What it means to be a Woman.
Female rage can be seen in the sharp, angry voice of Lolita as she screams “Murder me! Murder me like you murdered my mother!” Female rage can be seen in the way Annie screams “Don’t you ever raise your voice at me! I am your mother!” It can also be seen, perhaps much more subtly, in the movie Last Night in Soho directed by Edgar Wright, released in 2021.
Last Night in Soho is a blend of a horror and mystery movie that follows a girl named Eloise as she goes off to fashion school in London. Almost like a slowburn, the movie starts off slow, showing snippets of Eloise as she gets harassed by a cab driver and gets belittled by her flatmates. She then decides to move into a bedsit owned by an elderly woman named Ms Collins, and soon the movie transcends into a spiral of madness and terror. She is somehow transported to the 60s, where she gets to observe a woman named Sandie.
The idea of female rage is one that is becoming more widely represented in film; what it essentially represents is women shamelessly screaming and throwing a fit. Female rage comes from the idea that women are too emotional and often irrational, and these outlandish fits of rage are a portrayal of this emotional nature that is affiliated with women. However women are not typically represented as rageful, so when they are portrayed in the media having rageful outbursts it diverges from the typical delicate view of women. It also expresses the concept of women’s voices being unheard and unvalued, to the point where their rage is the only tool that can make them heard. There have been arguments that “female rage” is an inherently misogynistic idea curated by the media to demean a woman’s emotions, but it is empowering. When one thinks of femininity, a few adjectives that come to mind are soft, gentle, motherly, pink, and quiet. True femininity however, is embracing imperfections and embodying them. Screaming one’s heart out, being loud and unforgiving, and being harsh are qualities just as feminine as being soft spoken and motherly.
As Eloise is transported to the world of the 1960s every night and observes Sandie, the audience starts to observe Sandie with her. The audience is able to see how she is taken advantage of by men who hold powerful positions in society, powerful enough to help Sandie advance her career. However the audience is also able to see how these men objectify her and try to put her in a prostitution ring. Eloise and Sandie never meet each other during these nights, but Eloise starts to form a fondness for her, a desire and need to protect Sandie from these men and help her. She is seen trying to break the dimensional wall down and save Sandie. They only meet at the end of the movie, in a plot twist that almost gets Eloise killed.
In Last Night in Soho, Sandie is the representation of female rage in a different light. We don’t see her screaming and in tears, but rather we witness her slowly develop her rage directed towards men and the expectations they hold for her to act a certain way. Sandie is widely pursued by the men and taken advantage of, yet she recognizes that to fulfill her dreams as a singer, the only path to success would be to please these men in hopes of them helping her ascend the rankings in the music industry.
By the end of the film, it is revealed that the woman whose house Eloise is staying in, is in fact Sandie’s, and Sandie murdered the men she slept with in the very bed Eloise would sleep in every night and the same bed that transported her to Sandie’s world. The female rage that is presented in this film is Sandie stabbing and killing every man that tried to take advantage of her, an act of taking back her autonomy over those men who seek to control her. This rage is more hidden, and silent, than the obvious screaming and lashing out, and in a way, more powerful; it is alarming to see how quietly and heartlessly she stabbed them, but also inspiring, and even justified. That’s what highlights the nature of female rage. Her rage is silent and vengeful, it happens in the dark in moments of vulnerability. Her rage would not exist if not for the misogynistic men Sandie dealt with to pursue her dreams.
It is also interesting to see the contrast between the female gaze and male gaze both within the same movie. The “male gaze” is the phenomenon of women being viewed through an objective lens while their personality and interests are ignored. A relatively newer term has been coined, the “female gaze,” which is the idea that the perspective of women offers a more nuanced and genuine view, both of women and of things generally. Eloise see’s Sandie through the female gaze; she gets visibly worried about Sandie and tries to traverse the spectator view to save her. She also roots for Sandie all throughout the film and is inspired by Sandie for her fashion. She also attempts to investigate Sandie’s case herself, as she believed that Sandie was murdered. The men in the movie see Sandie through the male gaze, seeing her as an object for sex and pleasure, making her perform for their entertainment, and telling her she won’t be able to make it without them. The male gaze is widely represented by Jack’s character, the supposed ringleader of the prostitution ring he was luring Sandie into. Jack makes Sandie believe that her only path to success is through him, and he tries to leverage this to be able to get with her and convince her to sleep with older men. He also never acknowledges her talent and personality. This contrast between the male and female gaze makes Sandie’s female rage more justified to the audience, and shows exactly how this extreme rage towards men can develop, as they continue to view women as nothing but objects for their pleasure.
Last Night in Soho poses as an exploration of female trauma and rage. It shows us how limitless and dangerous femininity can be. It also shows us how this rage and trauma is an inherent part of womanhood. To be a woman is to be subjected to a society that views pain and emotion as irrational, that views objectification as sincerity, and the rage that stems from that as irrelevant and invalid. The movie portrays this aspect of womanhood without giving in to the notion that female rage is outlandish and irrational, but instead gives the audience a chance to truly understand where it comes from and allows them to empathize and justify Sandie’s actions. It breaks down femininity into its truest form, a form that is neither soft nor motherly but rather one that is ambitious, powerful, and unforgiving.