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Audrey Kupferberg: Woman As Spies

At a time when the topic of women’s empowerment dominates in the media and among the conversations of many Americans, mainstream movie releases are mirroring society’s thoughts.  One sub-genre that has carried forth the message is the female spy thriller.

A number of these films are comedies, spoofs of the standard James Bond sophisticated action film.  Two that stand out are SPY with Melissa McCarthy from 2015 and the much more recent release, THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME, with Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon.  In SPY, McCarthy plays a desk-bound bureaucrat with the Central Intelligence Agency who has not had a chance to use her field training until she finally succeeds in taking to the streets to bring down a dangerous arms dealer.  As a roly-poly action heroine, McCarthy is hilarious.  While some viewers were put off by the sexual explicitness of the film and its potty humor, many critics and most audience members seem to enjoy this 007 satire.  I think it’s laugh-out-loud funny, and I love the ways McCarthy uses physical humor, the kind that goes back to silent comedy days.  Nobody falls off a scooter quite like Melissa McCarthy.

THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME from 2018 also relies on nudity and juvenile humor for laughs. The characters of Kunis and McKinnon, two goofballs in their thirties who have no direction and spend too much time hanging out in bars, become involved in an espionage adventure.  In the course of the tale, the two go from irresponsible jerks to empowered women with direction. Unlike McCarthy’s character in SPY, these two have no training but manage to turn their limited life experience into a successful international spy mission.  They come close to death several times, scream with panic at the horrors around them, but somehow come out stronger and more mature.  At the start, Kunis in particular is man-dependent.  As the plot unfolds, both women become codependents.  It’s a female buddy movie.  Co-writer and director Susanna Fogel doesn’t have many film credentials, and THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME could use a lot more polish than it has, but this film is a clear indicator of how movies are illustrating the empowerment of women.

The gold standard of women as spies on film is the fact-based Mata Hari character played by Greta Garbo, the female who relies on sex to dazzle her male enemy into submission.  Jennifer Lawrence reverts to that old-fashioned portrayal of the female spy in RED SPARROW.  Critic Tim Grierson in The Guardian nailed it when he wrote“…Red Sparrow is the sort of film that thinks it’s empowering its female character by making her supremely confident in her sexual power, when in fact the story just wants to keep finding excuses for Jennifer Lawrence to take off her clothes and reduce men to quivering pools in her presence.” The female spy comedies are entertaining and I like the fact that they send an important modern-day message that the women do not need to employ sex to succeed.  I found RED SPARROW beyond my range of acceptance.  It’s extreme, serious, disgusting violence and particular style of sex were a turn-off for me.

The most exciting female spy thriller is the series KILLING EVE.  Sandra Oh plays Eve Polastri, a once-desk-bound bureaucrat with a British spy agency, who becomes a full-fledged action spy.  Her target is a psychopathic assassin from Russia played by Jodie Comer.  Eve is mature to begin with, but the task she has set for herself is pulling her down, weakening her.  Yet, she is growing stronger in some ways.  As the two foes move closer to each other, actually meeting face-to-face on occasion, they become oddly obsessed with each other.  Unlike so many previous spy stories, KILLING EVE exposes as much of the psychological behavior as it does the physical action.  It’s a gritty and uncompromising story, one that tends to grab the viewers’ attentions and refuse to let go.  Season one has left audiences panting, hungering to know what the next moves will be.  Season two premieres on April 7.

From Garbo as Mata Hari, Hedy Lamarr as Comrade X, Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in THE AVENGERS, to Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 in GET SMART and Natasha Fatale in Jay Ward’s cartoons, female spies have entertained us for a century.  That the latest entries are carrying a strong #metoo message is fascinating.

Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former Director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and has co-authored several entertainment biographies with her husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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