Tallulah

Feminist Rating: ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀

Overall Rating: ✮✮✮✮

Tallulah is a new Netflix original movie starring Ellen Page and Allison Janney and it might be a mini Juno reunion but let me be the first to tell you that this movie is very different. There’s a baby, sure, but the similarities stop there.  

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What makes Tallulah just an intriguing movie is the quirkiness, subtly, and heart. Margo (Allison Janney) plays a writer who writes marriage help books but her own marriage recently fell apart and she pretends to have everything together. Her husband (John Benjamin Hickey) plays the part of the brave ex-husband who came out as gay late in life but he also abandoned his family. Carolyn (Tammy Ford) is a neglectful and irresponsible and ultimately insecure mother. And Tallulah (Ellen Page) is a scrappy homeless girl who steals a baby. The characters aren’t good people but they are very real and the things they do, for the most part, they do with good intentions.

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I don’t want to give too much away because the plot isn’t important. Let’s get to the feminism.

               

Sian Heder is an absolute goddess. She is a writer for Orange is the New Black (season 1 through 3 so maybe her absence from the fourth season was what made it so bad) and she is the director of Tallulah and also wrote the screenplay. I give any movie extra feminist points if they were directed by a woman (you might be surprised at how rare they can be).

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First of all, the movie does pass the Bechdel Test and the female characters have their own narrative arcs that do not revolve around men. Tallulah, Margo, and Carolyn are all lost and broken women who are just trying to do their best but they fail again and again and it is their failures that make them human. Female characters should be allowed to make mistakes. The strong female character archetype is dangerous because these women don’t exist. The Joss Whedon female hero is not the sort of woman that we should compare ourselves to. We don’t need strong female characters because no one ever asks if the male character is “strong.” Let women be complicated, emotional, depressed, angry, aggressive, quiet, broken, passionate, powerful, vicious, or vulnerable. In reality, many women are all of these things at once.

               

These women are all very different but they are all broken, trying to put themselves back together again. This movie is feminist because these female characters are allowed to be human and that is a luxury we are rarely afforded in movies. They are not perfect and we can see ourselves in their flaws.

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the fact that the performances are incredible should not go unnoticed. Ellen Page and Allison Janney put so much heart into their performances and it pays off. Also Uzo Aduba makes an appearance as Detective Kinnie and she just blows me away with her talent.

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This movie is for women and it belongs to women and not only is it feminist, it’s also a very good film. Movies about real women are rare so go watch it on Netflix.