France

Paris Was Ours

mandy — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

“Paris lives in its details,” observes one contributor to this collection of essays. But equally true is the idea of Paris that thrives through clichés. You’ll find spare references to the Eiffel Tower, berets, cheese, and wine in Paris Was Ours, although the apparently ineluctable forms of French snobbery are discussed. What this anthology delivers instead are a wide breadth of creative and nuanced meditations on the culture, history, and inhabitants of the City of Light, confirming that all our romantic associations with Paris, despite the city’s faults, are quite justified.

Paris Was Ours offers a diversity of voices and topics, and in this regard, it is a superior resource among the proliferating anthologies on the city. (Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon and Sarah Turnbull’s Almost French come to mind.) The contributors range from well-known writer David Sedaris and poet C.K. Williams, to a homeless woman, a chef, an Iranian revolution escapee, and various scholars. There are translations in the book from Arabic, Spanish, and French.

Paris Was Ours serves as a useful introduction to French culture, and even the most frequent travelers to France will find it illuminates what can oftentimes be perplexing Parisian mores, such as their disdain for discussing money matters, heavy-handed parenting style, chic fashion sense, tangled bureaucratic systems, insistence on a well-rounded and balanced quality of life, and greater acceptance of human shortcomings in their political leaders. Reading the book had the satisfying effect of gaining a greater appreciation for living in France, and perhaps by some comparison, the United States.

One discovery I made is that, for many of the writers, living in Paris afforded a certain liberation that led to greater self-knowledge and appreciation. “People just find themselves here,” says one Uighur journalist. Valerie Steiker, in “Fledgling Days,” whose sojourn was motivated by her desire to connect with her deceased mother by re-living similar Parisian experiences, learns about humility and self-reliance. In “Understanding Chic,” Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni discovers that “[t]he secret to acquiring chic… is to correct negative thinking.” In “Just Another American,” African American student Janet McDonald describes how Paris freed her from being perceived mainly through the confines of racial assumptions:

The French drew no such [racial] distinctions, which meant I no longer had to worry about making African Americans look good. Or bad. Whatever I did was attributed to Americanness, not blackness. What a switch – a black person with the power to make white people look bad.

No discussion of Paris is complete without mention of seduction and romance, and there is certainly plenty of that in this collection. One standout essay is “Love Without Reason,” where student of post-structural theory Caroline Weber draws comparisons between Lacan’s views on human desire and her foray into becoming “a one-woman band of seduction.” In “Ma Vie Bohème,” Karen Shur sensually describes the days and nights spent with her lover in their scant apartment. Brigid Dorsey, in “Litost,” tells the heartbreaking story of her failed romantic relationship with the father of her child.

Paris Was Ours will conjure nostalgic feelings for those who have lived in Paris, and wanderlust for those who have yet to visit. Many aspects of Parisian life are captured in such original and surprising ways that I found the book tough to put down and almost as good as walking down the Champs-Élysées.

Written by: Abigail Licad, April 16th 2011

Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in Nineteenth-Century France

mandy — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Christine Adams

University of Illinois Press

The Society for Maternal Charity, a women-run organization, survived more than one hundred years through wars, revolutions, and changes of government. The group began because the large numbers of foundlings, abandoned due to poverty, were not only expensive for the State but had a very high mortality rate. The women’s societies were viewed as better bargains than orphanages and an extension of the women’s domestic sphere. Besides, France needed population for cannon fodder in its many wars.

The same dichotomous themes marked the Society’s growth and demise as we see today: rich/poor, government/private, national/local, stay-at-home/working mothers, male/female, and resentment by the poor/blindness of the rich. The same hot button questions existed in the nineteenth century: the worthy poor versus the lazy hordes, married women versus single tarts, breastfeeding versus wet nurses, the question of whether women were positive influences in society to “clean up” messes and women as children.

Even after the French Revolution, women remained barred from politics and civic affairs. But from participation in these organizations, they gained valuable skills and leadership training. Many of the societies had large budgets and staff giving the women executive experience. The Society raised money, lobbied politicians, and ran formidable businesses. These women from the elite classes proved that women could do hard work by going into ghettos and experiencing situations they had never imagined, let alone encountered.

These groups originated many business principles that today we consider basic: accountability by detailed financial statements, transparency by annual published reports, and maintaining minutes of meetings. They understood that often the husband’s interests didn’t align with the wife’s, and thus they gave the aid directly to the woman. Today, it is axiomatic in international aid that assistance should go to women, because they will spend it on the family while men may not.

The Society was eventually brought down by a perception that they were enforcing religious doctrine by insisting that the women have a religious marriage and enforcing morals such as that the recipients breastfeed and be “proper” women. The Society as a whole was faulted for relying on these religious precepts, though less than fifty percent of the organizations held these beliefs. Yet, the issue of the deserving versus undeserving poor is based on the impact of religion in political affairs. In reverse, the Bush Administration deliberately favored faith-based charities, as doing the job that government should not.

