Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Laura Gordon, Olivia DeJonge, Rob Collins, Josh Helman
Intro:
As erotically-tinged psycho-thriller, heartbreaking character study, and proud feminist confession, Undertow makes for resonant cinema…
Anyone who has ever taken the time to glimpse at the more feminist side of art criticism, film in particular, will have likely come across the term ‘male gaze’. In essence, it is the specific mode in which men (whether behind the camera, as part of the captured image or even as part of the audience) observe women. This is most commonly understood as a framework in which, to quote critic John Berger, “men act and women appear”.
But even beyond the sexual connotations of such things, there is also the more general example of how, when you get down to brass tacks, there is a marked difference between men telling the stories of women and women telling their own. It’s the reason why sexual objectification on film prevails in its bleedingly obvious fashion, and it’s why this film, in particular, needs to exist as counterargument.
In Undertow, it’s almost bizarre just how refreshing the visuals are, as captured by writer/director Miranda Nation and DOP Bonnie Elliott. While there’s a definite sensuality to be found here, the blocking and framing of the female bodies on-screen feel more in-line with the works of Catherine Breillat than anything in the modern mainstream.
As the camera glides across the many bumps on Laura Gordon’s skin in Undertow, it presents the body as this almost divine living landscape, as bristling and chaotic as the waves that give the film, and its title, its main symbolic reference point.
But the emphasis on female agency is stitched throughout the film’s textual side as well, presenting Gordon’s Claire as a mother who lost her child in the womb and, after a chance encounter, develops an obsessive fascination with the teenaged Angie (Olivia DeJonge, whom audiences might feel a tinge of whiplash in seeing here, if their only other exposure to her work is with the similarly image-fixated The Visit by M. Night Shyamalan).
The way Nation details Claire’s trauma, grief and sexual frustrations reflect a certain Jennifer Kent-esque boldness in how uncompromising it is, from the more explicitly psychological moments to the poetic, like the images of the dead refracted through a haze of blood, wine and lipstick. And in the contrast between Claire and Angie, the film ends up depicting aspects of the male gaze in a remarkably subtle fashion, managing to get across the double standards placed on women by men, society and even other women without making it a noisy spectacle.
This is the kind of film that is in unfortunately rare supply, as an inherently feminine story told through primarily feminine hands, and the end result only highlights how much of a genuine shame that is. As erotically-tinged psycho-thriller, heartbreaking character study, and proud feminist confession, Undertow makes for resonant cinema, and one only hopes that Miranda Nation and company keep up with this level of quality in the future.
