Women in Trouble (2009)
By: Sebastian Gutierrez (director, writer)
Starring: Carla Gugino, Adrianne Palicki, Connie Britton, Marley Shelton, Cameron Richardson, Garcelle Beauvais, Caitlin Keats, Simon Baker, Josh Brolin, Emmanuelle Chriqui
A serpentine day in the life of ten seemingly disparate women: a porn star, a flight attendant, a psychiatrist, a masseuse, a bartender, a pair of call girls, etc. All of them with one crucial thing in common. Trouble.
Take a moment and just look at the poster for Women in Trouble. If you’re anything like me, your immediate reaction is one of dubious disgust at the objectification and stereotyping of women in material promoting a film that is ostensibly about them. There are two reasons why I gave this movie a chance: I was hoping that the poster was intended as parody, and I noticed that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in the cast.
As it turns out, the poster wasn’t parody, and the only glimpse of Joseph Gordon-Levitt I noticed was his name in the titles. Logically, I know he’s got to be in there somewhere, but I honestly don’t know where. I didn’t even recognise his character’s name in the credits. I spent the whole film looking for the guy, and never found him. If Women in Trouble was a better film, I’d watch it over again to try and pick him out like a game of Where’s Waldo, but Women in Trouble is definitely not a film I’d voluntarily view again.
It seems innocuous enough on the surface: different women with different issues all randomly connected to each other. Maybe not a new concept, but one with squandered potential, as the entire film smacks of male perception and privilege. The lighthearted tone attempts to gloss over the fact that every, single female character is a blatant stereotype, and does it in such a way that’s inherently demeaning: this is a film for and about you, you should be grateful! Needless to say, I’m not grateful and the film certainly isn’t about me or any women I know. It’s a movie made by a man about how men see women, marketed to women so that they can view it and reaffirm their assigned gender roles. Oh, those silly women, always in trouble!
Give me a fucking break.
I don’t know where you were in this crap, JGL, but I’m disappointed you’re in there at all.
It’s a movie made by a man about how men see women, marketed to women so that they can view it and reaffirm their assigned gender roles.
So what you’re saying is that I’ll probably have an aneurysm if I watch this.
Yes, that is what I am saying. I could have ranted a lot longer about it, but I was out running errands tonight and was rushed to get my review in under the deadline.
There’s a scene where the “vapid but well-intentioned porn star” confesses to the “sexy hippie lesbian masseuse” about how she let her horny dog give her head as a kid.
The movie had a fixation on women going down on each other, too. It got mentioned way too often, like it was playing off the male fantasy of two hot lesbians together.