­e­ma screen to awak­en her sex­u­al­i­ty and get her cre­ative juices flowing.

A sim­i­lar­ly dis­missed neo-noir, Jane Campion’s In the Cut is a com­pelling por­tray­al of bur­geon­ing female sex­u­al­i­ty. The adap­ta­tion of Susan­na Moore’s nov­el sees Meg Ryan play­ing against type, trad­ing her America’s sweet­heart per­sona for a less like­able role. An uptight Eng­lish teacher liv­ing in New York City, Ryan’s Fran­nie gets entan­gled in a heinous mur­der with no-non­sense detec­tive Mal­loy (Mark Ruf­fa­lo), whom she sus­pects may be behind it.

Frannie’s sex­u­al renais­sance occurs through visu­al per­cep­tions first and fore­most. In one of the movie’s most shock­ing scenes, the pro­tag­o­nist spots a woman giv­ing a blowjob to a mys­tery man in the back of a bar and stands there, mes­merised. Lat­er on, she’s cap­ti­vat­ed by Malloy’s mat­ter-of-fact demeanour, study­ing his every move in the streets as she does in the bedroom.

But it’s anoth­er sequence that indi­cates a change in Fran­nie, whose resis­tance to eye con­tact sud­den­ly switch­es. In the back of Malloy’s patrol car, she holds his part­ner Rodriguez’s (Nick Dam­i­ci) gaze in the rearview mir­ror as he’s ques­tion­ing her with pry­ing eyes. This is a fore­bod­ing moment of what’s to come, with Campion’s film effec­tive­ly con­vey­ing the famil­iar ter­ror and hyper-expo­sure women face for sim­ply exist­ing next to men, even those who have sworn to pro­tect and serve.

While In the Cut’s cen­tral romance — refresh­ing­ly pri­ori­tis­ing female plea­sure — doesn’t ques­tion het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty, Lana and Lily Wachowskis’ direc­to­r­i­al debut Bound rejects the straight­ness of most noir in favour of queer love. Jen­nifer Tilly’s Vio­let is undoubt­ed­ly a femme fatale, yet she only has eyes for Corky (Gina Ger­shon), a butch-cod­ed les­bian work­ing in her build­ing. Knee-deep in the local mafia via her mon­ey laun­der­ing boyfriend Cae­sar (Joe Pan­to­liano), Vio­let knows her queer­ness is sub­ver­sive in this tox­ic, male environment.

Steer­ing away from the unbal­anced dynam­ic between men and women in noir, Bound presents Vio­let and Corky as equals. The film grad­u­al­ly builds a bridge between the two women, whose secret bond blos­soms through long­ing stares and beau­ti­ful­ly chore­o­graphed inti­mate sequences. (The Wachowskis brought sex edu­ca­tor Susie Bright on board for these.)

Sight takes cen­tre stage in this neo-noir, too. After their first time togeth­er, a sat­ed Corky whis­pers, ​“I can see again.” In the sec­ond act, Vio­let rush­es past Corky’s hide­out, man­han­dled by an unhinged Cae­sar. It’s a split-sec­ond scene: Vio­let silent­ly glances at the peep­hole, trust­ing Corky would be on the oth­er side.

Regain­ing a stripped-away agency doesn’t always guar­an­tee a hap­py end­ing, though. Whether it’s Variety’s casu­al street harass­ment or In the Cut’s graph­ic killings, the threat of vio­lence against women looms large in these movies. Some of the great noir sto­ries of the past didn’t steer clear of gen­der-based cru­el­ty, either. They were just too focused on male heroes — at times more fatale than any femme could ever be — to inves­ti­gate the roots of these women’s subjugation.

The strict­ly gen­der-cod­ed visu­al and pow­er rela­tions may have shift­ed since, yet the risks of inhab­it­ing the world as a woman are still very vis­i­ble in neo-noir, mir­ror­ing the macro and micro-aggres­sions of real life.

Dis­put­ing the very def­i­n­i­tion of femme fatale, neo-noir has spawned more relat­able, raw­er, fun­nier depic­tions of wom­an­hood and sex­u­al­i­ty. These female and gen­der-non­con­form­ing char­ac­ters defi­ant­ly inhab­it their bod­ies and dis­rupt tra­di­tion­al­ly male spaces and roles. These pro­tag­o­nists thrive despite sys­temic male vio­lence, hint­ing at a con­ver­sa­tion about ​‘Yes All Men’ some are still reluc­tant to have.