Review #373: 'The Woman' (2011)

The Wild Child's (1969) premise of an animalistic human being found in the forests and brought into the "civilised" world, is given a slight twist in this sometimes troubling tale of a violently misogynist patriarch. Having discovered a feral female roaming through the woods, Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) makes a plan to capture her and bring her into the cellar of the family home, his justification being centred on the premise of civilising the woman (Pollyanna McIntosh). Lucky McKee and Jack Ketchum's screenplay use the uncivilised woman, bound to the will of a man, to increasingly reveal the inherently psychotic hatred this central character has for woman in general. Cleek's meek wife, Belle (Angela Bettis), and teenage daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), begin to unravel, Peggy with a hidden pregnancy of dubious inception (her concerned teacher turns up to speak with the Cleeks as she suspects she is pregnant, and the patriarch replies that Peggy does not have any boyfriends, "I'd know if she did").

Whilst the male head of this family is deeply misogynistic, and the inevitable rape of the captured woman leads to influence his teenage son, Brian (Zach Rand), and the dominating thought about it's subject during the watching, was that the film was intrinsically hateful towards women. But as I was in the kitchen, doing the dishes, you know, women's work (sic), I considered a it feminist reading, after all, this is fundamentally about the entrapment and abuse of women. The feral woman, chained and sexually abused, juxtaposed with the "civilised", family unit, locked in a clandestine world, a secret insular house of family oppression, the truth behind the societal veneer of communities. But, contrary to this initial thought, a feminist treatise this is not - it simply falls apart, when the violence towards women turns to the rape of the shackled woman, and then the sons attack with pliers which alters the films effects, and panders to the horror cinema fans, and uses torture-porn tactics, and gruesome gore.

Apart from these moments, the film often plays, laconically, as self-consciously "indie". It is a very well made film, and some of the performances are very good. But I wonder about the intentions of the films central premise. It's a little ambiguous, and is sometimes difficult to truly decipher if the film is celebrating the misogyny in the father and son; or is this a tract about the gender divisions that still prevails in 21st century society? But ambiguous gender politics aside, it does state the theme that generally, the civilised are not far removed from the primitive, animal tendencies, and the barrier of property changes not some of these instincts.


Directed by: Lucky McKee
Starring: Pollyanna McIntosh, Angela Bettis, Sean Bridgers, Lauren Ashley Carter
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy