[SXSW 2021] VIOLATION REVIEW
VIOLATION is a film written and directed by the team of Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Macinelli. I have written before about the progression of the rape/revenge film for the Patreon based journal We Are Horror. I’m very glad to be able to let you know that VIOLATION is the horror drama that is the rape/revenge subgenre’s next and very exciting leap forward. The film is now screening on Shudder. Here is the trailer:
Miriam (Madeleine Sims-Fewer) is a woman who is married to Caleb (Obi Abili), a marriage that seems destined for divorce, and who has a sister Greta (Anna McGuire) that only seems to tolerate her presence. Miriam and Caleb come to visit Greta and her husband, who is also Miriam’s childhood friend Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe). In this disjunctive narrative, you see different scenes from different parts of the story that show how Miriam came to her present state of screaming fury. You see the building blocks of a frighteningly cold blooded act of vengeance. Serene scenes of nature are juxtaposed with ugly scenes of emotional violence and the criminal act. There’s a repeated scene of symbolism with a predator and prey animal. You can feel the trip to the edge of madness. It’s a revenge tale for the ages that turns the tables on the subgenre itself and all of our expectations.
The nonlinear nature of the story makes a lot of sense. It’s like someone remembering what happened to her. The story doesn’t start from the end and then go back to a certain point and move forward like Pulp Fiction, it jumps from scene to scene, back and forth from one specific reference point to another in a way that reveals the story and the true nature of the crime slowly. Most rape/revenge films are like the standard origin story of a zombie apocalypse or a comic book hero. VIOLATION is much more nuanced and challenging than many of the others. It has elements of things that have gone before it, but it is more of a character study of the people involved in this most heinous crime that most rapists get away with.
VIOLATION pulls away from many of the sensationalistic and voyeuristic standards of the rape/revenge film and instead builds a story that is much more realistic, but still filled with pain. It’s the story of a woman betrayed by everyone that she trusted and who is treated like she’s the problem by those that she loves. She’s gaslit by her own family and made to feel a deep shame that boils over into violence. Miriam is a woman who has been damaged by her familial and romantic relationships. She has a fiery nature that causes her to fight for the people she loves when perhaps she should have been fighting them for her own sake. She confides in a friend and family member and then a predator sees his chance.
Adam Crosby is the director of photography and really has made the film a lush and gorgeous trip through Hell. The score by Andrea Boccadoro soars with stately strings that devolve into violin shrieks and then morph into traditional and angelic choral arrangements. The bewitching nature of the music and the scenery throws the human ugliness into sharp relief.
Fewer and Macinelli really changed the game with VIOLATION. Much of the criticism of rape/revenge movies is that they always include a rape scene, some of which are very violent, long, or exploitative as they mostly show female nudity and degradation. To show the triumph of the woman and to underscore the catharsis of revenge, to show the women getting even with the men who raped them, films like I Spit On Your Grave go the route of making the rape as disgusting as possible. Are these scenes meant as titillation and are they made, on some level, for men? Almost certainly. Many of these films often show women attacked by strangers or people that they just met when the facts are that most victims are attacked by people that they know; partners, family members or friends. Not so in VIOLATION, as happens in reality, the rapist is someone Miriam knows and trusts.
There’s also a standard plot point in rape/revenge that the woman is approached by her attackers in the open. Many rapes happen while a victim is sleeping or otherwise incapacitated. Rapists are cowards. VIOLATION dispels this myth as well.
VIOLATION has gone the route of showing a rape that many people wouldn’t think is rape because it isn’t what most people perceive as rape. It puts the viewer in the uncomfortable position that is assumed voluntarily by some of the other characters. In Revenge, the night before the rape, the main character Jen is shown being very flirty with her boyfriend’s friend. She is shown in various states of undress and provocation. It shows her, in the context of what society at large and is what many men (and some women) think is, “asking for it”. Flirtatious behavior or even incidents of intimate action are not consent. VIOLATION does not feature the violent kind of rape that you are used to seeing. This is VIOLATION’s and the filmmakers biggest leap into the future.
Much is made of the catharsis that rape/revenge films offer victims and truthfully, they are a great source of relief to many. However, showing that not all rapes are the same and that there are victims in different scenarios who are equally as traumatized and worthy of sympathy is very important. Survivors aren’t a monolith, but all rape is “rape rape” to steal a phrase.
