The Crying Game

Hesse5.0

The top rated review of this movie is so bad I have to set the record straight lol.First of all, I love her but if Julia Serano called this movie transphobic she is wrong. Dil is one of the greatest trans characters ever written, honestly one of my favorite characters ever written period. She has hopes, fears, dreams, habits, friends, enemies, strengths, flaws, AGENCY! Fergus has no agency AT ALL so the critique that Dil and “her gender” (?) are just there in service of Fergus’s character is psychotic to me. But Dil’s character isn’t important, what’s important is the scene. The famous scene. The famous moment that everyone remembers where Fergus sees Dil’s dick and throws up. I really think this movie’s reputation is solely bc of the marketing. The marketing around “the big twist”. Take your friends so you can see their reaction! They basically harnessed audience transphobia and used it for marketing. And it worked! A ton of people saw it! But the audience focus on that twist and the famous critic embargo on discussing it combined to create a singularity, the only moment that mattered and the one moment no one talked about. It sucked the rest of the movie into it like a black hole, and to most people that’s what this movie is. A big transphobic twist sitting in an empty void. That is not what this movie is. This movie is a miracle.The script is insane. The structure; the beginning with Jody, so moving and heartbreaking and real, and then the movie proper in London. In the dialogue names are used so often. Everyone says their name a ton. All the characters are so vivid and real. Dil is the baddest bitch in the history of the world. I think Fergus is very genuinely in love with her, but he might not be! We can never know what’s in other people’s heads!The way it’s shot is achingly gorgeous. Half DePalma half Fassbinder. I really don’t think Jordan gets enough credit for how beautiful all his movies are and this is his absolute best. He shoots Jaye Davidson with such love, he makes sure Dil is the most beautiful woman in the world every single second she’s onscreen. The tight shots in the gay club are so unbelievably Fassbinder and the mediums and wides outside are so unbelievably DePalma. The difference between how the abandoned shack stuff with Jody is shot and the stuff in the city, it’s so beautiful.The performances are the real juice, specifically Jaye Davidson. This is one of my favorite performances in any movie ever. Rhea is amazing too as the total blank slate, a total dud of a man who has so little agency you suspect he doesn’t actually want any. Miranda Richardson fucking TORE and her trying to become one of the dolls with that wig at the end? That’s the kind of inside baseball only a chaser like Neil Jordan can bring you! Also Hastings from Line of Duty!One of the critiques in the top review, the worst review I’ve ever read, is that there is “music that reinforces the gender binary, allowing the audience to mock Dil” sorry but if you think its transphobic for the word “woman” to be sung in a song while a trans woman is onscreen you have other issues to work on!Another thing about this movie is that it takes itself deadly seriously. Which is so bold for a movie tackling trans themes at the time. They really went for it and, guess what, they fucking nailed it, because it’s honest and empathetic and unflinching, similar to M. Butterfly.That’s the main thing: this movie is dripping with empathy. It has so much care and delicacy with its characters, so much care and delicacy that it knows when to take off the kid gloves.I can’t really address the second half of the top review of this movie bc it’s clear from all the criticisms therein that the person who wrote it didn’t actually finish the movie? All her complaints after a certain point are about how a bunch of things that happen in the third act don’t happen lol.If you define a good trans narrative as a story where nothing bad happens to a trans person who is a perfect angel, which is apparently a lot of people, this movie is not for you. I hate what time and marketing and theory has turned that one moment into. Julia Serano is scrambled by that moment and misreads the rest of the movie because of it. She thinks that from that moment on, it becomes a burden on Fergus, the fact that he loves a trans woman, and the rest of the movie is him trying to cope with that. I think that’s a reductive read, but, even if that was the case, even if that exactly describes what happens from that moment forward, I have to point out that he’s still there, he doesn’t leave, he stays to protect her, he goes to jail for murder! A murder she committed! To protect her! He loves her! He wants to learn to love her so badly but he isn’t down with the dick! Shakespearean! In conclusion, calling this movie transphobic is like calling Vertigo misogynistic. You missed the movie. That’s what the movie is about. How a man loves a man with Jody. How a man loves a woman with Dil. How a man loves a trans woman. How an Irish man loves an English woman. How a white man loves a black woman: BADLY! BADLY! BADLY! BADLY! BADLY!Clockwork perfect. One of the greatest movies ever made. Essential viewing. Not transphobic. 🤠👍

Sally Jane Black

I've no idea where I put either of my copies of Whipping Girl, otherwise, I'd quote directly from it. Regardless, Julia Serano deconstructs the pivotal twist in this film and its inherent, violent transmisogyny in detail in her book, and I feel it's redundant to go over it again. Suffice it to say that it plays the Ace Ventura scene seriously, having Stephen Rea react viscerally to Dil's body, out of revulsion at her naked penis. Henceforth, he misgenders her and acts as if it is a burden that he has come to fall for her. Henceforth, his narrative becomes one of coping. It's as dehumanizing as any punchline, as any stereotype.Dil is never the focus of this story, but her gender is treated as a tool to build a cis man's character, as an obstacle he must overcome, not a part of her being. This is galling in and of itself as a matter of trans representation, but in regards to the film overall, it's irritating because this film has the potential to be a decent movie. It squanders that on stereotypes, transphobia, and lazy writing. It squanders that on half-baked sentiments and a lack of investigation. It squanders that on plot. Kinda just fuck plot.Beyond its portrayal of a trans body as violently disgusting and its repeated misgendering, it seems to go out of its way--particularly in its soundtrack choices--in asserting a distinctly binary view of gender. This stands out because it comes off as coyness, a cheeky little wink that contextualizes Dil's gender as a dramatic joke. It turns her into a punchline in the minds of those who view gender in a biological essentialist and inherently binary fashion, and as it focuses its character arc and plot on the cisgender male who dehumanizes her, it shows that this is firmly a film for a cisgender audience. My other main complaint is, of course, its treatment of the IRA. Any film that fails to support their struggles against British imperialism can completely fuck off. But there, too, is where it fails in basic writing. It sidesteps Fergus's culpability in Jody's death in a way that waters down the characterization and positions him in contrast to the other IRA members, as if disloyalty to them isn't a betrayal worthy of scorn, as if his toxic obsession with Dil--which brings more violence and death into her life than would likely have otherwise--is somehow a noble response to his guilt. It both softly demonizes the IRA--who I may remind you are opposing a genocidal empire--and attempts to pre-emptively forgive Fergus for murdering Dil's lover.It's a typical shoddy Hollywood cop-out death. Make Fergus an explicit killer (for the cause) and explore sexuality and gender with a little more compassion, and portray Dil with an actual trans actress, remove the disgusting reaction scene and show Fergus's reluctance to be what it is--transphobia and toxic masculinity--and don't make him out to be some hero and this might have been palatable. Pride count: 9/30

KYK3.0

not this cis white woman with huge ms. monopoly energy being the poster...