Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D

In Alice We Trust, Resident Evil: Afterlife

"I don't know how much longer I can do this," says Alice in Resident Evil: Afterlife to her video camera. Alice (Milla Jovovich) sits on a beach in a post-apocalyptic universe pondering an existence in isolation. The myth of Alice is built on her ability to overcome the odds against her. Alice can walk the earth alone because she represents recreation. In a post-apocalyptic universe, Alice is a symbol of fertility among a barren land. Alice's fighting spirit lives inside a body capable of superior performance. Alice runs across a rooftop, turns swiftly and fires her aim at killer zombies. Gruesome never looked so graceful. Alice dives off the side of the building and survives. 

In Resident Evil: Afterlife, Alice seeks to lead the other survivors to safety like a caring mother. Her empathy and delicate voice are reminiscent of the greek goddess, Athena. Athena, the goddess of war, was noted for restraint, reflection, compassion and calm.  As protectress of the city, Athena was as much a symbol of destruction as she was of renewal. In Resident Evil: Afterlife, Alice's violence is strategic rather than rageful. Alice is considered a trustworthy leader because her resilience is always tied to the greater good. Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil: Afterlife is not short on fetish or phallus. Yet the fantasy of Alice remains that her heart is more fearless than her body is fierce.

Sex and Lucia

Life and Death in Sex and Lucía  

Sex and Lucía is a story about the interconnectedness of life. Under the moon and off the coast of a remote island, two strangers make love. A sad novelist and an obsessed fan find comfort in each other. A lonely babysitter finds a father figure. Two women discover their sexual pasts are mysteriously connected. Everyone’s life intersects as a result of an ordinary yet profound longing.

Sexual life in Sex and Lucía is as beautiful as it is anguished. Desire elicits as much suffering as the ecstasy it promises. Julio Medem’s film opens with Lucía (Paz Vega) frantic to save her lover, Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa). Finding a note after a desperate phone call, Lucía believes Lorenzo is dead. Lorenzo told Lucía many stories about a secluded Mediterranean island. Lucía flees there in hopes of discovering his secret about the island.

On the island, Lucía remembers the early days of their lovemaking.  Six years earlier, Lucía walked into a bar and announced to her favorite author she was moving in with him. He said she was brave and they drank the night away. In the story of Lorenzo and Lucía, their love is instant, playful and passionate. Lucía’s faith in Lorenzo’s genius begins an adventure for both of them. Lucía is no longer an orphan. Lorenzo is no longer a blocked writer. Romantic love seems to offer them a new life. In bed, Lucía will yell, “I’m dying! I’m dying!” Their wild and fearless lust for each other is truly innocent.    

Romantic love plants a false courage in the heart of Lorenzo. His new novel inspires him to search out the daughter he abandoned. Secretly visiting her at the playground, he develops a sordid flirtation with her babysitter, Belén. In the story of Lorenzo and Belén, erotic talk proves dangerous ground. Belén (Elena Anaya) tells Lorenzo stories of her mother’s former life as a porn star. She confesses to having fantasies about her mother’s lover. Lorenzo dares her to imagine the seduction. Belén becomes deeply attached to Lorenzo’s curiosity about her.

Lorenzo desperately wants to feel part of his daughter’s world. The sexual innuendo between Lorenzo and Belén allows him to feel he has crossed into that forbidden realm. Belén feels trapped in her mother’s home of repressed desire. Lorenzo and Belén share a fantasy that sexual transgression will free them from their shame. Lorenzo and Belén do not have sex but their close call one night leads to tragic consequences and his daughter, Luna is killed.     

The loss of Luna destroys the fantasy life between Lorenzo and Belén. Belén is devastated by Luna’s death and tries to kill herself. Lorenzo is tormented by images of Belén’s bleeding wrists. Lucía does not know about Belén or Luna and cannot understand Lorenzo’s depression. He tells her she loves a sick man and to give up on him. Plagued by guilt, Lorenzo begins to write online to Luna’s mother, Elena under the alias, the lighthouse keeper.

He writes to her,

I have a story for you, it’s full of advantages. The first advantage is at the end of the story. It doesn’t finish, it falls in a hole and the story starts again halfway. The other advantage, and the biggest, is that you can change course along the way…

Lucía goes to the island to mourn her life with Lorenzo. Elena goes to the island to recover from the loss of her daughter. On the island, Lucía and Elena become friends. Lucía and Elena figure out that Lorenzo is Luna’s father and the lighthouse keeper. The two women are torn by the revelation. Both women hold tight to the familiar. Elena sees Luna as belonging to only her. Lucía sees Lorenzo as someone she needs to protect. Both women cannot move forward without a new perspective about their past. In the story of Lucía and Elena, friendship calls for a kind of compassion they have not known before.