As France became more secular and organized, they recognized the potential power of civic organizations and tried to rein them in. They created model statutes and bylaws and required the Society to adopt them. When the Society refused, the funding stopped and the Society died.

Prior to the welfare state, all assistance was charity. States still question if it is a duty to provide for the poor. By demanding money from the state, the Society made the point that the State had responsibility to care for the poor. Christine Adams, the author of Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood, claims that these societies are the reason that France, as most of the European Union, has a much better welfare state with specific provisions for pregnant women and families, more generous vacations, health care, paternity leaves, etc. The women’s Societies, women’s work, should be given due credit.

Written by: Dianne Post, December 31st 2010

Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in Nineteenth-Century France

tina — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Christine Adams

University of Illinois Press

The women-run organization The Society for Maternal Charity survived more than a hundred years of wars, revolutions, and government changes. Initially the group began because of the number of children being abandoned due to poverty. Not only were these foundlings expensive for the state, but they also had a very high mortality rate. Women’s societies were viewed as more ideal than orphanages and seen as an extension of the women’s domestic sphere.

In following the growth and demise of the Society, Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in Nineteenth-Century France covers the themes of rich/poor, government/private, national/local, stay at home v. working mothers, male v. female-run, and the resentment by the poor/blindness of the rich. The author, Christine Adams, also outlines hot button issues that existed in the nineteenth century: the worthy poor versus the lazy hordes; married women versus single tarts; breast feeding versus wet nurses; and the question of whether or not women were positive influences in society, there to “clean up messes.”

Even after the French revolution women remained barred from politics and civic affairs, but through participation in these organizations they gained valuable skills and leadership training. Many of the societies had large budgets and staff, giving the women executive experience. The Society raised money, lobbied politicians, and ran formidable businesses. Women from the elite classes proved that they could make a difference by going into rough neighborhoods and aiding in situations they had never imagined, let alone encountered.

As Adams illustrates in Poverty, Charity and Motherhood, these maternal societies created many business principles, such as accountability, transparency, and sustainability. The societies understood that a husband’s interests often didn’t align with the wife’s, so aid must be given directly to women.

The Society was eventually brought down because it was believed they were enforcing religious doctrine; the Society insisted women have religious marriages and it required them to act as “proper women.” As a whole the Society was faulted for relying on these religious precepts, though less than fifty percent of the organizations held these beliefs.

Prior to the welfare state, all assistance was charity. By demanding money from the state, the Society made it clear that the State had a responsibility to care for the poor. Adams claims that these societies are the reason that France and other European countries have a much better welfare state, with specific provisions for pregnant women and families, more generous vacations, health care, paternity leave, etc. The women’s Societies should be given due credit.

While the Societies signaled many of the issues that remain today, as Adams points out, they were not strong enough to consider the implications of inequality in their own lives; a different brand of woman had to do that. As with the “club women” of today, they do offer a valuable service: they are training grounds for women’s leadership and they should be given credit for the work they do.

Written by: , October 30th 2010

Partir (Leaving)

annette — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Catherine Corsini

IFC Films

David McKenzie’s Asylum is a flawed but breathtakingly compelling portrait of violent sexual obsession, deception, and mental illness. Unremittingly dark, this film also presents us with a woman who rails against the constraints placed on women in 1950s middle class Britain.

Stella (Natasha Richardson) is a bored housewife who makes her home on the grounds of a mental hospital outside London. She’s married to Max (Hugh Bonneville), a pompous overbearing psychiatrist who makes it clear that she is expected to devote all of her energies to helping him rise to the top of the hospital hierarchy. The servants who cook meals, clean the house, and care for Stella’s son guarantee that Stella never has anything productive to do.

Stella has a chance encounter with Edgar (Marton Csokas), an inmate who is repairing the gazebo in her garden. They are both instantly attracted and begin having steamy trysts. Edgar, who has been institutionalized after having murdered his wife, is denied release from the asylum. Frustrated, he escapes and re-establishes contact with Stella once he is safely ensconced in a squalid cold-water flat in London.

Meanwhile, Max’s rival, Dr. Peter Cleave (Sir Ian McKellen) puts two and two together and confronts Stella, demanding to know where Edgar is. When Stella refuses, he reminds her that Max, as her husband, can have her committed to the asylum. Stella, trapped and caught in the full grip of hybristophilia, runs to Edgar.

Why did I choose to start off this review of Partir (Leaving) with a synopsis of a completely different film? Quite frankly, the plot of Partir is startlingly similar to Asylum. Although Partir is set in twenty-first century France, both films are keenly rendered character portraits of strong-willed British women who’ve grown tired of sacrificing their happiness for their families’ sake and decide to follow their hearts to tragic results.

Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an Englishwoman who’s called France home for more than two decades. She is a stay-at-home mother who decides to go back to work after fifteen years out of the paid labor force. She is completing her training as a physiotherapist, something she’d planned to do before having children. Suzanne is married to Samuel (Yvan Attal), a pompous overbearing doctor, who reluctantly sinks a small fortune into fixing up a shed for her home office.

