Tell it Like a Woman: Review - A Well Intentioned Misfire

Tell it Like a Woman (2022)

This film has the unfortunate recognition of being one the worst reviewed films on the popular film discussion website IMDB to have received an Academy Award nomination. Knowing ahead of time the poor reception the film had received I did my best to go into the film with an open mind knowing that many of my favourite films have been maligned by critics or bemoaned by the wider public. This film has no overarching story and instead contains seven short films which all are said to contain female centric plots which the title crawl of the movie claims are meant to advance the cause of equality. In order to properly review such a film I thought it best to discuss each vignette on their own, which I will now do starting with the first story.

1.) Pepcy & Kim: Directed by Taraji P. Henson

This short film starts out in a very confusing way with Jennifer Hudson starring as an inmate who acts out almost immediately once we are introduced to her. As the audience knows nothing about her other than the fact that her emotional register is at an eleven out of ten it made it hard for the viewer to try and discern why she was behaving this way. Without any clear answer as to what is motivating this strange behaviour it is impossible to discern whether or not Hudson's character is acting out as a result of an emotional buildup or if this is nothing more than a child like tantrum.

Not long after the aforementioned outburst from Hudson's character she is seen baring her soul to a care worker inside the prison about the awful abuse and sexual assault she has endured. Almost immediately after this and I mean within just a few seconds her character shifted entirely in a new direction where she went from looking disheveled and acting erratically to now being clean faced and nicely dressed as if her entire demeanor had evolved in an upward direction after one conversation which to the viewer is nothing out of the ordinary as it is the only thing the character has really done up to this point.

If that was not bad enough the short film than resorted to some of the most outlandishly bad CGI to fill in the landscape that is meant to fill the windows as Hudson looks out them as she is driven away from prison. The cartoonish style of this scene reminded me of early YouTube skits or even the Lady Gaga and Beyonce music video Telephone. The short than abruptly ends cutting to the real life Kim Carter who it is meant to be based on. No proper discussion is given to how she overcame her past or what the split personality plot device in the movie was meant to represent was for. This is a perplexing vignette which did not help to dispel any fears I had about the quality of the movie.

2.) Elbows Deep: Directed by Catherine Hardwicke

The second story documents Marcia Gay Harden and her coworkers job of helping to care for homeless people who in Los Angeles had been rehomed in some hotels. While there the pair struggle to help Cara Delevigne's character who is a homeless woman that has taken shelter in the hotel under Project Roomkey. Delevigne does a great job here playing someone who is fearful and defensive against outsiders who is clearly struggling as shown through her chaotic mannerisms and strung out personality. I must say though that the real world parallel here with her real life struggles with substance abuse made it hard to watch this short film at times since it felt so similar to real world events. However, the real problem with this short was that the plot is so limited in that we only see the two care workers clean the area Cara is living in and help her to remove her clothes before showering such that the audience never gains a greater understanding the project that was designed to help at risk unhoused people during the height of the Covid pandemic. Instead, this felt more like a small scale recreation of a real event that had no voice to add to the event or anything meaningful to say about the ramifications of it. Technically, the production quality of this one was better than the first but that is not saying all that much.

3.) Lagonegro: Directed by Lucia Punzo

I must be honest and say that by the time this short started my patience was starting to wear thin and I was struggling to concentrate on this film without my mind wondering to other more interesting topics. The one thing that did stand out to me here was how awful the lead actress Eva Longoria was with her soap opera melodramatic performance which never came close to even orbiting the sense of feeling authentic. The story detailed Longoria's struggle with trying to accept the responsibility of caring for her recently deceased sister's children. Again, and perhaps this is a fault of the format the story is being told in, but no great revelations are made about the nature of the sister's troubled life or Longoria's which would help to explain why she is struggling so much with taking on this responsibility which made her hesitation to accept it feel immature so that by the time she finally embraces it the audience feels more relief that the character has grown to act in an adult way rather than feeling as though this person was doing something noble.

