I don't intend on giving 5%s to every movie, nor writing only on the films I give 5%s.
But this film is awesome. It's nutso. I love it. It's super low-fi, using varied formats and awkward camera placement reminiscent of home photography and security cameras. It cuts unexpectedly into the next scene, leaving the audience with the sense that we're just flipping through conversations between these women.
It's a marxist-feminist-1968 revolutionary fantasy. 10 years following the Liberation Revolution, women are still frustrated by the rhetoric of equality and the lack of follow through by the new government. Thus the Women's Army is formed, initially chasing rapists on bicycles, but eventually moving to armed resistance following the prison murder of their leader, and uniting women in the struggle for equal work and the end of masculine-focused society.
In an interview included on the DVD, filmmaker Lizzie Borden claims that she intended the audience to disagree with the violence in the film. I find this hard to believe. The militancy is so admired by the attention given to certain characters and the non-violent, bourgeois, cultural, educated elite are dismissed as out of touch and afraid of action. I think she, like many who came of age after 1968, admires the firm stance that many took during the fight against the Vietnam War and the willingness to completely sacrifice for a cause. It is romantic and foreign to bougie college kids like Borden at the time, and myself for that matter. College educated, liberals long for a passionate commitment to a movement. If our heroes are Dr. King and Gandhi, we naturally fantasize about civil disobedience. If one's heroes are Bernadine Dorn or Malcolm X, one fantasizes about militant revolution.
The romanticism of the film is further developed by the two radio djs, Honey and Adele, one a firm, forward, black, soulfully-voiced leader & one a punky, opportunistic, painfully-rapping, feisty provocateur. They are folk leaders whose messages ignite the imaginations of their audience and the audience of the film.
I, for one, enjoy the fantasy of bands of bike riders coming to save the day, blowing rape whistles to prevent sexual assaults, and groups of women coming together to provide daycare, eldercare and equal employment in male dominated occupations (i.e. nearly all). The film's movement demands respect for nurses, teachers, waitresses and secretaries.
I wish I'd seen it when I was in high-school, but I don't know if I'd have been gutsy enough to embrace it.