None of the main characters in the film are what you would call likeable. In this, they are very realistic especially in the context of a family divided by a rape and sexual assault. People are selfish and unwilling to listen to a woman who insists that things are not okay. Miriam is very angry not only because she has been raped, but also because she is not believed and that she can see everyone trying to convince her that she is at fault. Dylan is particularly odious as he works the genial collegial male identity that never takes responsibility for his own awful actions. Jesse LaVercombe does an excellent job of essaying the role of a cheerful and seemingly nice guy who is anything but. Obi Abili as Caleb is a man who doesn’t seem to want to talk to or believe his own wife. He’s already cast judgment on Miriam as a liar and is uninterested by her emotional needs. It’s another terrific performance. He shows another man who is seemingly reasonable and who sets himself up as the authority in their relationship, but doesn’t want to do the emotional labor of supporting his own partner. Anna McGuire does a tremendous job as Greta, a woman and a sibling who actively dislikes her own sister and who takes every opportunity to undermine Miriam. It’s sibling rivalry as a death match. Because Greta is limited as a person, she insists on upholding the patriarchy because she wants, above all, to be liked and considered an ally of men. Like many female patriarchal allies, she really believes in the structures of the male hierarchy and thinks asserting herself as a woman and insisting on the validity of her own needs as a woman is embarrassing and wrong. She is fully brainwashed by this particular societal structure.
The idea that women “ask for it” by engaging in flirtation or being friendly or emotionally intimate with a man. The idea that women’s consent doesn’t matter because men’s sexual desires are more of a priority. The idea that getting a woman drunk or waiting until she is unconscious to “make your move” is acceptable. The idea that women who say that they were raped are being hysterical, actively trying to destroy a man, or are somehow responsible for a man’s actions because of who they are. All of these things are tools used by unscrupulous men to get what they want from women and vent their anger on women without being punished for it. All of these things, and more, are tools of the patriarchy. VIOLATION lays all of these commonplace but accepted wrongs bare.
VIOLATION also reverses the catharsis of the usual rape/revenge movie. Instead of the rape being brutal and the woman being shown naked, the situations are upended. It is symbolic of the exposure of the male structures of patriarchal control. However, it additionally shows the tragic damage done to the woman who commits the act of vengeance. For her, that catharsis is pyrrhic at best. The revenge is against some of the closest people in her life. The damage done to her spirit completely kills her marriage. While there is the satisfaction of getting some of her own back, it doesn’t change all of what was done to her and who did it. She still has to deal with the trauma of what was done to her plus the trauma of what she has now done to herself. As usual, a woman is made to shoulder most of the burden for wrongdoing. However, VIOLATION makes the man the focus of the physical savagery and graphic nudity. It’s about time.
One of the most affecting scenes of symbolism, that is wound throughout the film, is the scene where Greta skins a rabbit and tells Miriam and Caleb that her being able to do that represents an accomplishment for her. She believes that it has improved her character and made her a better person by hardening her to the task. It cannot be ignored that the allusion is to Miriam as the victim (or rabbit) and Greta’s protection of her husband, a predator, means two things. That despite her denials and her attempts to gaslight Miriam, she is well aware of what Dylan is and knows that Miriam is telling the truth. She considers this denial and protection of a rapist to be a personal accomplishment and she’s proud of it. She’s chosen her side based on her own needs and desires. She is, in essence, like Dylan herself. She wants to be cruel and still feel like she is a good person. It’s all okay as long as the predator didn’t hurt her. Miriam, the unstable annoyance, is to blame, not herself and not Jesse.
VIOLATION is a savage and true to life story of the many humiliations endured by rape victims worldwide that do not end with the rape itself. It is also a very honest, compelling, and multi-layered look at the consequences of taking revenge on the people who have hurt you. Rather than a cathartic stand up and cheer tale of vengeance, it is a more thoughtful and subtle meditation on the pain of the victims of sexual assault and rape and how they are re-victimized again and again by people who should know better. How we still blame women for the cruelty of men. How we make women bear the burden of shame. How even the families of the survivors of rape perpetuate the cycle and blame their own blood. How all of this has to stop.
VIOLATION is a superlative piece of cinema that takes vengeance on all those who deserve it. It reminds you that even in taking revenge, survivors of rape will always bear the wounds of the crime.
