Hayat Hyatt
Stories (4/0)
One Sings The Other Doesn't
In response to the recent actions surrounding abortion rights and Roe Vs Wade, I wanted to revisit Agnes Varda’s epic One Sings, the Other Doesn’t. It’s epic in that the melodrama travails across Europe and fourteen years to detail the friendship of two women, Pauline and Suzanne. Like all of Varda’s work, One Sings infuses a kitsch sensibility to a film that otherwise plays like a straightforward exercise in genre. It also ignores conventional filmic tropes and plays as Varda’s feminist answer to the ‘buddy film.’
By Hayat Hyatt11 months ago in Journal
#TBT La Cienaga and The Wonders
Lucrecia Martell’s La Ciénaga and Alice Rohrwacher The Wonders are both female-led vehicles that deconstruct notions of the modern family. The two films are also personal reflections of their directors, with Ciénaga based in the suburbs where Martel was raised and Wonders also using Rochwacher’s place of birth as reference. From the perspective of their protagonists, beyond-their-years emotionally intelligent teenage girls, the features combine elements of satire and realism to convey intergenerational difference; also relying on feminist phenomenology to unpack the patriarchal order consistent with traditional family structures.
By Hayat Hyatt4 years ago in Geeks
#tbt La Cienaga // Lucretia Martel
La Ciénaga (2001), directed by Argentinean auteur Lucretia Martel, embodies the sardonic sensibilities of New Argentine Cinema. Perhaps the best example of this in the film is Martel’s infatuation with the corporal. The film opens with unflattering close-ups of cellulite and aging bodies near an outdoor pool – bodies that are otherwise, humorously, positioned for print magazine advertising. Shortly thereafter, the film’s most probable heroine, Mecha, drunkenly injures herself in a moment that parallels a later scene where a cow slowly descends into quicksand. In these scenes the primary subject on screen reflects the country’s aging bourgeoisie, which Martel records both intimately and with a mocking distance. Like other films of New Argentine Cinema, Martel’s work takes a structural departure from traditional narrative cinema, and with La Ciénaga the filmmaker uses it to paint a scathing portrait of the Argentinean bourgeoisie.
By Hayat Hyatt4 years ago in Geeks