Lorenzo did not die that fateful night at the start of the film.  He fell into a coma. He wakes up and goes to the island to find Lucía. Upon his arrival, Elena recognizes him. Six years earlier, under the moon and off the coast of a remote island, two strangers made love. Elena called Lorenzo when she became pregnant but he did not return her call.  Lorenzo could not acknowledge Elena or be a real father to Luna. He dreamed he would one day have the courage. When Elena and Lorenzo meet again, it is a moment of grave forgiveness. Elena sees Lorenzo’s grief. He has lost a daughter too.  Lorenzo’s tears are meaningful to her and she is finally able to cry.  In the story of Lorenzo and Elena, they will always share Luna.    

Elena finds Lucía and reunites the two lovers. When Lucía sees Lorenzo, she stands in a trance and walks toward him. In Lucía’s trance, the ground becomes the bottom of the sea. She rocks back and forth and falls into his embrace. Lorenzo’s death—once certain--is rewritten.  Elena is moved by the miracle. She turns toward a photograph of her daughter and falls through a hole.

In Sex and Lucía, Medem explores the mystery of being alive in the sexual exploits of his characters. Sex is an expression of love. Sex is a descent into a secret life. Sex is a thread tying the past to the present. A one-night stand leads to a daughter. A haunting transgression leads to redemption. A shared lover leads to an unlikely friendship. In Sex and Lucía, sex is the portal between life and death, and life again. 

dir. Julio Medem

Spain, (Lucia y El Sexo), 2001

Salt

Possession in Salt

Salt is a film where the repressed comes alive. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a sleeper spy awakened into action by a Russian patriarch who then betrays her. Fueled by revenge, she saves the world only to spite his greatest dream of destroying America. Salt's transformation from the blonde and beaten Evelyn to the dark-haired, grenade-throwing Chenkov speaks to cultural fantasy/anxiety about female power.  

Barbara Creed's The Monstrous-Feminine: Woman as Possessed Monster discusses films where "female evil" breaks through its innocent shell, such as The Exorcist (1973) and Carrie (1976). Creed writes about "possession" as an expression of the monstrous-feminine.  Spygirl Evelyn Salt becomes possessed, first by loyalty then by revenge. Similar to Regan in The Exorcist, Salt's body is the site of this transformation/possession. As well, in Carrie, her intent on revenge enables her to realize her superhuman powers. Beyond its bullets and car chases, Salt is a film of more complicated ideological equations and is worthy of feminist considerations. 

The Kids Are Alright

 The Representation of Sexual Identity in The Kids Are Alright

The Kids are Alright tells the story of a lesbian couple whose two children decide they want to meet their sperm donor. When so-called "donor-dad" enters the picture, the perfect suburban world of Moms Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) is forever changed. Their kids, Laser and Joni have someone to show them a different way of being in the world. For Laser, donor dad answers hard questions honestly over a basketball game. For Joni, donor dad takes her on his motorcycle and agrees her parents need to loosen up. When donor dad Paul (Mark Ruffalo) hears that Mom Jules is trying to jumpstart a landscaping business, he hires her to remake his garden. Nic, a doctor, is finally warming up to donor dad when she discovers Paul and Jules are having an affair and all around heartbreak ensues.


Mainstream audiences will flock to this film, directed by Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, Laurel Canyon), and congratulate themselves on how far we have come as a society regarding lesbian marriage. In The Kids Are Alright, the troubled marriage of Nic and Jules makes for good drama. Though the more compelling conflict of the film is their daughter Joni’s battle for independence as she approaches adulthood. 


“Donor dad” Paul plays a pivotal role in Joni’s break from her two mom parents. And who wouldn’t be swept away by Paul? Paul is ultra-amazing...an organic farmer, rides motorcylces, bakes pie, easy-going, successful but from modest roots, likes minorities, has sowed his wild oats but ready for a family, likes younger women and older women, sexy, a charming restaurateur, emotionally available, protective, his own boss, can play basketball with teenagers, not a jealous bone in his body, can sing Joni Mitchell, knows his wine--who is this man? 