The man in charge of fixing up the space is Ivan (Sergi Lopez), a Spaniard who went to prison for “kid’s stuff.” When Suzanne causes an accident that causes Ivan to break his ankle, the guilt-ridden Suzanne to offer him a ride to Spain so that Ivan can visit his young daughter. The two, who already feel attracted, embark on a passionate affair.

Suzanne leaves her husband after confessing the affair and unsuccessfully trying to end it. Samuel, who seems to view Suzanne as more of a possession than an equal partner, resorts to blacklisting the couple to the point of starvation and freezing the bank accounts, not at all willing to give Suzanne a quick divorce.

Despite its derivativeness, Partir still managed to absorb me. This is in no small part due to Kristen Scott Thomas’ subtly commanding performance. Scott Thomas effortlessly conveys Suzanne’s conflicting emotions through her eyes and nearly imperceptible gestures.

I also like the fact that Corsini doesn’t feel the need to tell us everything. Many of the films climactic scenes end rather abruptly, requiring the audience to draw its own conclusions and Partir’s lean eighty-five minute run time guarantees that the film’s pacing doesn’t lag.

Partir doesn’t shy away from its feminist subtext, exploring the invisibility and frustrations of homemakers at length. Partir, in brutally honest scenes, depicts how easy it is for a vindictive husband to use his financial clout to punish an errant wife.

Given the date of its release and its serious subject matter, I anticipate Partir becoming a contender for Best Foreign Language Film. (It’s in French with English subtitles). Nominations for its cast and director are probably in short order, too.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, October 26th 2010

Welcome

priyanka — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Phillippe Lioret

Nord-Ouest Productions

Phillippe Lioret’s award-winning film, Welcome, zooms in on the anti-Muslim attitudes now gripping much of the Western world. The result is compelling, poignant, and profoundly tragic.

At the center of the story is Bilal (Firat Ayverdi), a seventeen-year-old Iraqi Kurd who has somehow traveled to Calais, a small city on the northern coast of France. While the details of his voyage out of Kurdistan are sketchy, it is obvious that the trip has exacted a horrifying toll and viewers see Bilal as he struggles with the emotional aftermath—in flashbacks—of having been tortured by police as he moved from country to country.

At the same time, Bilal is bullheaded, and fiercely determined not to let political and social roadblocks deter him. After all, he knows what he wants: His goal is to reach England and be reunited with the girl of his dreams, Mina, and join a Manchester soccer team.

But how to get there? After several failed attempts to hide in vehicles headed for Britain, Bilal decides to swim the thirty-two kilometer English Channel that separates Calais from his desired destination. To do this, Bilal needs to become more adept in the water and he enrolls in classes taught by instructor Simon Calmat (Vincent Lindon), a middle-aged former Olympian.

At first, the kid repels Simon—he is clearly illegal and Simon wants no part in aiding and abetting him. His lessons, which Bilal has paid for, are perfunctory, the work of a teacher who couldn’t care less whether his student learns or not. Then something happens that causes Simon to have a change of heart. After he is served his divorce papers, Simon abruptly decides to help Bilal. This shift, of course, has nothing to do with the boy, but is instead a calculated attempt to win back Marion (Audrey Dana), his ex.

The reasoning is simple: Marion volunteers at an outdoor soup kitchen that feeds undocumented and homeless men, and Simon believes that if Marion learns that he is helping Bilal—even going so far as to put him up in his flat—she will be so touched that she’ll return to him. Sound far-fetched? Well, yeah. But what often happens in everyday life happens here. That is, the one-on-one encounters between Simon and Bilal result in life-transforming changes in Simon. As he gets to know Bilal and hears his story, the young man morphs from the Alien Other into someone for whom Simon feels deep respect and admiration.

In short order, Simon is driven to act, ignoring French immigration law to help Bilal reach his journey’s end. The risks are enormous. At one point, Simon’s neighbors report him to police, prompting an investigation into whether he is harboring an undesirable foreigner. It’s grim stuff, calling up seventy-year-old images of Christians protecting Jews, queers, and communists from Nazi thugs.

Lioret’s rendering is sympathetic without ever becoming maudlin. Simon comes across as painfully real—as do Bilal and his always-scheming friends and associates. At the same time, Welcome’s reach extends beyond the personal to the political, in this case highlighting the lunacy of France’s immigration policies—policies that elevate demonization over understanding and judgment over compassion. The end result is a film that makes us wonder what we can do to help the strangers in our midst. What’s more, it asks us whom we—as a society and as individuals—are willing to welcome, and why.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, October 20th 2010

Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris

admin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:19:00 +0000

By Jennifer Anne Boittin

University of Nebraska Press

Interwar Paris conjures up images of romance and renewal. From the ashes and rubble of the First World War, families reunite and rebuild under what seemed to be the end of the most dire of circumstances. Unfortunately, Colonial Metropolis fails to capture this magic, and yet it is an extremely thoughtful and methodical review of the local primary source material available, and would serve as a very strong academic referral source.

