MFA and Prevenge Give the Revenge Genre a Feminist Spin

MFA

Women rarely have the opportunity to play superheroes or serial killers on the big screen. Rarer yet are the roles that combine both.

"Women don't have a lot of space in the world of revenge," says MFA director Natalia Leite. "And if we do, she's crazy." Written by Leah McKendrick and starring Francesca Eastwood (yes, that Eastwood), MFA is a thriller-esque drama that follows Noelle, a shy art student whose brutal rape transforms her into a vigilante on a killing spree targeting campus rapists.

"Who's protecting us?" Noelle asks a friend, pinpointing the bleak reality of sexual assault – rapists manage to float by with a slap on the wrist, while their victims are ostracized and called liars and sluts by everyone from their peers to the police.

MFA is, in fact, a shining example of how to tell a good rape joke, except, in Leite's film, rape is no joke. The film does not shy away from showing both the graphicness of sexual assault and the all-encompassing aftermath. It's all but impossible to find sympathy for Noelle's "victims."

"I made a big point not to use guns in the film," explains Leite, who felt an immediate "personal connection" to the story, disclosing that she was sexually assaulted while attending the San Francisco Art Institute. "I really wanted to pull back on the violence and give people – women, especially women who've been violated, a cathartic experience."

Prevenge writer/director Alice Lowe had a similar desire to voice another rarely discussed female experience. "I was told by actress friends of mine, 'Don't let anyone know you're pregnant; you won't get any jobs,'" says Lowe, who admits Prevenge wasn't a planned movie. (She was seven and a half months pregnant during filming.) While she was grappling with the scary concept of taking a year or two off to be a mom, a director friend approached her to collaborate on a project. When she returned with the Prevenge script, he bowed out. "He said, 'I make rom-coms – this is your story to tell.'"

Prevenge

And tell it she did. Prevenge turns Lowe's pregnancy anxieties into a sci-fi-inspired dark comedy. "I really wanted to show the existential crisis of being pregnant. It's not horror-specific – it's enough to be scary just having a baby."

Prevenge opens with a very pregnant Ruth (played by Lowe) mourning the loss of her partner/baby daddy. The story quickly turns down a dark rabbit hole of revenge with Ruth racking up a long kill list. For Lowe, Ruth's pregnancy gives her superhuman power, a "Trojan horse" aspect. But it's a power she doesn't necessarily use for good. "I wanted to make audiences identify with a female antiheroine, like the men we see in Breaking Bad or Taxi Driver," Lowe says. "Women typically aren't allowed to be like this; we have to be more martyr-ish."

Though Prevenge is Lowe's feature film directorial debut, she's been writing scripts and acting for 15 years, including co-writing and starring in Ben Wheatley's Sightseers. "It's quite ironic that my first film was sort of a pregnancy film – no man is going to take this away from me," she quips. According to her, the power of cinema is to "stretch people's empathy, but it's up to producers, directors, and writers – typically white men of a certain age – to put different people onscreen. Here, I wanted to test audiences – can your sympathy extend to this woman?"

While both films toy with the notion of women regaining their power, neither ends with a skip into the sunset. MFA offers a sobering juxtaposition of rapists and murders, while Prevenge questions, where do we go from here? In today's political climate, these fantastical, challenging stories shine a spotlight on the real-life issues women confront daily.

MFA

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Prevenge

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