Bloody Daughter -- Film Review The Last of Robin Hood -- Film Review

Bloody Daughter

A Film by Stephanie Argerich

The title of this film is misleading.  It suggests either abuse or extreme hardship or menstruation, but none of these play out in the film.  While ninety percent of the film focuses on Stephanie Argerich's mother, the renowned pianist, Martha Argerich, the title comes from her father, Stephen Kovacevich, himself a pianist of the first order, and seems to refer to the roughness in Stephanie's relationship with him.  He offers an explanation of the term 'bloody daughter,' which doesn't quite make sense, and seems to reflect confusion and misunderstanding.  The term 'bloody' is a British expletive of disputed origins which is used as an intensifier, similar to the way we use 'damn' in the United States, or a less savory word that is much rougher and cruder.  It doesn't really fit well with the content of this film.  I wish they had been able to dream up a different title.

But the film is outstanding.  It is a disarmingly intimate portrait of a very unusual family of remarkably talented people.   It is classified as a documentary, but it is actually a personal journal, rather than an attempt to construct an organized narrative of the facts.  There are very intimate scenes throughout this film.  Things one would not ordinarily include in a documentary.   A sequence of Martha waking up in bed in the morning and sipping her coffee at her bedside.  A tense scene between Stephanie and her father doing paperwork to obtain his official acknowledgement of Stephanie as his daughter.  Kovacevich has stalled and dragged his feet on this matter for thirty-four years.  No explanation of what that is about.  An outdoor scene of Martha and her three daughters painting their toenails and discussing their lives in a park.  Martha is on camera through most of the film.  Stephanie is intently preoccupied with her mother.  There are many close ups of her mother's face and eyes, as if she is trying to incorporate her mother or understand her mother through the camera. 

While there is a lot of conflict and tension within this family, there is also great warmth and strong personal bonds.  I wouldn't call this a dysfunctional family at all.  The members are engaged with one another, there is good communication between them, and there seems to be a lot of basic good will among them, despite some friction and misunderstanding.   They are a family that introspects more than is common in the United States, I would judge.  They seem to make a genuine effort to understand themselves and their relationships to a degree that I find unusual as an American.  American people are not very self-knowing, and one seldom hears them discuss their family relationships with much sensitivity or insight.  This film is strikingly different in that respect. 

There is great music throughout the film.  Both Martha Argerich and Stephen Kovacevich are world class pianists.  There are sequences of them performing at various stages of their lives.  It is clear that music serves as an adhesive that binds all of these people together. 

The film is in French and English with subtitles available in a number of other languages as well.  There is a menu where you can select.  Argerich speaks French despite originating in Argentina.  Kovacevich is American, but has lived most of his adult life in England.  Stephanie speaks English, and French with her mother.  If you like classical music, piano, or European life and culture, this is an excellent film that is a personal, in depth study of a fascinating family of top quality musicians. 

The Last of Robin Hood

Directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland

I have no criticisms of this film.  It is excellent in every respect.   It depicts the last couple years of Errol Flynn's life (Kevin Kline) and his relationship with Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning).   Beverly Aadland was fifteen at the time the relationship started, although she passed for twenty.  Flynn comes off more favorably and sympathetically than he probably was in real life, but it was a positive, convincing portrayal of his relationship to Beverly Aadland. 

Flynn involved Beverly's mother Florence (Susan Sarandon) in the relationship, having her accompany them on trips and appear with them in public places.  It provided cover for his relationship with the young girl, and Florence cooperated and even encouraged the relationship. 

It is an interesting romantic story: well acted, well conceived, and well presented.  I think the significance of this film is that it strikes a blow against some of the prejudice and nonsense that seems to prevail in our culture regarding sexual relationships across wide age gaps and with partners who are quite young -- "underage," as if the government can draw a line and declare people beneath a certain age boundary unfit, or unsuited, or incapable of behaving and functioning in a constructive sexual relationship, when it is well known that people show erotic response and interest in things sexual literally from birth.

I can tell you for a fact that many young women are attracted to men considerably older than themselves and that such relationships as depicted in this film are much more common that might be realized.  The vast majority of them play out in quiet discretion, but occasionally one is exposed and made into a public sensation and sanctimonious prosecution. 

I think there is a growing perception that these laws and these hysterical prosecutions are much more destructive and pathological than the relationships that are their objects.  Lives and careers are destroyed, families are broken up, communities are disrupted and riven, institutions are shaken and weakened.  All over a little bit of sex with a young person.  It's foolishness.  Sex does not harm children.  That has never been proven by anyone.   How could it?  Children are capable of erotic arousal from a very early age.  They are curious and quite readily explore it given the opportunity.  It is quite natural. 

We live in a society where it is perfectly legal to train children how to use automatic weapons, but if you show a child an erect penis, you can be put in jail and tarred with being a sex offender for the rest of your life.  There is something wrong with that, ladies and gentlemen.  I think that the perversity of this is beginning to emerge into consciousness across a wide swath of American society. 

These laws creating the concepts of "statutory rape," or "child molestation," are a legacy of religious prejudice and are designed to prevent children from growing up with healthy, accepting attitudes toward their bodies and their desires.  In recent years we've seen increasing havoc created throughout society at all levels by the boundless viciousness with which these laws are enforced.  It is time to dial this all back and rethink this in a fundamental way.  Religious conservatives have succeeded in hijacking the power of the state to enforce their negative sexual agenda on the entire society.  State power has replaced ecclesiastical courts.  This is improper and unconstitutional.  In 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down laws against sodomy making consensual sex between same sex partners legal in all fifty states of the United States, although such sexual acts have been condemned by religious ideologies for centuries.  It was a declaration of independence for the state against the tyranny of religious prejudice in policing sexual behavior.  This trend needs to continue and be carried forward. 

This film, while not belaboring the point, serves as an illustration of the wrongheadedness of the current statutes governing sexual relations between young people and adults.  It is an indirect critique of the current sexual regime in our legal system and a blatant contradiction to widespread prejudices against relationships that cross wide gulfs in age.  An excellent job on a neglected, but much needed theme.