Call it brilliant publicity or blind luck, but a few days ago a clip of a man getting upset over the content of the film The Woman at Sundance hit the web. Now, the trailer is online and we get a taste of what got that one man so riled up. The film, directed by Lucky McKee and starring Pollyanna McIntosh, Sean Bridgers and Angela Bettis, is about a family that chains a feral woman up inside a shed and works to "civilize" her through brutality and cruelty. Taken from that description, sure the film seems like a textbook case of misogyny, though, like any piece of art, it's about the idea behind the film and not what's simply shown on the screen. That's not a defense of the film, but rather a statement about film as art - and if you listen to that man's rant, his criticisms seem to stop at surface-level consumption of what he just saw, until he begins asking what purpose it serves at the very end (just as the Sundance authorities decide to finally tell the guy to stop filming). Is he wrong? Is he right? Maybe, maybe not. But the film has garnered a bit of reputation by word of mouth. Seriously, who wouldn't see a movie that “ought to be confiscated, burned. There's no value in showing this to anyone."
Check out the trailer and make up your own mind, but it makes it look like just another horror film. We'll see.
Here's the official synopsis:
The Woman is a disturbing tale of torture and dirty little secrets that can haunt any seemingly harmless neighborhood. The story follows a successful country lawyer who captures and attempts to "civilize" the last remaining member of a violent clan that has roamed the Northeast in the wild for decades, thereby putting the lives of his family in extreme jeopardy.
And, for anyone interested, here is the angry man's 6-minute rant against the film and it's indecency.
