By Claire

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Women--and humans--are complex by nature. We run with our emotions, seek adventure, love and grieve, and have a tendency to lose ourselves. When life gets us down, it's not uncommon to seek isolation, and nature, to figure ourselves out and reset.

You know what I'm talking about. In every movie or tv show, there's that scene when life gets to be too much, the sad or wronged protagonist gets up and drives or runs away, and sit's on the hood of their car or on a hill, looking out into the ocean pensively as the sun sets around them and a familiar song plays in the soundtrack. I often like to recreate these scenes on the train back to my hometown, ipod playing the perfect song to set the mood as I stare out the window.

Wild (2014) is all of this, and yet so much more.

Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed in Wild (2014)

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (who is a male, but bear with me, this is relevant), 'Wild' is the second film produced by all-female production company Pacific Standard (Reese Witherspoon and Australian Bruna Papendrea).

When Pacific Standard was announced, I flipped. Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papendrea saw the lack of strong female characters in films, and decided to center their production company exactly around that, by optioning for books with strong and interesting female leads, starting with 'Gone Girl' and 'Wild' in 2014.

Originally a book, 'Wild' is like the female counterpart to solo-adventure book, 'Into the Wild'. 

Into the Wild is a book predominantly read by young men, and is herald as a must-read book for all men in their 20s. First published in 1996 by Jon Krakaeur, 'Into the Wild' is a non-fiction novel, telling the story of Christopher McCandless, who in 1992, not long after graduating, he gave away all his money and possessions and started to hitch-hike across America to Alaska. He was then found dead after 100 days. Now, this book has received much critical acclaim, and is used as a high school text.

In 2007 Sean Penn (ew) directed the film adaption starring Emile Hirsch as McCandless. The score was written by Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam and the film won awards across the national and international film festival circuit, as well as two Golden Globe and two Oscar nominations. 

Theatrical poster for Sean Penn's adaption of Into the Wild (2007)

The whole thing, as a girl, seems a bit wanky to me. From what I've seen, Into the Wild is probably a beautiful movie, but I can't tell if the story is inspiring or a cautionary tale. Let's not forget, this kid was found dead in Alaska. He came from a "well-to-do family" (which is stressed in the first sentence of the blurb, and even on the front cover of the book because this is Very Important Information), and one day decided to give away all his possessions, donate his entire savings ($24, 000)  to charity (which was actually very nice of him), burn the rest, and just decide to go on his wilderness trek with 10-pounds of rice and a rifle. 

How is 'Into the Wild' a story to look to re: finding yourself and great solo adventures? This guy was unprepared and died. It feels like a very male indulgence, believing you can give up everything and just live in the wild with no preparation. 

As a woman, when I was feeling lost and felt the itch for adventure, 'Into the Wild' seemed less than ideal.

This is why I am so thankful for 'Wild'.

'Wild' is an adaption of Cheryl Strayed's memoir of the same name. Published in 2012, Strayed shares her story, motivations and experience of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, a hike spanning form the Mexican-Californian border all the way up to Canada, solo. After the rapid loss of her mother to cancer when she was 22, Strayed distanced herself from her family and husband. Moving constantly around the country, Strayed started taking heroine and got a divorce form her husband. One day she comes across a book about the Pacific Crest Trail, and uses the journey as a way to "walk [herself] back to the woman [her] mother thought [she] was." 

Witherspoon in Wild

The PCT is a space away from conventional standards of beauty placed on women. The first time we meet Witherspoon as Strayed at the very beginning of the movie, Strayed is ripping dead toenails off of her battered feet. Here is a female character without makeup, without her hair glamourously done, covered in dirt and sweat and grime. Her body is not sexualised while she is hiking, her body is bruised, battered, grazed, tortured: her body is a warrior. 

'Wild' is a story of self-discovery, of a solitary woman hiking a trail predominantly walked by men. The scenery is beautiful, the sound-track nostalgic for a life lost, and exactly what I need as a woman in her 20's. 

When I was feeling lost, like I was floating and in need of an anchor, I had Cheryl Strayed, and 'Wild' and the PCT to look to. I need to go on my own journey. Admittedly, not to the extent that Cheryl did, but just a quick train ride through regional Victoria to my home town and watching 'Wild' a couple of times was more than enough to help me find that anchor, and satisfy this restless feeling, if only momentarily. Something that I do not believe 'Into the Wild' can provide. 