The author, Jennifer Anne Boittin, has a clear passion for the subject matter and conveys this well through her enthusiastic descriptions of the characters of the period who populated the anti-colonialism and feminist movements. The problem, for me, stems from the fact that we never feel the interaction between these players. These characters never seem to weave together into the larger story of feminist and anti-colonial activism, the tale that Boittin is seemed so hopeful to tell at the outset of the book.

Boittin lifts directly from the historical record to bring a multitude of characters from this period to life, but none so well as that as Josephine Baker. Pages and pages are dedicated to bringing her tantalizing and mischievous performances to life. Imagine the dedication and zeal of Marina Abramović crossed with the free wheeling sexual spirit of Isadora Duncan. Who wouldn’t want to be warped back to the front row for that show of an old theater in Paris?

With these high sensory moments scattered throughout, readers catch glimpses of the time gone by that was advertised to them, but even the best of these moments failed to sustain me from page to page. Clearly, Boittin’s integrity to the historical record speaks to her virtues as an academic; it just doesn’t make for a particularly interesting read.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, August 2nd 2010

Captive Queen: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine

admin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Alison Weir

Ballantine Books

Alison Weir is first a historian, and it shows in Captive Queen. She studied Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 1970s and 1990s and realized one day that “the nature of medieval biography, particularly of women, is the piecing together of fragments of information and making sense of them. It can be a frustrating task, as there are often gaps that you know you can never fill.”

Captive Queen explores Eleanor’s life from just before her marriage to Henry FitzEmpress (later Henry II, King of England) until just after Henry’s death in 1189. There is also an epilogue that covers her death in 1204. At the beginning, there’s a map of lower England and Aquitaine, Normandy, Brittany, and France, which are all parts of present-day France. Also included is a helpful flowchart of Eleanor and Henry’s genealogy, which I referred to numerous times when I was trying to remember minor characters.

The novel itself is split into five parts, each representing a stage in Eleanor’s life and marriage to Henry. The first part is a rosy depiction of Eleanor’s early life with Henry. At the time of their wedding, he was eighteen and she was twenty-nine and already had two daughters. They were married just two months after the annulment of her marriage to the King of France, Louis VII. Eleanor’s marriage to King Henry was tumultuous: she fought with Henry often about his rule of her lands. At the same time, however, it was steamy; it wasn’t even twenty pages in before the first bedroom scene occurs. Still, it’s clear she wanted a partnership of equals, not a man to rule over her as husband and lord, which was the norm at the time, especially for women in royalty.

The following four parts accentuate her desire to be included in affairs of state, rule her lands equitably, and be treated as more than “the wife of King Henry and mother of his children.” The second part covers her apparent rivalry with Thomas Becket. In the third part, Weir writes about Eleanor and Henry’s sons: Young Henry, Richard (who would become Richard the Lionheart), Geoffrey, and John (later to become King John, best known for signing the Magna Carta and for being a primary antagonist in most Robin Hood legends).

After encouraging her sons to rebel (unsuccessfully) against their father, Henry placed Eleanor under house arrest for more than fifteen years, most notably in Sarum, Wiltshire (the earliest settlement of present-day Salisbury, England). There, she received very little news from outside the confines of her imprisonment but was finally freed upon Henry’s death in 1189. In the novel, she says to her gaoler, “Master Berneval, I command you, in the name of King Richard, to set me at liberty at once.” And he does.

Two things irked me about Captive Queen, and neither are the author’s fault. The first is Henry’s repeated insistence (and everyone else’s assumption) that women are meant to be child-bearers and nothing more. Eleanor herself even notes that she is most proud of her daughters when they produce children—hopefully sons—for their husbands. The second is that Eleanor’s life revolves around the men in it, no matter how much she wants to rule her lands herself or how intelligent and magnanimous she is in acting as Henry’s regent. The first thing is the unfortunate sexist reality Eleanor had to deal with during her lifetime. The second is related; Weir’s frustration at being able to find only a very few fragments of Eleanor’s life basically forced her to study the men surrounding Eleanor and often make conjectures about her based on what was written about them.

It’s clear in reading that Alison Weir did a lot of research before penning Captive Queen as a fiction. After all, she writes, “What is the point of a historical novel... based on a real person if the author does not take pains to make it authentic as possible?” For fans of medieval Europe, this book is a must read. Just beware that the author made it as authentic as possible, right down to the sexism of the time period.

Written by: Viannah Duncan, July 18th 2010

Coco Before Chanel

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Directed by Anne Fontaine

Sony Pictures Classics

Spoiler Alert Prior to seeing this movie, I associated Coco Chanel with couture fashion and high society women with size two figures, like Audrey Hepburn and Nancy Reagan. Coco Before Chanel introduces us to the woman Chanel was before revolutionizing women’s fashion and becoming a fashion icon to the rich, famous and not so famous. This beautifully shot film humanizes Chanel and brings her to life by showing that she had insecurities, complexity, and visionary genius as a designer.

