Joanna Arnow, As Her Feature Debuts, Knocks Oft-Used Words “Describing Films Women Make About Sexuality” – Specialty Preview
26.04.2024 - 20:35
/ deadline.com
There’s a nice trio of specialty films to highlight this weekend from Joanna Arnow, Uberto Pasolini and Caitlin Cronenberg‘s feature directorial debut.
Joanna Arnow’s micro-budget comedy The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Past world-premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. It follows a 30-something New York woman as time passes in her long-term casual BDSM relationship, low-level corporate job, and quarrelsome Jewish family. Arnow writes, directs and stars. And that’s BDSM, as in bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.
The helmer is thrilled to see her feature (after 2017’s i hate myself :), and a handful of well-received shorts) launch a theatrical run, Magnolia distributing. “That’s how I dream of my movies being seen,” Arnow tells Deadline. “It’s also so important to see comedies (on the big screen) Shared laughter with strangers is quite beautiful and healing in a way.”
The film has strong reviews. Millennial, raw and cringey are words that come up. Asked about that, she says she finds it “sort of reductive and diminishing” — and not all that uncommon for female filmmakers.
“I think there’s a kind of coded language that is perhaps, unintentionally, used sometimes when describing films that women make about sexuality,” she says. “There’s a lot of words like ‘raw,’ and ‘cringe’ … whereas for a male director, instead, ‘raw might be ‘powerful’, or instead of ‘cringy’, it might be ‘outsider art’.”
She’s compared to Lena Dunham (Girls), “a director I quite admire.” But, “it’s often, you know, a ‘We have to compare the women to each other’ kind of situation.” Her work is “trailblazing. But yeah, I imagine she would agree that the comparisons can, you know, be reductive.”