Film #12 — 3/4 Films Based on Novels
Also filed under: A-One
By C. Ramsay
“Tell me about yourself…What does your husband do?”
Walter, Joanna, and their two young children, Amy and Kim, are finalizing packing their car to uproot from Manhattan to Stepford, Connecticut when they’re first introduced to the audience. Joanna, a photographer, seems distracted in longing for the city before they’ve even left, and the kids are curious of the world around them. When Walter eventually catches up to them with the last of their things, he’s bitter, rushing to take off, and expressing contempt for the liberality of the home the rest of his family has not yet processed giving up. With him driving, they take off for the destination of their new all-white, pastoral, guarded community to start the next chapter of their lives.
The viewer is transported through the hazy dreaminess of Stepford with a drifting camera that gently follows Joanna as she adjusts to the traditionalism of rural suburbia. People of colour are absent as residents and tokenized when brought up, every woman is expected to be quiet and obedient, and Joanna is the only one who sees the children in the area as people. As her unease about the values of their new town grows to safety concerns, Joanna tries to vocalize her fears to her husband who becomes frustrated, making it clear that decisions he’d previously tried to frame as being mutually beneficial were actually based out of patriarchal conservatism.
Joanna is constantly confirming her love for her husband, not unhappy to dote on him when he expresses the same degree of love in return, but this is not enough for him to be content while she still maintains her own agency. One of the scariest angles of this film isn’t in seeing a sudden shift in the person you love, but to realize that that’s who they’ve been all along. A candid sketch of Joanna is drawn at one point, during a moment when she’s trying to adapt to a space where she knows she’s not wanted, that captures her sense of isolation and sadness. The focus is heavily placed on her eyes, the window to the soul, in an effort to document her humanity. Being a photographer drawn to people as subjects, Joanna is touched, though yet unable to understand that where she sees life, the artist doesn’t see anything at all.
Star rating (/5): ★★★★½
Recommend?: Yes