We first meet Chanel in her humble beginnings as a young girl left at a French orphanage with her sister Adrienne by their distant father. Chanel waited faithfully for him to visit the orphanage every Sunday to no avail. She and Adrienne are taught how to sew by the nuns at the orphanage, and when we meet the sisters again, they are supporting themselves as seamstresses by day and a sister song and dance act by night. After Adrienne elopes with a French nobleman, Chanel is unable to line up work as a solo act and decides to show up uninvited on the doorstep of Etienne, a wealthy and somewhat decadent Baron she had met in Paris who seems to have a sincere affection for her despite his rakish ways.

After Etienne informs her that she can only stay for a couple of days, Chanel stays on against his wishes and transforms herself into an Annie Hall-like muse by tailoring some of Etienne’s clothes to suit her waif-like figure and literally crashing (on horseback) a picnic he is hosting. Etienne finds Chanel entertaining and unique, and she ends up becoming a kind of mascot (and mistress) to him.

This movie effectively weaves Chanel’s personal metamorphosis with her evolution as a fashion visionary. In one pivotal scene, Etienne takes Chanel to the races and leaves her alone on the lawn while he sits in the more expensive box seats. As the camera pans over the crowd, we see through Chanel’s eyes, exposing the excessively ornate beading and ruffles on the women’s clothing, and realize her unique vision of how women’s clothing could look.

Coco Before Chanel is one of those films that stayed with me for days after I had seen it. Audrey Tatou’s transcendent and lifelike portrayal of Chanel is inspired, and director Anne Fontaine paints a fascinating portrait of a complex and talented woman. One may take issue with Chanel’s pragmatic approach to her relationship with Etienne, but a key piece of dialog in the movie explains the place of women in the world at that time: when Boy Capel (a love interest) asks Etienne if he can “borrow” Chanel for a couple of days, after a few thoughtful moments, Etienne assents adding, “Maybe it’s just what she needs to clear her head.”

Written by: Gita Tewari, November 11th 2009

Taken

admin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:04:00 +0000

Directed by Pierre Morel

20th Century Fox

Reading this review will tell you all you need to know about Taken. If you haven't see the film, perhaps now is the time for you to cease reading, as spoilers abound. Then again, the film follows an overused and clichéd Hollywood format that makes spoilage an inevitability if you've a tendency for moviegoing, and my commentary on Taken might be more worth your while than viewing the ninety-minute film. The choice is yours to make.

Ever wonder what you'd get by mixing sexist stereotypes with ones about Muslims? Oh wait, I think that's happened before -- many, many times. Taken is just the most recent example of this ever-present phenomenon, and it has brought in $124 million to date. Apparently tired tropes sell.

Liam Neeson plays the estranged father, Bryan Mills, of Kim (Maggie Grace), a spoiled yet sweet seventeen-year-old girl who lives with her mother (Famke Janssen) and step-father in posh American splendor. Mills recently quit his job—which he describes as being a "preventer" for an unspecified special ops entity run by the US government—in order to build a relationship with his daughter. The conflict begins almost immediately, as Kim requires her father's legal permission to go on an adult-free, intercontinental vacation with a friend to follow U2's European Tour. (She initially tells her dad she'll be spending the summer in Paris). Dad tells Daughter that the world is a dangerous place. Mom tells dad he's being overprotective. Dad caves in hopes of engendering Daughter's love.

When Kim and her friend Amanda, a sexually permissive nineteen-year-old whose sole role in Taken is to put the two young women in danger by following her hormonal whims, arrive in Paris they are promptly snatched up by a group of men, but not before we learn that Kim is a virgin. We discover within minutes (thanks to Dad's "particular set of skills") that the girls have been taken by a group of Muslim Albanians that specialize in kidnapping of young, foreign girls who are traveling alone (read: without male protection) and are to be sold into sexual slavery. The star and crescent tattoo on the captor's hand somehow lets Dad know that he has ninety-six hours to save Daughter.

So how does Mills do it? By being hyper-masculine to the point of invincibility, of course. These Muslim men stole his property, after all, and he wants it back. (The kidnapping is to be read, in part, as the fault of overly permissive and naive Mom who used guilt to override Dad's "reason" to allow Daughter go to Paris, which included colluding in Daughter's lying to Dad and using ridiculous Dr. Phil-like platitudes about "not smothering" Daughter.) The mission of this now-enraged father will not be thwarted, and all tactics (including rampant killing and bodily torture) are at his disposal to save poor Kim while her purity is still in tact.

Being a virgin, and therefore highly valuable, Kim is singled out for sale to a wealthy businessman. Unfortunately, sluttish Amanda is not so fortunate and Mills finds her dead of a drug overdose, a punishment for failing to be sexually chaste. After looking in a number of seedy places, Mills works his way up the food chain to the elite meat market where he sees Kim sold—after being described as "certified pure"—for half a million dollars to an older Arab man. (Kim isn't the girl sold to this man. He has bought a veritable harem of virgins who are dolled up and dressed in white lace robes, which veil their young faces, before being bought to his bed chamber.)