My favourite part?

Cheryl survives the journey. 


** Cause a Cine do not take any ownership of images used

By Zoë

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Carol was beautiful. While watching it in the cinema, I wanted to throw myself through the screen and into Carol and Therese’s world. Cate Blanchett as Carol was intoxicating, and it wasn’t hard to understand how Rooney Mara’s Therese could fall in love with her. It felt like a revelation to see a film about lesbians that was both exquisitely made and featured a happy ending.

On Monday, during the Oscars ceremony, Chris Rock referred to Carol as the “third best” “girl-on-girl movie” he’d seen this year.

When I heard that, I cringed. Because here was a movie I had loved not just as a cinemagoer, but as a bisexual woman. Carol, for me, captured the beauty and terror of being a woman attracted to a woman, something I’ve experienced. I saw myself reflected in Therese. So when Chris Rock referred to the film as “girl-on-girl”, linking it to lesbian pornography, I too felt denigrated.

It was shame that I felt, a feeling well known to same-sex attracted women. In fact, you can see this shame depicted in Carol. In the scene where Therese first meets Carol at the department store, her attraction to the older woman is instant. But immediately after her wide-eyed, starstruck attraction, Mara depicts Therese’s confusion, her anxiety over what she has just felt. Did I just feel that? Surely not. But she’s a woman. I can’t feel that way about a woman. In Therese’s flushed cheeks and nervous gestures is not just the delightful shock of being attracted to someone, but the panicked confusion of attraction that is taboo. How could I feel that? What’s wrong with me?

 Cate Blanchett (left) as Carol and Rooney Mara (right) as Therese in Carol

Both the film’s director, Todd Haynes, and writer, Phyllis Nagy, are openly gay. Together they capture same-sex attraction with all of its complicated emotions: wonder, joy, confusion, fear, shame. With Carol, I saw for a film that represented lesbian love as being as valid as any other romance, while also acknowledging its separate challenges. I saw represented on screen the feelings I too have known, the shame I too have felt.

Carol is of course set in a different world to our own. Lesbians and bi women obviously face significantly less oppression now than they did then. But the shame still persists because the prejudice against us does. Every time I mention being bisexual, no matter how liberal the company, it is prefaced by at least thirty seconds of anxiety. Because for every ten situations where it is accepted without question, there is one that goes badly: The date who immediately asked me if I’d ever had a threesome, the friend’s father who called me a “dyke”, the middle-aged man who propositioned 17-year-old me and asked if I could “turn straight” for him. These instances are rare, and without doubt, others have it much worse. I am lucky. But these rare instances are the ones that haunt me, that make the words catch in my throat the next time around.

Chris Rock’s remark is yet another comment that brings that shame to the fore. It’s a reminder that female same-sex attraction is mocked and fetishized, still, in 2016. Even when it occurs within an elegant, romantic, critically-acclaimed film, lesbian sexuality is discussed as something hyper-sexual, seedy, pornified. The description “girl-on-girl” suggests that our very identity is a porn category. Apparently, we still cannot find other women attractive without lecherous men assuming it is for their benefit.

Mara and Blanchett in Carol

When Therese reacted with shame over her attraction towards Carol, I first felt amazed: here was my experience reflected up on the big screen, in a mainstream movie, by an A-list actress. Here was the rapid heartbeat and sweating palms, the confusion, the incredulousness that you could be attracted to her. I am so thankful to Haynes and Nagy for representing this, for allowing all the lesbians and bi girls still wracked by insecurity to feel a little less alone. But at the same time, I’m immensely sad that we still feel this shame felt sixty years ago. We are still made to feel ashamed, and we should not.

Our sexuality still cannot exist on its own terms. It is bound on all sides: by politics, by societal prejudice, by the leers of men who think they’re far cleverer than they are. When Chris Rock called Carol “girl-on-girl”, I felt that shame, that feeling that there is something inherently weird and exotic about our sexuality. That it is something to be gawked at and sexualised by spectators. Society has evolved greatly since the time period of Carol. Things are definitely much better than they are. But while comments like Rock’s persist, shame, the legacy of our deviant existence, lives on.