52 Films by Women Vol 3. 3. PERMANENT (Director: Colette Burson)
Permanent illustrates a common phenomenon that affects female
film directors. After making her feature debut in 2000, Coming Soon, writer-director
Colette Burson had to wait seventeen years before her follow-up reached the big
screen – well, a limited theatrical window and video on demand. In the meantime,
Burson honed her craft in television – she co-created (with her husband Dmitry
Lipkin) the HBO television series, Hung, which ran for three seasons between 2009 and 2011 and wrote one
episode of the show, The Riches, also created by Lipkin
in 2007; the series starred Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver, but was otherwise
as American as black comedy comes. The American film industry does not forgive
failure on the part of women directors very easily. If their films tank at the
box office and receive indifferent reviews, when then it must be that the
director is not working in the right medium. Male film directors are not
treated in the same way.
The excellent news to report is that Permanent is a slickly
produced comedy of teenage misfit-hood that has some sitcom qualities but
absolutely delivers, humorously and emotionally. Set in Virginia in 1982, it is
the story of thirteen year old Aurelie Dixon (Kira McLean) who has lived on air
force bases her whole life but has moved into a small town where appearance is
everything. She begs her husband to get a perm or permanent. Unfortunately, Dad
aka Jim (Rainn Wilson, anticipating Movember with a black tash) has lost his
job as a steward on Air Force One – President Reagan asked for a steak, but the
fridge only had a pork chop – and is returning to school on a scholarship. Mum
aka Jeanne (Patricia Arquette) is the family’s main breadwinner, working as a
waitress at a local chicken restaurant. The bottom line is that they don’t have
much money. Jeanne takes Aurelie into a beauty school, where Jim fixates on
something else (‘how much for the plastic head?’) and Aurelie puts her head in
the hands of a student (‘I’m going to be qualified in six weeks’). Her hair is
fried.
Burson’s film documents the consequences of going cheap: being
ostracised on the school bus - they make fun of Aurelie’s name too, calling her
‘Orally’ - and subjected to bullying. Her family sign her up for karate classes
– the first lesson is free - but she’s not a natural talent. Throw in a boy who
wants to finger her, clearly a Harvey Weinstein in training, and an African
American girl who wants Aurelie to pay her a dollar a day to be her friend and
we are very much in ‘school is hell’ territory.
As storytellers the world over know, you cannot have a feel
good comedy without feeling bad first. You can’t make a comedy without the
promise of change. So damned if Aurelie doesn’t try to iron her curls out. She
gets an opportunity to strike back during a scooter basketball game, but even
that ends in her near expulsion – Aurelie’s nemesis is Kelly Keester (Kaleigh
Jo Keller) whose position is middle school is maintained through a clique, the
bully group of three.
Burson spends as much time with the adults as she does with
the kids. Jim has his own hair problem. He wears a wig and lives in fear of
losing it whilst swimming in the mandatory ‘you must swim in order to be
accepted as a student’ test. (We don’t have that in England.) Jeanne comes home
smelling of chicken. In an early scene, she pretends not to be in so as not to
accept the ‘welcome to the neighbourhood’ gift basket and the obligatory prying
questions. One night, she is drawn out to the yard by whale sound. Her aged neighbour,
Jerry (Michael Greene, whose last role was George Bush in the 2001 TV movie, The Day Reagan Was Shot) plays it for
solace. He becomes an unlikely love interest for her, turning up at her place
of work and also at a couple’s therapy session – she didn’t know he was
married. There is also a running joke about one of the teachers being pregnant,
which she uses at every opportunity to demand that the class not be so
disruptive. (‘It’s bad for my baby.’)
The relationship between Jim and Jeanne becomes almost as
frayed as Aurelie’s hair, so much so that she walks out on him – Jerry offers a
helpful ladder so she can climb the fence. He has a hot tub in full view of
Jim’s house and Jim scowls.
Although an exercise in nostalgia, it looks forward to
better times, notably when Aurelie enters her only friend, kept back in
‘special education’ classes, for the poetry reciting contest. The recitation is
a particular crowd rousing highpoint, followed by a sequence involving a diving
board.
Perhaps the most interesting and non-Hollywood aspect of the
film is Patricia Arquette’s weight gain. I have no idea whether she added
pounds intentionally for the role, so as to be a good physical match for Rainn
Wilson, or whether after winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2015 with
an impassioned speech for equal wages and treatment and headlining one season
of CSI Cyber (not as glamorous as
Miami or New York), she just stopped hitting the treadmill. A male director
might have insisted that Arquette look dowdy yet glamorous. Burson will
understand that this is what real women look like. The marketing department
does not know quite what to do. It has the top-billed Arquette sitting down and
focuses instead on Rainn Wilson, as if it is his hair problems that are the
source of entertainment. If women ran marketing departments, we might have a
campaign that better reflected the movie and real life.
Now what exactly is that scooter board court game called?
Reviewed at Stockholm
International Film Festival, Saturday 18 November 2017, 19:00 screening, Grand
Cinema Screen One
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