‘Sexual behaviour doesn’t change a woman’s… | Little White Lies

Sex­u­al behav­iour doesn’t change a woman’s iden­ti­ty’ – Josephine Mack­er­ras on Alice

30 Jul 2020

Words by Zoe Whitfield

A woman in black underwear standing in a doorway, looking directly at the camera.
A woman in black underwear standing in a doorway, looking directly at the camera.
The Aus­tralian writer/​director dis­cuss­es debunk­ing pop­u­lar myths sur­round­ing sex work in her bold debut feature.

Josephine Mack­er­ras’ debut fea­ture might have looked and sound­ed very dif­fer­ent had the slow pace of indus­try for­mal­i­ties and a bare­ly-there bud­get not pro­voked a sense of urgency in the Aus­tralian film­mak­er. Some­thing in me snapped,” she says of her deci­sion to move the pro­duc­tion from Lon­don to Paris, where she was liv­ing at the time. I went crazy and basi­cal­ly just set a date; it was now or nev­er.” The birth of her son Jules while writ­ing the script proved sim­i­lar­ly con­se­quen­tial, prompt­ing Mack­er­ras to revise her draft and anchor the nar­ra­tive in a fam­i­ly unit.

Alice (Emi­lie Pipon­nier) is a moth­er of one (the child is played by the director’s own son; their on-screen home her for­mer apart­ment) with a seem­ing­ly charm­ing hus­band in François (Mar­tin Swabey), a char­ac­ter loose­ly based on sev­er­al men Mack­er­ras knew in Paris. While pay­ing for toi­letries Alice dis­cov­ers that her cred­it cards aren’t work­ing, and fol­low­ing up with the bank, hav­ing been unable to reach François by phone, she learns that the family’s account is emp­ty and they’re a year behind on their mortgage.

It tran­spires that her hus­band has spent it all on high-end sex work­ers, and is now AWOL. In a bid to save her home and re-estab­lish some secu­ri­ty, Alice becomes an escort her­self, in the process uncov­er­ing new per­son­al free­doms and ulti­mate­ly her agency.

The deci­sion to frame Alice around sex work arose from an inter­est in the 2008 Eliot Spitzer case, in which the then Gov­er­nor of New York used cam­paign funds to pay for sex work­ers. Mack­er­ras fol­lowed the blog of a woman who’d been iden­ti­fied in the ensu­ing scan­dal – an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor who lost her job as a result and who, unlike Spitzer, who large­ly returned to pub­lic favour two years lat­er, couldn’t find a teach­ing job even five years on.

I found that fas­ci­nat­ing, that dou­ble stan­dard, and how it can flip on its head inside a het­ero­sex­u­al rela­tion­ship,” Mack­er­ras says. That was a way inside the rela­tion­ship – the film’s not about sex work, it’s about Alice and her meta­mor­pho­sis, lib­er­at­ing her­self from this tox­ic mar­riage. She’d lived by every­one else’s val­ues and was wak­ing up to that idea of being respon­si­ble for this bizarre dynam­ic, of liv­ing through her husband.”

Close-up of two people using camera equipment, man with beard looking at woman wearing headphones.

Jules’ well­be­ing serves as the film’s nucle­us: it makes room for François’ return, else­where pro­vid­ing con­ser­v­a­tive audi­ences with empa­thy for Alice and a sen­si­tiv­i­ty towards her pro­fes­sion­al deci­sions. Hav­ing a child real­ly brought to the fore­front how depen­dent you become on oth­er peo­ple; [Jules] is in this vul­ner­a­ble state alone,” says Mack­er­ras of the set-up. I researched past court cas­es and learned how easy it is to use that prej­u­dice against a woman, if you don’t see beyond the pros­ti­tute label.”

Lat­er scenes broach these labels and the couple’s chang­ing dynam­ics, intro­duc­ing a par­al­lel ver­sion of François to the man we meet in the film’s open­ing shots. In a par­tic­u­lar­ly manip­u­la­tive moment, he describes Alice as the purest per­son” he knows before launch­ing an abu­sive tirade that con­cludes with him weapon­is­ing their son.

In sep­a­rat­ing his behav­iour from hers, his actions speak to an omnipresent cul­ture of belit­tling misog­y­ny and nar­cis­sism. It was a mix­ture of those dou­ble stan­dards,” says Mack­er­ras of these lat­ter emo­tions, but also the idea that she starts as this per­fect’ moth­er and wife, then has this awak­en­ing. Real­is­ing that this tox­i­c­i­ty is going to be passed down to the child if she doesn’t heal her own weaknesses.”

While Alice’s growth is the film’s prin­ci­pal con­cern, the character’s prox­im­i­ty to the sex indus­try pro­vides the film with a polit­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty, echo­ing the wider social dis­course around gen­der roles that con­tin­ue to infil­trate fam­i­ly life today. As Mack­er­ras explains, There’s so much mythol­o­gy around pros­ti­tu­tion and the moth­er: In Catholi­cism you’ve got the vir­gin and the whore, and that flows into our social con­structs. So Alice being a moth­er actu­al­ly turned out to be the most con­tro­ver­sial thing. Of course, on the inside those labels mean noth­ing. She’s just a human being with a strug­gle, and her sex­u­al behav­iour doesn’t change her iden­ti­ty; these are all lies we’ve been fed, par­tic­u­lar­ly as women.”

Alice is avail­able to watch via Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma, BFI Play­er, Bar­bi­can Cin­e­ma On Demand and Ama­zon Prime Video now.

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