Anne Marie of "A Year With Kate" fame returning to TFE with a new series!
Welcome to Women’s Pictures, a new series dedicated to celebrating female directors. From the matriarchal melodramas of the 50s (from which this series draws its name), to the 90s chick flicks, to the surprisingly durable stereotype that female filmmakers aren’t mainstream enough for “big” pictures, films for women or by women continue to be ignored or maligned. To this I say: Screw that! Women directors are as varied and interesting as the many movies they make.
Each month, we will examine four(ish) movies by a female director in chronological order. All genres, time periods, creeds, colors, and languages are open for examination. We’ll meet auteurs we might have missed, shine a light on corners of cinema previously obscured, and maybe even redefine what “Women’s Pictures” means.
This month, in honor of Black History Month, Selma’s two Academy Award nominations, and the recent happy announcement of a new TV series, our first female filmmaker is Ava DuVernay! (You may recall that Nathaniel met her at AFI Fest this year. She'd been up for 48 hours editing Selma, but still managed to be gracious and charming.) Her story (self-starter-publicist-turned-self-starter-director) is by this point well known, even if the two feature-length narratives she made before Selma were only recently made available VOD. Before Oprah, Oscars, or a seven figure budget, DuVernay made her first film, I Will Follow, in 2010 for $50,000.
So, what kind of a first film is a former publicist going to make? A very personal one...
Based on DuVernay’s relationship with her own aunt, I Will Follow is a sad and quiet movie about mourning. The film follows Maye, a makeup artist Maye (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), over the course of one day as she moves out of the house she shared with her recently deceased, much beloved aunt, Amanda (Beverly Todd). Amanda--only shown through Maye’s flashbacks--was an exuberant free spirit who played drums for studios. Maye worshipped her, so when Amanda decided to forgo painful breast cancer surgery, Maye quit everything to move with her to Topanga Canyon (for the trees). Now that Amanda has passed, Maye has the painful duty of sorting through her belongings and moving out in one day.
DuVernay described I Will Follow as a “mood piece.” There’s no structured beginning and end beyond the passing of morning into night. Instead, the film is a series of conversations between Maye and the various people who touched her life during the year that she cared for her aunt. The empathetic moving man, the widowed neighbor, the jealous cousin, the emotionally tangled booty call, the reticent nephew: each conversation allows Maye to express her grief in a new way. DuVernay’s script never leans on the easy crutches of misery or nostalgia; though both are expressed, along with anger, jealousy, regret, humor, and loneliness. Maye’s grief, unlike her slowly packed up house, is messy and unprocessed.
DuVernay is talented, but at times I Will Follow feels like the first time feature effort that it is. Shots are framed with blunt practicality. Some of the supporting characters lose their individuality behind their symbolic importance. What’s missing most is a sense of progression; the film is front-loaded with mounting tension between Maye and Fran (Michole White), Maye’s cousin and Amanda’s daughter. That tension explodes into a painful battle of blame one-upsmanship, magnificently acted by Richardson-Whitfield and White. However, after Fran leaves, the film fails to regain its momentum. Ultimately, I Will Follow is DuVernay’s experiment with how characters shift the mood of a film.
However, the biggest takeaway from I Will Follow is how well DuVernay understands people. (Makes sense for a publicist.) Through small moments, DuVernay shows how the memory of a loved one can color things as mundane as DVR’d TV shows, as trivial as arguments over Nass and Jay Z, or as important as how much of our lives we can devote to another person. I Will Follow is unstructured, unceremonious, and utterly heartfelt.
Upcoming Films This Month:
Thursday, 2/12: Middle of Nowhere (2012) (available on Amazon Prime) - Ava DuVernay’s second full length film features some very familiar faces and netted her Best Director at Sundance.
Thursday, 2/19: Selma (2014)
If you have suggestions for future Women’s Pictures directors, post them in the comments or find Anne Marie on Twitter!