I already told you that Mills saves Kim, and that's where the story neatly ends. We don't find out what happens to the rest of the girls or the traffickers that Mills encounters on his quest. And really, he makes it quite clear that he's not interested in their fate, which he sees as just a part of the business. Mills only cares about the fate of Kim because she is his daughter, and therefore, his quest was personal. (He tells this to one of the higher-ups, just before he kills him.)

Lest lascivious France escape unscathed, the French government benefits from human sexual slavery too, padding their pockets through the sale of female flesh. Interestingly, the system of trafficking itself is never scrutinized; it's simply accepted as the way things are. Except that what is shown in Taken is not really the way things are in the world of sex trafficking.

For starters, it is extremely uncommon for an American girl to be trafficked. Instead, the victims tend to be women who "originate from countries experiencing political and economic instability, internal displacement, militarism, civil unrest, internal armed conflict, and natural disasters." Women who are trafficked tend to be from Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, not the United States—but reality doesn't serve Taken's cautionary, paternalistic, white supremacist tale. In order to effectively convey its fearmongering, Taken needs its victim to be a picture of feminine perfection: lily white, innocent, young, beautiful, and American. (Kim even dreams of being a singer instead of taking advantage of her family's economic privilege to pursue a more cerebrally engaging career.)

The use of anti-Muslim and anti-feminist fare in Hollywood blockbusters is certainly nothing new. (What is interesting, though, is how other reviews have ignored—or promoted—their use in Taken.) It is ironic that the makers of Taken actually reinforce the ideas that make sex trafficking possible. Advocating for social, political, and economic equality of marginalized populations is one method endorsed to curb the sale of women and build struggling economies through legal means. You see, viewing someone through a lens of humanity has the funny effect of making it more difficult to treat them as chattel or evildoers. I guess the makers of Taken didn't get that memo.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, February 12th 2009

The Women Incendiaries

admin — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 03:03:00 +0000

By Edith Thomas

Haymarket Books

The Women Incendiaries was reprinted in paperback this year from the nonprofit book publisher, Haymarket Books. This classic feminist text was first published in France in 1963 and translated to English three years later. It describes the role women played in the Paris Commune, an anarchist-socialist government that took hold of Paris for two months in the spring of 1871.

This book is not a light read, but for anyone who has interest in the current political atmosphere, this revolutionary tale provides historical significance. It was a time, much like our own, when military defeat and poor political leadership encouraged an ever-widening disparity between rich and poor. The disillusionment of the working class was at an all time high, and personal dignity was often sacrificed in the name of survival.

And of those who suffered, women were one of the most transgressed. Their mother-wife role in the patriarchal society was clear, but as the working poor they were unable to live up to this moral standard, and those with money and power condemned them for it. Many of the female revolutionaries of the time rightly believed that women’s rights were an inextricable part of worker’s rights, and you could not have one without the other. With this conviction in mind, they took a large part in organizing and fighting within revolutionary organizations, including the French socialist movement that gave rise to the Paris Commune. The role they played in this battle for dignity, and its effect on the future of women’s liberation, is not mentioned in history books. But thanks to historian Edith Thomas, we have a detailed and unflinching account of these inspiring feminists.

Unfortunately, the author isn’t writing for the uninitiated. Her audience is primarily women’s studies students and historians. Thankfully, she takes extensive footnotes, and leaves a trail of books to which the reader can go for more information. If you’re a fan of classic feminist literature, this book is a must for your collection.

Written by: Jessica Star Rockers, September 1st 2007

The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes

admin — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:41:00 +0000

By Tess Uriza Holthe

Crown Publishers

No point beating about the bush. Might as well get the finale over with right now at the top, instead of coyly building to it with flourishes of logic and neat exempla. Here goes.

This is one terrific book Tess Uriza Holthe has written. It's tough, slapstick, delicate, witty, bawdy, rueful and superbly crafted. One minute she throws her head back in laughter; the next she whips out a blade and knifes you in the ribs. Can't trust her at all, meaning she's the best sort of writer. There are lots of good characters, too, women and men: a Scots enforcer, three widows all once married to the same man, a band of gypsy pickpockets, a hard ex-con who finds happiness with a street urchin and vice versa, a Jewish mother and son, a master lace maker, a snoopy wife who suffers migraines, a young French woman who marries a rich good-hearted American only to discover that he's mentally ill and drug-addicted. These characters are unusual and engrossing, including the not-so-likable ones. In fact, now I think of it, most of the good ones aren't so good all the way around, and the bad ones aren't so bad all the way around - which is to say that they have dimension and are recognizably human.

