The most interesting scene of Red Sparrow could also be its most problematic. Jennifer Lawrence has just stripped off all her clothes and hopped onto a desk in front of a classroom of people. A day earlier, one of her classmates attempted to rape her in the shower, and now he’s standing before her. This is an invitation. But he can’t get it up. “Power, that’s what he wants,” she says.
It’s a line that speaks volumes in the post-Weinstein, #metoo era. And if this were The Handmaid’s Tale, it might just work. Lawrence’s line comes as part of a class in which Russian spies are trained as “sparrows” to use their bodies and sexuality to manipulate their marks. Charlotte Rampling leads the class in which young women and men are asked to give blow jobs and study their own sex tapes. “Your body belongs to the state,” Rampling says. “Now it asks something in return.”
It’s almost laughable, and it’s hard to swallow (forgive the euphemism) within a movie that wants to be about female empowerment and survival. But I’d trade much more of this bizarre, questionable sex boot camp for the convoluted and conventional spy thriller Red Sparrow becomes. Continue reading “Red Sparrow”