Male Storytellers, Women’s Stories
More movies about women are getting made — with men at the helm
True gender parity remains an unfulfilled goal in Hollywood as in the rest of the world. But over the past several years, the power and potential of women’s stories has finally begun to take deeper root in the entertainment industry. Following a year whose releases included “She Said,” “Women Talking” and “The Woman King,” 2023 features “Past Lives,” “A Thousand and One,” “You Hurt My Feelings,” “Priscilla,” “Bottoms,” “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” and of course, “Barbie,” this year’s box office queen.
Oscar voters have certainly noticed, awarding women seven of 12 winners for best picture, director and writer in just the last three years. Though written and directed by two men, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” dominated last year’s Academy Award ceremony with 11 nominations and seven wins, including the coveted best picture trophy.
The Daniels’ film is further emblematic of this industry trend, as men are also increasingly shifting their attention to female characters. Following in their footsteps are this year’s “Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, “May December” (Todd Haynes) and “Eileen” (William Oldroyd), along with two likely Oscar nominees for international feature, Ilker Çatak’s “The Teachers’ Lounge” and Tran Anh Hung’s “The Taste of Things.”
Even auteurs Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann have adjusted stories ostensibly about men to amplify the roles of their female counterparts. Both “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Ferrari” feature linchpin roles for women: Mollie (Lily Gladstone) is the emotional heart of Scorsese’s “Killers” Osage Nation murder mystery, while Laura Ferrari (Penélope Cruz) nearly drives away with Mann’s movie, despite barely casting a shadow in the biography Mann drew from for his film about automotive giant Enzo.
“Women’s roles and the articulation of women’s stories are now seen as more important,” says “Killers of the Flower Moon” co-writer Eric Roth.
Çatak, whose film is about a young teacher who becomes enmeshed in the controversy surrounding a series of thefts at her school, says that after more than a century of cinema, it’s about time. “I have more to discover when I make a film about a woman,” he adds. “I’m drawn to something that I know less about.”
Hung says it’s a hopeful sign that more men are undertaking these explorations. “It’s legitimate for men to give their idea of how they see women in society,” he says. “Taste of Things” is set in 1885 but Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), a brilliant cook, has a keen sense of her own freedom. Dodin (Benoît Magimel), the gourmand who both employs and loves her, understands and respects those desires.
“She’s the one who decides whether or not she leaves her door open for him at night,” Hung notes. “And she’s a free woman to the end.”
His film is less about a fight for justice, Hung says, than about showing a world in which women are treated more equally. “I think it’s good to have stories like this on the screen.”
While it’s vital that more women tell more of these stories, Roth notes that there remains a
“paucity of opportunity for women directors.”
Ottessa Moshfegh, who wrote the novel “Eileen” and co-wrote the screenplay with husband Luke Goebel, agrees. “Clearly we’re all interested in these stories, but we’re still catching up and there aren’t enough female filmmakers yet,” she says. “But if you compare it to when I was a kid in the 1980s, we’re living in a different universe as far as the stories being told. I feel very fortunate to be witness to this kind of expansion of consciousness and evolution.”
These men emphasize that they embrace the challenge of writing and directing complex, truthful portraits of women while acknowledging that there are things about them that they can’t ever fully understand.
“I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to say I can feel like a woman and I can’t argue that sometimes it may be better for wom en to write women,” Roth says. “But we did copious research and tried as best we could to reflect Mollie’s personality. Whatever the gender, I try writing characters that are flesh and blood and will ring true.”
“Eileen’s” Oldroyd suggests that research is essential no matter whose story he’s telling. “I’m not a boxer either,” he says. “Making a movie about a young woman just means I had to work harder. But that’s the job of the director.”
Though Moshfegh debates the merits of men writing women protagonists and vice versa, she argues, “I could imagine being a 19th-century alcoholic sailor just as easily as I could imagine being Eileen.”
She also acknowledges that not all female writers and directors share the same lived experience. “It’s not like your gender creates the ideal environment for perfect storytelling.”
Having seen Oldroyd’s “Lady Macbeth,” she knew that he “was a director that I could trust with a female character, that he’d give her the credit of being a layered, nuanced human being, human in her imperfections.”
What was most important to her was that Oldroyd immediately understood her story. “He immediately got what it was saying about this character and how she feels trapped and wants to act out,” she says. “That meant way more for me than any sort of gendered engagement.”
Çatak gratefully observes that society is also finally accepting more fluid gender definitions. “There are aspects of me that feel feminine,” he says, adding that just like female filmmakers, he doesn’t want to “be reduced to my gender.”
Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), the protagonist in “Teachers’ Lounge,” encounters sexism among her colleagues, but Çatak says he and co-writer Johannes Duncker carefully considered gender when conceiving other roles in the film, such as the school’s dean. “We’ve seen it so many times before where it’s a guy in charge who’s like a sheriff proclaiming law and order. So we thought, ‘Why don’t we make it a woman, and not a macho woman, but someone who works against that narrative, who tries to be gentle but is caught in the politics of the system.’”
Çatak’s next film will explore a woman facing menopause, another story that will obviously require intensive research. “It’s about genuine interest and diving into that world.”
He says that he’s emboldened to tackle these subjects by the response he received to an earlier film, “I Was, I Am, I Will Be,” in which a woman falls in love with a male prostitute while battling breast cancer. Çatak says some viewers told him, “We thought this film was made by a woman,” which he considered the ultimate compliment.
That said, these male filmmakers know that the key to getting these stories right is by not telling them alone. “I question my male gaze with every shot, but I also surround myself with women who are older than me who know more about life than me,” says Çatak, whose cinematographer, editor and department heads are all women.
Hung collaborated closely with Binoche on the film’s heroine Eugénie, whom he envisioned on the page as being quite tender. “Juliette is a strong woman in life and defended the point of view of the woman in this story,” Hung says. “We had this gentle fight during shooting, and she was right and what you see on screen is the compromise.”
Both behind and in front of the camera, Oldroyd takes the same approach.
“I’ve had a female producer, worked with women as screenwriters and cinematographers,” he says. “Surrounding yourself with women when you’re telling a story about a woman can only help.”