American Woman puts a moody new spin on Patty Hearst story
AMERICAN WOMAN
rural Upstate New York hideout where Hearst stand-in Pauline (Sarah Gadon) and her two volatile captors, Juan and Yvonne (John Gallagher Jr. and Lola Kirke), are holed up after a police shootout has killed the rest of their group.
A connection builds between the two women, Jenny somehow drawn to Pauline’s vulnerability and empathetic to what appears to be her trauma-induced fear, Pauline to her watcher’s gentleness, especially compared to the abuse from Juan— the angry anticapitalist who calls his captive “princess”.
Time stands still, and Chellas gives these scenes a dreamlike feel, leaves rustling, crickets chirping, all enhanced with poetic lensing by Vancouver cinematographer Greg Middleton.
When the pair break from Juan and Yvonne, the movie shifts its tone dramatically into that of a more romanticized road movie, Pauline and Jenny speeding their way west.
The overall mood is a world away from Paul Schrader’s dark descent into brainwashing and captivity, 1988’s Patty Hearst. American Woman is more interested in the post-’60s political and cultural forces that led to such radical acts, presented here in hushed, meditative tones.
In the end, Gadon’s Pauline remains a cipher, shellshocked, unstable, but coy. Chau, the core of the movie, fares better. Yoshimura had a fascinating life that led to her activism—especially having been born in a Japanese-American internment camp. That’s only mentioned briefly here, but Chau is strong enough to bring a compelling new perspective to this bizarre chapter of history—and to the entire idea of the identity of the “American woman”.