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MArtha Coolidge’s famous and daring 1976 drama is the first study of rape made all the more powerful by the analytical techniques she developed. Coolidge began to dramatize the important moments leading up to and following the rape she survived a decade or more earlier, as a teenager with the help of a fellow student. The handler is shown driving him and a group of other students to a party in New York. He insists on stopping at a house on the way; this is where the crime takes place, and it escalates later because of the abuse from the mean girls in the bedroom next door and dean’s inexplicable humility when he hears the rumours.
The film presents us with these events, as well as fly-on-the-wall schedules of the filmmaker discussing the project with the actors, rehearsing and editing. These last scenes are so long that you are invited to ask if this is a big (fictional) event. The director (Michele Manenti), playing “Martha”, opens up about the rape of the same day, and her sleeping husband, Anne, played by Anne Mundstuk, Coolidge’s dorm-mate at the time. Rapist “Curly” was played by Jim Carrington, an actor who later rose to fame in mid-80s films and as an actor. Unknowingly, she makes the rape worse by talking to the director on camera later, different about how she can see Curly’s feelings and how the men sympathize with her needs at this point. After the seemingly horrific incident, Carrington admitted that he was so angry at the shooter that he wanted to punch him in the face.
Can a film of such bravery be made today? It is unknown. But the ride-in-the-car sequence has a sense of dread for the audience who knows where it’s leading. The film is a nod to the innocent, no-nonsense films of the era like American Graffiti and it reminded me of the pre-rape car ride. Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page from 2005. It’s a great Brechtian experiment and an important documentary film.
Not a Pretty Picture is on Mubi from July 1st.