However hard the surfaces are sometimes, and they do get hard, there are knots of love in these stories. But this ain't chick lit. No way. Rakish heroes and heaving bosoms do not abound in Holthe's worlds. She's too Annie Oakley smart. Miss Sure Shot, you know. Can throw a dozen glass balls in the air and get 'em all before they hit the ground. That good. A champ. And the dust jacket design is very nice, too, by the bye, and useful to see the locations, which are mostly the Italian and French Rivieras, the Côte d'Azur. So, to put the conclusion before the facts: I highly suggest you pedal your Schwinn to an independent bookstore and buy this collection of interrelated short fictions by Holthe. Read it. Savor it. Dig it. You'll be glad you plunked down your bucks. You'll be advising your friends to do the same.

So now that's clear, time for some convincing details. How about this fine, calm image of the exterior of a wealthy château in Cannes that the protagonist, Claudette, comes back to after a few years' absence in the U.S.:

The château is heartbreakingly beautiful in the soft twilight. Mauve and rose light upon the clay-colored exterior and black wrought-iron railing...Blue cornflowers and red poppies rustling in the warm breeze. Cypress and plane trees leaning in to shade the house. Ivy climbing alongside magenta bougainvillea. Two small red birds flutter and hop on the faded red-tiled roof, craning necks down, small jerks of their heads as they listen to her fumble for the copper skeleton key…

And those two birds!

Or how about this, a nice contrast, in which Clara thinks Alberto, the man she has just intentionally knocked into the bushes, is a thief, and confronts him. He will become her husband, of course.

[S]ince she was certain Alberto was a thief, albeit a good-looking one, ...she said, "You can stuff your hand up a pig's behind, you pig!" He blinked. "A pig's behind?" But she had called him a pig. Did she then mean for him to stick his hand up his own behind?

The superbly crafted aspect of these stories turns up in their interrelations, not only in the excellent, concise writing. A character who is the protagonist in one story will turn up as a minor character in the next. Three typical, young, American male tourists pass through a couple of stories. That street urchin links the Scots heavy to the ex-con. The gypsy pickpockets have two stories, but figure prominently in a third, the one in which the rich American meets his unkind fate. And so on.

A different facet of Holthe's craft is on display in the bashing but comic story "The Bruiser." She takes a big chance in this story with her Scots protagonist, Colin Fergusen. He's not exactly your typical enforcer: He likes yoga and aromatherapy, can't get a Ricky Nelson tune out of his head and admires American advertising. But even more, when he speaks or thinks, it's in the brogue of his country. Like this:

In America ye couldnay smoke in certain public places. That's what he heard telt. Nay joke. Imagine that. People claiming the air around ye. He'd never make it there. He inhaled deeply and let the smoke oot through his nostrils. Worked like a charm in calming yer nerves. If he couldnay had a smoke at will he'd be a goner.

Hoot mon, dialects are tricky. Some readers will turn off if it's not done perfectly. Well, Holthe not only pulls it off for Colin's speech and his interior monologues, she also has some fun by making the omniscient narrator's voice in brogue as well. Note above, for example, "He inhaled deeply and let the smoke oot through his nostrils." A sight quibble in this matter, though: To me, "yin" does not equal Scots for "one," and so every time this word appears it's a minor distraction.

Is every story equally good, then? Almost, but not quite. "Weightless," about a young American woman who steps into an affair with an Italian fisherman who is having an affair with his brother's wife, goes on too long. And it also seems not very well borrowed from a Henry James American-innocent-abroad-in-Europe narrative.

Nonetheless, she's a sly, funny coyote, Holthe is, when she tells her tales. And most of them, BTW, do not have little, pink bows at the end. Whew. Thank goodness. Just like life.

Okay, that's it. Enough. End of review. Go to your independent bookstore; buy a copy of The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes. You'll be glad you did, but I already said that, didn't I?

Written by: Neil Flowers, July 29th 2007

The Bridesmaid

admin — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:32:00 +0000

Directed by Claude Chabrol

First Run Features

Claude Chabrol is a grandfather of French cinema; he is one of the major figures of the French New Wave who is still making frequent, full-length films. Recently released in the US on DVD, Chabrol’s 2004 film, The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d’honneur), is a tightly wound thriller that has been compared to Hitchcock, and seems classic yet altogether contemporary.

Another Chabrol film based on a Ruth Rendell novel (the last was 1995’s La Ceremonie), the main plot revolves around Philippe (Benoit Magimel), whose sister gets married and has Senta (Laura Smet) in the wedding party as a titular bridesmaid. There is something instantly between the steady, responsible Philippe and the wild-child Senta, who, we learn, changes her name every six months and certainly has secrets in her past deeper than that. Philippe gives up his reliable persona when he meets Senta; he becomes obsessed with her, irresponsible with his duties and his family. Senta casts a spell on him; she does not seem like a fully realized character, however, and is instead everything that Philippe desires in his own life. In this way, Chabrol fails to fully develop the most fascinating aspect of his film: his femme fatale.

