Whose porn is it, anyway?

>> Bad Girl looks at women behind the X-rated cameras

by MATTHEW HAYS

It’s the kind of scandal filmmakers dream of. There’s nothing, after all, that works to help sell a movie better than publicity, and publicity comes by the bucket load when censorship is involved.

Such was the scenario almost a year ago, when Bad Girl, Marielle Nitoslawska’s feature-length doc about women and pornography, was yanked at the last minute from its scheduled March screening date by Télé-Québec. The film had already received heaps of advance press, assuring decent ratings, but the TV suits apparently got cold feet about the hot stuff in the film (including a symphony of cum shots early in the movie) and pulled the plug. Then the film received a second wave of publicity when it opened at Ex-Centris—then a film marked by the censored label, it played well to sold-out houses. This prompted Télé-Québec to rethink its stance; Bad Girl ultimately aired in October to solid ratings.

Slamming the censors

But now that the film is opening this week at the Parc in its English-language version, filmmaker Nitoslawska, who also teaches film production at Concordia, would like you to forget about the headline-grabbing controversy surrounding her film. “In a sense, the controversy overtook the film itself,” says Nitoslawska, sitting in a Faubourg coffee shop near her office. “Everything seemed to have been propelled by the censorship scandal. Which, in a sense, is too bad. There’s been very little discussion about what the film itself is really about.”

Indeed, though there are some raunchy and racy images in Bad Girl—how could there not be?—the film raises important issues and addresses a number of ideas surrounding pornography and the burgeoning number of women involved behind the cameras. And while there have been a number of films about women and porn in the past few years—The Girl Next Door and Sex: The Annabel Chong Story among them—none have presented an overview that includes American strains of women-authored porn and European strains. Nitoslawska artfully leaps between interviews with porn activists like Annie Sprinkle (an American who decided to make films of her own after starring in over 60) and Catherine Breillat (the French director of Romance and Bad Girl whose films have been widely censored). As well, Nitoslawska engages with the female filmmaking team behind Baise-moi and a Scandinavian group committed to filming explicit erotica by women for women.

Not Not a Love Story

Despite the cultural divides, there were similarities, reports Nitoslawska. “They all seemed to want to open the cupboad door and see what was in there. It’s never really been done before, people seemed to feel, and it’s about time it was. When I was researching and starting to make the film, the question of what a woman wants was always asked in the singular. To me, it’s a more complex question, not of what a woman wants but what women want. There’s a plurality of views. Let’s stop finding the common denominator. This question of finding the difference between man and woman, which is a very Judeo-Christian way of putting it, is quite wrongheaded. All of the women in the film were profoundly in need of dealing with the issue as a metaphysical, philosophical one. That was my criteria for choosing women in the film.”

Though often thought of as repressed, Canada does have a history of making films about the sex trade and pornography. Nitoslawska looked carefully at the grandmama of the genre, the famous NFB attack on the porn biz, 1981’s Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography. “I was interested to watch that film again because it’s aged very badly. It’s a well made film, but its point of view is no longer viable. I secretly felt all along that I was making a bit of a remake of that film. The whole issue of women’s desire was not on the books then. The basic question is: what turns you on? That film never asked that question.”

Bad Girl has gained must-see status as well through its timing. Nitoslawska interviewed both Romance and Baise-moi directors before the censorship controversies around those films broke. “Ultimately, I think this isn’t really a film about pornography,” says Nitoslawska. “I think of it more as a film about authorship, gender and sexuality. I don’t think the film promotes pornography, per se, I think it promotes thinking about the perspective of pornography, what its functions are, who’s speaking in it, and to whom.” :

Bad Girl opens Friday, Feb. 22 at Cinéma du Parc