The act of filmmaking as an act of objectification. See Zulawaski's La Femme Publique (1984)

The film reminded me of Zulawski's film La Femme Publique (1984), anybody who loves this film should watch that one. I would have been interested in seeing something a lot longer, the film for example misses an entire husband and the filming of The Misfits, which I think is the one film she is absolutely brilliant and most raw and real in, the one film where she wasn't exploited.

The act of portraying a subject unfairly or inaccurately or as something other than what it is is what film is all about. Film isn't reality, and the act of filmmaking, like writing or painting or dancing or any other kind of creative activity, is an act of objectification, even when the artist is deconstructing objectification.

I tend to see fiction and films in the same way that Amos Vogel, Andre Bazin or Alain Robbe-Grillet did: The closer cinema tries to get to an accurate portrayal of reality, the further away cinema gets from realizing its potential. Film is artifice. Everything is a signifier and a prop, and everything includes the narrative and the human characters. Common criticisms like "the narrative is implausible/unbelievable/unrealistic" and "the characters are unlikeable/unrelatable" and "that's not what really happened" and "this is not entertaining therefore this is too slow or bad or about nothing or pointless" are null and void because you're not experiencing reality, you're watching a film.

A narrative film whose subject is narrative filmmaking lends itself to the idea of treating human characters as objects. La Femme Publique explores that idea much better, I think, than many other films about filmmaking (which Blonde is, Blonde is a film about filmmaking) through cinematography and the portrayal of characters in the act of photographing each other. A lot of what's onscreen could be delusional behavior on the part of the three principal characters, much like we see in Blonde. The characters are photographed, filmed, videotaped, or otherwise reproduced constantly throughout the film, that is, they are being documented and displayed in another medium, the viewer sees images of characters' faces reproduced in photographic prints, in mirrors, on magazine covers, and on television screens, the charcters are routinely portrayed as props or commodities, much like Marylin in Blonde. In La Femme, there is a blurring of fiction within fiction within fiction complete with a double (characters are filming a film and there is a double), which reminds me of Blonde, with Marilyn really Norma but we see her as Marilyn but she is Norma playing Marilyn playing a character and she is her own double (Norma/Marilyn) which she created, she objectified herself by creating a persona then spent the rest of her brief life fighting against that.

Anyway, watch this a few months ago and still consider this a 10/10 masterwork and an extremely important creation deconstructing the perpetual sexual exploitation of females on screen. Lift your dress up and we love you, spread your legs and we love you, put jeans on and question your very existence and self-worth in a mesmerizing, deeply personal filmic play where your heart is laid bare and you're boring and can't act, you're pregnant? you're a whore get an abortion. Ta-tum.