The main female characters in the film all show a sexually repressed side. Nicole Kidman's charlotte is undoubtedly the biggest highlight of the film, and this is what her accurate grasp of the character's sexual repression and release brings her. She had a relationship with three men - Hillary in prison, JACK, a newsboy, and Yardley, a black writer. In their relationship with Hillary, the two initially kept in touch via letters, and the scene of their first meeting in prison constitutes a sadomasochistic landscape. Hillary tells Charlotte to spread her legs and tore her stockings, and then they both masturbate and climax. This is a sex act without a "penis" present. Due to the regulations of prison visitation, the two cannot have any physical contact, so it is impossible for the two to have a real sexual relationship. But the physical absence of the phallus does not mean the loss of the libido. The "sexual relationship" between Hillary and Charlotte was realized based on the password Hillary issued to Charlotte. "Would you like to do something for me now?" Commands such as "Open your legs", "Rip your stockings", "Open your mouth" and Charlotte's follow-up completed a "command-execution" exercise of power. There is no doubt that the imprisoned Hillary has an extreme desire to have sex with women (he is not shown to be gay in the film); at the same time, Charlotte, who "deeply loves" Hillary, also desires to have sex with him. . But the issuer of the order is the male hillary, which implies a fact that the existing knowledge system formed by the patriarchal discourse system represented by Freudian psychoanalysis maintains the fact that males are the center of power. Here, charlotte is just a code for exercising a "prescribed" procedure in an existing disciplinary system. In this sense, hillary forms a spiritual phallus through the discourse power endowed by the collective unconscious, and dominates the entire sexual relationship process. After Hillary was released from prison, the difference was that the two achieved a physical sexual relationship; the same thing was that sadomasochism had once again become the way to achieve a sexual relationship, and hillary was also the dominant player. In the process of the relationship between the two, the director also interspersed pictures of crocodiles in the river, wild boars foraging in the wild, and some dead wild animals, suggesting that the relationship seems to conform to the laws of nature with a metaphorical montage technique—— The strong eat the weak; c who didn't want to have a relationship with hillary at first
In the relationship with jack, charlotte appears to be "easy". Jack looking at the photos he took with his mother when he was a child and taking back his mother's ring from his father's girlfriend all show the subconscious Oedipus complex of the boy whose mother ran away when he was 5 years old. In turn, this plot continued into his relationship with Charlotte. The "fantasy" scene used by Lee Daniels also appears in this film. While Jack is waiting for Charlotte, he fantasizes about her marrying him in a white wedding dress. But when Jack wanted to have a relationship with Charlotte, Charlotte refused, and Jack did not take coercive measures like Hillary did. This fully shows that Jack's love for Charlotte is the emotional displacement of his Oedipus complex. This is a unique emotion that boys have towards their mothers - they want to possess, but they don't dare to act recklessly. Even when Charlotte agreed to have a relationship with Jack later, it was more like the "son" wanted to get a toy and exchanged it for the "mother" in a coquettish way. At the beach, Jack scolded Charlotte when she was told that she would not have a relationship with him, but Charlotte was neither ashamed nor annoyed. This kind of "accommodation" is like a mother who contradicts her child without holding a grudge. In a later scene, Jack is stung by a jellyfish and Charlotte urinates on Jack to detoxify. This is very similar to "Bitter Moon", which uses images of women excreting urine on men to form a sadomasochistic landscape. In the social discourse rules of patriarchal androcentrism, men should act as agents in the libidinal transfer equation, but here women are superior to men in both form and substance. On the one hand, charlotte "rides" on jack and excretes urine on him, announcing the rise of feminism in a form of male sexuality; on the other hand, charlotte does this to give jack Detoxification, in the saving/being saved relationship, the woman also becomes the savior. However, it is worth pondering that, in the sense of the first aspect, the way women achieve their rise is through the "imitation" of men's realization of power domination. Further, there is no reconstruction of a female discourse system here, but Is still using male discourse to achieve the rise of women. This is the same strategy that Laura Mulvey adopted in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Film" - by recoding the existing patriarchal discourse system, in order to realize the discourse system's
Likewise, the most important term in Mulvey's theory is "gaze", and the use of gaze in this film is equally worth analyzing. Mulvey argues that film choreographs three "gazes": the gaze of the camera, the gaze between characters, and the gaze of the audience. These three gazes lead to voyeuristic identification with a male-to-female gaze. In this film, the director has adopted different lens performance strategies in the performance of the relationship between Charlotte, Hillary and Jack. In the relationship with Hillary, Hillary stared at Charlotte, such as when the two met in prison for the first time, Hillary stared at Charlotte's private parts. Similarly, there is also the gaze of the camera and the gaze of the audience in this clip. When hillary stared at Charlotte's private parts, the director gave the audience his subjective lens, and by identifying with hillary, it also satisfied the audience's voyeurism. Obviously, because hillary is in a dominant position, he "has the right" to stare at Charlotte's private parts, and by identifying with him, the audience also realizes the sharing of power. In the relationship with Jack, Jack's gaze on Charlotte appeared many times in the film, but he did not give his subjective shot. In other words, the director deprived the audience of the "right" of voyeurism in this form. This hints at the director's intent - as "sons," we can only spiritually satisfy our possession of "mothers," but not really realize the action.
In the relationship with Yardley, the film only implied that the two had a relationship, and did not specifically present the process. For charlotte, just as she said "Fucking a man is the most natural thing in the world." Charlotte just regarded this as an ordinary and normal sexual relationship, which can be regarded as the promotion of "open marriage" in the United States at that time practice. Compared with hillary and jack, the relationship with Yardley is more ambiguous - both radical and conservative.
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