He’s ideal..in the world according to Hollywood. In The Kids Are Alright, lesbians are just fine, just dandy as long as heterosexuality is understood as everybody's default--and everybody wants a piece of donor dad. Particularly seduced by Paul is Jules, the more feminine and insecure of the parents. Jules (Moore) who clearly identifies herself as gay enters into an affair with heterosexual Paul. Undoubtedly and humorously, the first sex scene between them portrays Jules as sexually starving for a man. 


Jules’s alternating sexual desire is curious. It would be admirable for a Hollywood film to represent sexual behavior as diverse, illogical, not fixed, outside labels of gay or straight and existing on a broader range. Yet, the function of the sex between Jules and Paul serves the purpose of framing heterosexuality as the ideal.  The film stays true to Hollywood conventions in representing sexuality in terms of hierarchy and in The Kids Are Alright heteronormativity remains at the throne.


By the time Jules enters into the affair with Paul, the film has already established the male body as desirable to both women in an earlier scene. Nic and Jules put on a tape of gay male porn to spice things up and a sex scene gone amuck follows. When the tape is found in their bedroom—Jules explains to her son why his two moms watch gay male porn, she says, “Female sexuality is internalized and sometimes it’s nice for us to see it externalized.” In The Kids Are Alright, lesbian sex is framed as incomplete and heterosexual sex is framed as instinctual and exciting. 


What does “natural” mean in The Kids Are Alright? Is there an inherent emotional connection between a sperm donor and offspring? Is sexual identity formed from our experiences or by our genetic inheritance? The question of genetics versus socialization is at the core of gay politics. Will two lesbians raise gay children? The son’s sexuality is questioned at the start of the film in a way that mocks this very concern. While Laser isn’t gay, he is lost and this leads him to a longing to know a father.


Laser isn’t just looking for a father figure. He wants to know his biological origins. The coach at the neighborhood Y, an uncle or a teacher at school just won’t do. Would there be as strong a desire for a child to seek out a surrogate mother? Perhaps there would be, if we lived in a matriarchal society.  As a patriarchal society, the focus is on the father.  The Kids Are Alright never makes this connection between the outside world influencing Laser’s need to know a father and his internal drive to locate him. The Kids Are Alright is not aware of its own immersion in patriarchal ideology and for that reason cannot be a progressive film about alternative families.


The opening sequence of the film is Laser on his skateboard racing through his suburban neighborhood. He is being pushed around by other boys, other boys with fathers, he hangs out with losers, and he is doing cocaine.  Frustrated by his overbearing mothers and stating that he is curious, he asks his sister Joni to call the sperm bank. The request for a sperm donor’s identity has to be made by someone who is at least eighteen years old. Along with her leaving for college, the film makes a strong issue of Joni’s movement into adulthood. 


The scene where Laser pushes Joni to call the sperm bank is crucial to establishing Joni’s disinterest in men and in having a father. Following this sequence, the film never takes up the son's story in a significant way again. The focus switches to Joni once she meets Paul. Joni is only helping her brother out until she discovers that donor dad Paul owns an organic farm.  Joni's eyes brighten with curiosity. She expresses an interest in that which is "natural."  Joni's struggle in the film reveals the film's true anxiety--the daughter's sexuality. 


The character of Joni starts out not interested in sex. She puts down her friend Sasha who is overtly sexual. She calls her a "slut." She is embarrassed when Sasha makes fun of the repressed sexual feelings between Joni and her best guy friend.  She is disgusted when her friend says, “donor dad is a hottie."


When Joni unexpectedly bonds with Paul--she changes. She blushes and giggles. She is open to new things. She gets drunk. She has lost interest in scrabble. She tells her parents off, one for being too strict and the other for being morally shady. She finally kisses the best guy friend. Joni is enchanted and changed by her experience with Paul--an idealized heterosexual man with authority (“authority” because of his donor dad scientific weight and his expertise on all that is “organic”).


Joni is heartbroken by Paul's affair with her mother. It is with this heartbreak that she leaves for college. The heartbreak is particularly significant if you consider the cultural anxiety around the gay marriage. Branded with heartbreak over father figure Paul, Joni has been sentenced to a life long search for that connection she once felt. The film reassures its audience that Joni will seek out male partners. 


The film says—don’t worry, Joni will procreate, and the world will go on. The film shows a final scene where the son says the two moms should not break up "because you are too old." Since it has been cemented that they no longer experience sexual attraction for each other, the film concludes that the two women have been desexualized. The question of their desire is no longer of any concern because the torch of desire has been successfully passed to the daughter.