It only takes me 20 seconds for Emma Thompson to debunk the reality of a naked older woman in a movie. He did it with a frontal naked single in a movie Good luck Big Leo. In this scene, her character Nancy, a middle-aged teacher, leaves behind prejudices and taboos to take a fresh look at her body. He doesn’t do it in a slanderous way, not to frighten, disturb, or evoke an ominous fact. He shows himself in all the splendor of his age and, moreover, in experience of adult and mature sexuality that surprises with its sensitivity.
. He did it with a frontal naked single in a movie Good luck Big Leo. In this scene, her character Nancy, a middle-aged teacher, leaves behind prejudices and taboos to take a fresh look at her body. He doesn’t do it in a slanderous way, not to frighten, disturb, or evoke an ominous fact. He shows himself in all the splendor of his age and, moreover, in experience of adult and mature sexuality that surprises with its sensitivity.
In fact, it’s a huge interest in a movie full of them. Directed by Sophie Hyde, the performance raises an old dilemma in pop culture that has been prejudiced for decades.
The adult female body on the big screen is a heated argument with disparate and, at worst, unpleasant responses. With honorable exceptions, she is never portrayed as beautiful, desirable, or even just plain natural.. Rather, it becomes a conductor of terror, a symbol of pain, death, or loss.
Discussion of an old naked elderly woman in new places
This perception is so ingrained that there is a name to define the phenomenon. Horror subgenre hagsploitation uses the female body to express horrorthe proximity of the unknown of death and destruction. This effect was seen in one of the most embarrassing scenes in the show’s fifth season. Game of Thrones.
In the first episode of the delivery, Melisandre’s character (Carice van Houten) is shown as a terrifying old woman, beyond the power of magic. Something similar happened with one of the plot twists of the successful horror film. Weather, M. Night Shyamalan.
Recently, barbarian Zack Cregger also featured an older female character as a brutal monster. In all cases, a naked, old and unpleasant-looking woman is the central point for diving into dark and gloomy themes.
Adult woman at the center of a sensitive plot
But Good luck Big Leo it does the opposite. Not only praises Thompson’s characterbut endows him with amazing sensitivity and fragility. Part of the film’s triumph (which has become a seasonal phenomenon in much of the world) is its ability to portray a new type of woman. Also, to delve into how the female figure has been dehumanized and turned into complex terrain in movies.
In just a few seconds of nudity, Emma Thompson demonstrated a number of concepts that are hard to accept in pop culture and that conflict with the vision of a mature woman’s naked body as terrifying. In particular, the passage of time and the concept of beauty in the entertainment world.
Painful reality that gets a new look
“Women have been led to hate our bodies. It’s a fact,” Emma Thompson said while promoting the film. It’s a biting phrase that has led to the introduction of female characters in movies that is rarely talked about.
for an actress there is significant pressure on women in show business This affects how they understand their body. “Everything around us reminds us how imperfect we are: everything is wrong with us,” she insisted.
This is not a recent debate. Already in 2019, the Screeners Guild of the USA published a study stating that actresses over 40 hardly make up 25.4% of important film roles. An industry survey covering the controversial topic of female idealization on the big screen.
For most works the feminine aspect responds to the sexualized and idealized imagewhich causes immediate discrimination. Most of the big roles go to women who meet the prevailing stereotype of youth and beauty. Something that Thompson also mentioned in various interviews. “Women should be forever young,” specifically. “What happens when it becomes obvious that this is not the case?”.
Complex history of image and concept
In 1996 film Divorced Club, written by Hugh Wilson, has become a rarity. It was a plot that, unlike most Hollywood films, did not focus on a very young and carefree heroine. Actually, At the center of the dispute were three mature women who had to deal with love failures..
And much more: fear of the future, insecurity and the weight of age in a culture that sees aging as a form of weakness. The cast included Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler; all the actresses who had to deal with the invisible limit of youth in Hollywood. The film spoke in mocking terms about the prejudices of a vain society.. And he did it, and with a comic background, which was a triumph at the box office and with critics.
But despite its commercial success, Wilson’s film idea in various ways resonated with unusual places. The plot has been discussed as a satire with unsavory overtones about women and their perception in film.
A hard look at a naked older woman in Hollywood
Ten years later, the subject resurfaced with greater force, and this time from more uncomfortable points of view. In 2006, a social media controversy erupted when Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal told The Wrap she was turned down for the role. The character in question was the mistress of a fifty-five-year-old man. Rejection reason? The Oscar nominee says the casting director didn’t hesitate to explain to her that “she’s older for the part.”
Gyllenhaal has come across the hidden face of Hollywood and its way of discriminating against women. Also with what is an open secret: the life of actresses in the mecca of cinema is ephemeral. “At first I felt bad, then I got angry and finally started laughing,” the actress admitted years later. “But obviously something is seriously wrong with everything. There is something about the structure that is being sold to the public that needs urgent change.”
Of course, what happened to Gyllenhaal is no exception, much less an isolated case. Hollywood’s general vision of women, beauty and youth. Film critic A. O. Scott did the same in an essay published The newspaper “New York Times. The text referred to what he calls “patriarchal figures”. Scott insisted that the ages of the male and female protagonists in series and films have drastically declined in recent decades.
In other words, youth is assumed to be necessary, inevitable, and closely related to success. First of all, as an integral element of the interpretation of our very specific social image. Scott’s vision is necessary to understand what’s going on in Hollywood with actresses over forty. In particular, when the female image is often hypersexualized and built according to a well-defined pattern.
Good luck Big Leo.Thank you for the lesson
It may seem that Good luck Big Leo this is a film obsessed not only with sexuality, but in other ways as well. But in fact, this is a kind of rethinking of the roles of men and women in our time.
Nancy Emma Thompson is a tense and obsessive woman, broken and full of unhealed emotional wounds. Also, This is a celebration of unusual female roles on the big screen.. An important step towards new places where a woman’s identity is discussed between unusual dilemmas, beyond her beauty, her youth, or even her cultural role.