There are several subplots that also come to fruition within the main story, such as Philippe’s mother and her sleazy boyfriend, Philippe’s younger sister’s rebelliousness and Senta’s tango-dancing stepmother. None of these threads are woven together until the film’s final third, and even then, there are far fewer answers than questions. I did not feel as if I was watching a film with a definite plot and ending; instead, I was given scenes and impressions and made to put those ends together myself. This is a quality I normally love, but in a movie so full of suspense and mystery, I found myself wanting a little more. Chabrol is still going strong at almost eighty years old, and while this is a powerful effort, I only would have liked to see something more. What that something might have been is my own mystery.

Written by: Dana Reinoos, June 1st 2007

Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita

admin — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:07:00 +0000

By Phyllis Birnbaum

Faber and Faber Inc.

Readers interested in art, Paris, Tokyo, or multiculturalism in the first half of the twentieth century will enjoy Phyllis Birnbaum’s carefully documented biography of Foujita’s tumultuous life as an aristocratic playboy and fiercely dedicated artist, both acclaimed and vilified for his controversial works. She chronicles Foujita’s five marriages, repeated moves to France from Japan and back again, travels in Latin America and the United States, whimsical moods, political shifts, and mastery of a unique style fusing Western oil painting techniques with Japanese brushwork.

In 1920s France, Foujita painted elegant nudes, scandalizing his Japanese compatriots, and during WWII, in Japan, he created propagandistic war paintings that got him in trouble with almost everybody after the Allied victory -- Japanese, Europeans, and Americans. Even today opinions are divided about works such as Last Stand at Attu, 1943. Sasaki Shigeo compares these paintings unfavorably with Picasso’s Guernica, while the artist’s nephew, Ashihara Eiryo, defends him: “In the same way that Foujita believed that women were merely ‘flesh,’ so a gun or a flower was all the same to Foujita.”

Indeed, even though Foujita’s favorite painting subjects were women and cats, singly or together, his affectionate appreciation for them did not make him respect them. Birnbaum quotes without comment his oft-repeated statement to interviewers: “… women and cats are absolutely the same. If you treat them nicely, they are submissive, but if you don’t, they will turn on you. Just think about it – isn’t a woman just like a cat if you put on some whiskers and a tail?” A feminist analysis of the artist’s complicated ambivalence toward women would have strengthened this biography, but Birnbaum, while a noted biographer of Japanese women and their works, reminds us that she is “not writing the woman’s story this time around.” Her duty to Foujita, she believes, makes it necessary for her to take his point of view in everything.

Still, Birnbaum does an outstanding job of presenting her main thesis, exploring in intriguing detail the artist’s dilemma as a man between two countries and two cultures, and in the process she gives a vivid picture of the international art scene during the World Wars, background vital for understanding many of today’s cultural clashes, misunderstandings, and surprising fusions.

Written by: Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring, February 20th 2007

Breaking the Silence: French Women’s Voices from the Ghetto

admin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 16:01:00 +0000

By Fadela Amara

University of California Press

In her recently translated book Breaking the Silence, Fadela Amara attempts to rework and redefine feminism as it relates to her specific time and place. As a Muslim girl of Algerian immigrant parents growing up in the projects, Amara’s experience of feminism as the term is traditionally defined by western academics was non-existent. In fact, her book critiques the very term as it exists now, perceived by her to be owned by the white middle and upper-class women who coined it. Rather than clinging to old ways and means, Amara challenges herself and other women in the projects to find new meaning, "to regroup around essential issues such as the struggle against sexist violence, against conjugal violence, in favor of equal pay, for greater professional mobility."

Starting at zero, Muslim women in the French projects had their work cut out for them, and as this book reveals, rose to the challenge. The original march organizers far surpassed their original expectations. Mothers, once confined and cowed into submission, broke tradition and marched alongside their daughters. Grandmothers, even more entrenched in conventional ways, emerged from crowds along the marchers’ route to whisper blessings in the ears of that younger generation, inspired. Upon their arrival at their final destination in Paris, the marchers were met with astounding support and received a meeting with the Prime Minister to express their motivations for marching and their hopes for the future. These were things Amara never could have conceived of before.

By putting these stories on paper, Amara is able to convey the message that the impossible can become possible through solidarity. In this way, this book is inspirational. The stories collected here represent human will triumphing over oppression; in any context, that is an uplifting thing. The women presented in Breaking the Silence disregard the usual rhetoric and theory surrounding the concept of feminism in favor of pragmatic approaches to results-oriented activism. Their cross-country march earned them respect and visibility. A community once completely invisible within even within the confines of their own homes is now gaining the power to improve the quality of life for Muslim women in the projects. The writing isn’t ground-breaking, but the story is. This may not be the most finely crafted piece of writing, but here, the value lies in the work of raising awareness and spreading information about a social issue barely recognized by France, let alone the rest of the western world. This English translation is an extremely valuable tool in this process. On its own terms Breaking the Silence is a resounding success, a testimonial, a manifesto, and a call-to-arms.

Written by: Kelly Moritz, November 19th 2006