4.) A Week in My Life: Directed by Mipo O

Here the movie finally began to feel competent as was evidenced by the sudden ability of the movie to have competent cinematography and clever editing which worked to splice together scenes in an interesting way which often included little music outside diegetic sounds thus conveying the hectic work life balance the main character had to endure with little outside distraction. While the technical side of the film improved, the human quality did not. For a film set on propagating a social message it is confounding how so much of the movie fails to present human beings doing interesting or compelling things which would work to gain the audience's sympathies toward the cause it is advancing. As such, while one can appreciate the filmmaker for making a coherent movie it was not a particularly interesting one. Short films, in my opinion, should be like a flash in the pan in that there is very little time to be wasted such that the filmmaker must ensure that they grab the attention of the viewer and do something memorable in the limited space they have. Unfortunately, up to this point all of these stories act as if they are more interesting than they are and as such they do little to earn the viewer’s attention acting as if their mere existence warrants it. While the motivations behind this movie are admirable the stories therein meant to campion that goal are entirely lacking. Case and point here, the story of a struggling single mother balancing taking care of her kids and the chaotic work environment she navigates did not feel inspired and came across as a sort of Pursuit of Happiness rip off but without the pursuit or the happiness as the main character is not shown to have any clear goal nor does the crescendo moment where she smiles through tears and comes to appreciate her life cap off the film as it goes on after in a momentous slog of mundaneness.

5.) Unspoken: Directed Maria Sole Tognazzi

This to me was the best vignette in the movie for the simple reason that it was the most compelling story it presented where a woman seeks the help of her local veterinarian regarding the domestic abuse she is being subjected to at home. This short also made great use of misdirection since at the start much time is given to showing the strife present in the vet's life such that the audience is not expecting the narrative shift where the person she encounters one night at work becomes the main focus of the vignette. Not only was this an interesting short film it also made great use of depicting a real problem while at the same time presenting a hopeful message whereby woman can seek help when and if they find themselves in such an awful situation.

6.) Sharing a Ride: Directed by Leena Yadav

This vignette was a mess in terms of the plot but it did possess some of the more interesting sequences in the film. For instance, there are a number of horrifying shots early into this short where we see people undergoing immense surgical procedures only for cosmetic purposes.

Building on this beauty theme there is an interesting shot where a woman is seen between the cutout of a human figure reflecting the idea of a specific beauty standard being present in society which purports to have a single definition of what beauty is.

All of these interesting ideas are never utilized in an encompassing way to tell a compelling story. Furthermore, the more surreal abstract sides of the film, such as the dreamlike dance sequences reminiscent of the movie Music (2021), came across as vapid and did not work to convey anything worthwhile. This felt self indulgent to the nth degree.

While the short started out and appeared focused on telling a story about the hostile work environment sex workers must endure this concept was abruptly dropped without resolution when the film shifted its focus toward the struggle of transgender youth in finding acceptance from their family and society as a whole. While this too is an important topic worthy of being interrogated and given a proper voice in a movie of this nature the sloppy narrative structure and poorly strewn together narrative failed to do this topic the justice that it deserves.

7.) Aria: Directed by Lucia Bulgheroni and Silvia Carobbio

This final short film, which is animated, starts with an undefined and alien blob breaking the glass of their residence, which appeared to be a metaphor for breaking the glass ceiling, to reveal a big brother esque panopticon style society they were living in. This alien figure than has french fry style hair erupt from her scalp before she races around this larger structure in search of someone to join her. She later works to release the rest of the prisoners of this dystopian nightmare world such that they all float up to the sky flying around the moon.

What hurt this vignette was that the main character barely struggled to escape from the confides she was subjected to which made the hopeful ending feel hollow as so little was done to attain it. It reminded me of the classic line in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum's character remarks on the corporate powers that rushed into development creating dinosaurs where he states and I quote " I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step.You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it.:" Likewise, in this movie the main character breaks loose from the prison she was trapped in so quickly and with so little effort than any great meaning the audience is supposed to take from it is lost for the simple reason that the character's struggle appeared inconsequential thus reducing the narrative the short film to feeling shallow and without any real purpose.

I also wanted to briefly discuss the song Applause by Sofia Carson which was the source of this film's Oscar nomination. I am not someone who knows a great deal about music but to me the lyrics of this song all kind of blended together and were hard to discern from each other while the instrumental side of the song felt generic and quite forgettable.

Ultimately, this anthology film's admirable mission of trying to advance the cause of gender equality in society was overshadowed by muddled and unfocused vignettes which together with some of the stronger ones failed to convey a coherent message or theme reflective of the titled ambition of the larger project.

Here is the trailer for Tell it Like a Woman: