Where Are the Women? Youth

BASIC REPRESENTATION SCORE: +10

FEMALE AGENCY/POWER/AUTHORITY SCORE: 0

[no significant representation of women in authority]

THE MALE GAZE SCORE: -25

GENDER/SEXUALITY SCORE: -5

WILDCARD SCORE: -3

Is there anything either positive or negative in the film’s representation of women not already accounted for here? (points will vary)

There is much talk about the absent woman who is (or was) wife to the male protagonist and mother to his daughter (the female supporting character), and until the very end of the movie, we don’t know if she is dead or why she might be absent if she is alive. For all intents and purposes regarding her function in the story, however, she is a key example of the “dead mother problem.”

TOTAL SCORE: -23

IS THE FILM’S DIRECTOR FEMALE? No (does not impact scoring)

IS THE FILM’S SCREENWRITER FEMALE? No (does not impact scoring)

BOTTOM LINE: I can’t decide which is the better example of the film’s treatment of women as little more than decorative objects, one that often mistakes dehumanization for celebration. Is it the shots of random employees at a luxury spa getting ready for work featuring women in their locker room in their underwear, while the men in their locker room are in lab coats? Or is it how the camera lingers on a fully nude “Miss Universe” as the two elderly male protagonists defend staring lasciviously at her as “the last great idyll of [their] lives”? There are, of course, no elderly women who feel they deserve to stare at handsome young men as a way to feel young again: this is a story that is all about how women are mere elements in the grand works of art that are men’s lives.