‘It’ Topic: Women Behind the Cameras

Just as every Sundance Film Festival has an “It” Girl or “It” Boy, an actress or actor appearing in two or three high-profile films, there’s also often a trend among entries that everyone talks about. This time it’s “The Year of the Sundance Women,” and for once that designation seems apt.

Unlike 1993’s Oscar Salutes Women and the Movies, in which there were few women in film to celebrate, Sundance actually has loads of them this year, more than two dozen female directors (twice as many as last year) in the Feature Film, Documentary, Premiere, American Spectrum, World Cinema and Park City at Midnight sections.

Some of these are returnees: Mary Harron (here previously with “I Shot Andy Warhol,” this year with “American Psycho”), Lisa Krueger (“Manny & Lo,” “Committed”) and Maggie Greenwald (“The Kill Off,” “Songcatcher”). Others are neophytes: Karyn Kasama (“Girlfight”), Jenniphr Goodman (“Tao of Steve”), Ann Hu (“Shadow Magic”) and Sofia Coppola (“The Virgin Suicides”).

Opinions are divided as to what it means.

Some--though certainly not all--of the women involved disagree. They see it as the result of more and more women becoming part of the filmmaking system, or at least the independent filmmaking system.

“I think more women have been going to film schools for a while now, and eventually that was bound to have an effect,” says Harron, who didn’t go to film school. “It took a while for that to permeate. There are more women in the crews. More women executives. More women producers. I think it’s more that than any other single factor.”

Liz Manne, an executive at the Sundance Channel and a veteran of 11 years at the festival, points out that there have always been a lot of female producers (Maggie Renzie, Christine Vachon, for example), but until recently they’ve been at the service of men. Now that’s beginning to change.

“I think that there were a number of years where those women were under the same pressures as male producers to turn out commercial product,” Greenwald says. “I think what’s happening now is some have finally achieved a very real amount of success and are taking more risks.”

Actresses are getting involved too, supporting and collaborating with female directors. “I can’t speculate what went through Heather Graham’s mind when she got the script for ‘Committed,’ ” Manne says. “But let’s face it, between her studio successes, ‘Austin Powers,’ etc., I’m sure she could just go ka-ching! Ka-ching! to the bank every day. She doesn’t have to do low-budget movies. I’m sure she did it for a combination of the material and the director [Krueger].”

Amir Malin, co-president of Artisan Entertainment (“The Blair Witch Project”), and Manne agree that there’s been a lowering of the barriers for everyone in indie circles, what with the proliferation of cheaper technology and film festivals, though obviously this means that there are more filmmakers fighting for the same distribution space.

Also at issue among festival participants is whether these directors are bringing a specific sensibility--a female sensibility--to the big screen. Or even if there is such a thing. It’s a subject that makes both men and women nervous.

“I’m not even sure what my thoughts are about these gender issues,” Goodman says. “I just wish women made more action films. That’s my only insight. It’s not deep, but there it is.”

“I can’t tell you what a feminine sensibility is,” festival co-director Geoffrey Gilmore says, adding with a laugh, “It’s not really my position to make those arguments, but it’s certainly the woman filmmakers’ position to do so.”

And some of them do.

“I do believe that men have a more difficult time with certain kinds of emotional contact,” Manne says, reinforcing what she admits is a cliche. “I think that’s true of life, and I think that’s true of filmmakers. And that’s why sometimes when you have sentimental male movies, you tend to get bludgeoned by the music or the cinematography or something that makes you feel emotions, as opposed to sometimes in female-directed films they’re willing to go there a little bit more and to hang out there a little bit more emotionally.”

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Malin objects to this line of reasoning, citing Barry Levinson (“Liberty Heights”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (“Magnolia”) as instances of male directors who are willing to “go there.” Yet there are examples at this year’s festival of films that, if they’re not going there, are going somewhere else.

Harron says that even the scene in “American Psycho” that has gotten her into trouble with the motion picture ratings board (the film has an NC-17 because of it) reflects a feminine perspective. In it, the protagonist, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), has an assignation with two prostitutes.

“These women are being paid, it’s just a job, it’s not that they’re doing it because they enjoy it or it’s fun,” Harron says. “I don’t know that a man would immediately take that angle on it. One of my big bugbears is how prostitutes are romanticized. Probably that in my film is one case where, as a woman, I think I directed it a little differently.”

“American Psycho,” which premiered at the festival last Friday, is an interesting case because the source material, Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, was attacked for its alleged misogyny.

Tom Ortenberg, co-president of Lions Gate Films, which financed and is distributing the picture, straddles the fence on the issue of whether Harron’s participation will make the material more palatable to critics and the public. Harron, on the other hand, believes that her gender helped get the movie made and may help get it seen.

“This is not for me to say, but I hope it is less offensive because I am a woman,” Harron says. “Because if you’re a heterosexual guy, it might play into your worst fantasies. I think Guinevere [Turner], my co-writer, and I can honestly say we don’t have fantasies about abusing women. There’s no way that we would identify with Bateman.”

“American Psycho,” however extreme it may be, is also representative of the films made by women at this year’s festival in that it addresses a subject not traditionally associated with women.

“I know one guy who said to a woman when she talked about [female directors], ‘Oh boy, there goes a whole bunch more romantic comedies I have to see,’ ” Gilmore recalls.

“And nothing could be further from the truth. There are no chick flicks categories here. This range of women’s work in the festival is as diverse and different as everything else in the festival is. In fact, two of the most melodramatic films in the festival are done by men [Marc Foster’s “Everything Put Together” and Kenneth Lonergan’s “You Can Count on Me”].”

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About the only kinds of movies women aren’t making are the nihilistic or navel-gazing films that plagued the festival during the mid-’90s. But they are dealing with genres that in the past have been the province of men: coming-of-age films, murder mysteries, sports movies. Again, the question is whether they’re putting a feminine spin on this material.

For example, though Christina Andreef says a father-son relationship is at the heart of her family drama “Soft Fruit,” she cheerfully admits of the film’s three sisters, “I wanted to just have this wave of estrogen that’s very hormonal. I wanted to be very unabashed about these big, blowzy girls and their out-of-control emotions.” Kasama says her “Girlfight” is a coming-of-age story, a lone-wolf story and an antihero tale.

What everyone seems to agree on is this: The films directed by women at this year’s Sundance Film Festival are free of polemics.

“I think that everything I do comes from a woman’s point of view, because it comes from my point of view,” says Stacy Cochran, director of a Sundance film, “Drop Back Ten,” who will not attend the festival because she is about to give birth to her third child.

“I like that,” she continues. “But on the other hand, I would hope that I’m not making movies that are about my point of view. I don’t like movies that feel like, more than being about the characters or the story, they’re about the point of view of the filmmaker. If it felt like that woman really said what women are trying to say, I would probably glaze over.”

Another thing everyone agrees on: If a female director breaks out this year, she won’t be handed the keys to Hollywood in the same way that a male director would. The studios, burdened with huge budgets and a cadre of (mostly male) executives, are not ready for that yet. What’s a woman to do?

“What they do is go, ‘Well, the hell with them. I’ll just go back and write something I really want to shoot, and I’ll scramble around and pull some money together and shoot it,’ ” Cochran says. “ ‘And then I’ll go back to Sundance with it two years from now.’ ”