becoming a woman

1

Lane 4 – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Lane 4, Amanda is most comfortable in the water. Lacking her parents’ attention at home, swimming is the only thing she has. But she’s not alone in the pool. Priscila, the star of her swim team, becomes her friend and rival in the pool and in life.

The film starts with Amanda completely still, floating underwater in the fetal position in a swimming pool. By comparing the swimming pool to a womb, the opening image shows Amanda’s desire to return to the womb, to escape all the stresses of her daily life (see Freud’s Thanatos Instinct). In the pool, she can escape from her parents who don’t understand her, the social pressures of maintaining a ‘cool’ image, and her own growing pains. However, unfortunately for her, she cannot stay underwater forever. Eventually she has to surface for air. When she breaks from the fetal position and swims to the surface, it’s symbolic of her second birth. It’s her rebirth as a woman and a world full of expectations for her.

The scenes of Amanda underwater are the corner stones of Lane 4. Each one of them indicate her underlying desires. First, as mentioned above, she’s reborn from a girl into a woman, even though she desires to return to the simplicity of the womb. Secondly, she dives to the bottom of the pool on her own to reluctantly collect a hairband given to her by her mother. This image symbolizes her reluctance to grow up and tie back her hair – something that her mum thinks she should do to show off her ears. The third underwater scene shows her diving towards Priscila’s boyfriend. This scene starts to reveal her desire to assume Priscila’s position as the coolest girl on the swim team which are confirmed in the last underwater scene to end the film. Above water, Amanda is mostly silent and rarely reveals what she thinks, but underwater, she reveals all of her underlying desires and urges.

Lane 4 contains most of the typical coming of age film tropes, such as:

  • Dealing with absent parents.
  • Dealing with friends who have grown up before you.
  • Dealing with a dad that still sees you as a little girl.
  • Jealousy of the popular girl at school.
  • Wanting to go out with most attractive boy at school.
  • Her first period.

As a result, it will feel very familiar to other coming of age films, such as Alba. The main thing that sets apart Lane 4 from other films is that it’s set within a competitive swim club. This environment, and the underwater scenes that reveal her hidden desires, made Lane 4 one of the most memorable films at SBIFF.

2

Vai – A Tribute to the Indigenous Women of the Pacific Islands

Vai

Vai Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

Why Watch Vai?

  • For a collection of 8 short films set across the Pacific Islands
  • See a shared indigenous Pacific Islander experience
  • It’s a powerful feminist tribute, featuring 8 women, and directed by 9
From: Cook Islands, Fiji, New Zealand, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Australasia
Watch: Trailer, Amazon Prime, Tubi, JustWatch
Next: Whale Rider, Boyhood, The Orator

a collection of short films

Vai is a collection of eight short films made by 9 women which takes place across seven different countries (Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, New Zealand, Kuki Airani, Samoa, and Niue). The titular character, Vai, is played by eight different indigenous women aging from 6 to 80.

Another interesting thing to note before watching is that ‘Vai’ translates as ‘water’ in each of the countries named above. Water is an integral part of the story. It surrounds each of the islands, which isolates each community, making traveling between islands harder. It’s ability to provide food is threatened as companies infringe on and overfish in traditional fishing waters. Drinking water is also rare and hoarded by the privileged. Most importantly, it gives life, both spiritually (as in the final short) and physically.

“We sweat and cry salt water, so we know that the ocean is really in our blood”

Teresia Teaiwa

A Common Indigenous Experience

Vai’s journey is played by 8 different indigenous actresses across 7 different countries and 8 different ages. In the first short, Vai is a 6 year old girl in Fiji, and the film progresses until the final short shows her as an 80 year old woman in Aeotara (New Zealand). By shooting Vai’s journey with different actresses across different countries, Vai creates a common indigenous Pacific Islander experience.

One common theme is the cycle of leaving and returning. In the first three shorts, Vai lives without her mother or father, as they’ve been forced to travel to New Zealand to try and provide for their family. In the fourth, Vai has already left Samoa and is studying in New Zealand. The final four films feature an older Vai that has returned to home. She returns and has to relearn the traditional ways she has forgotten. Whilst she regains her community, her younger relatives leave their homes just as she did, repeating the cycle of coming and going.

(Insert analogy comparing the coming and going of the people and tradition to the coming and going of the sea tides).

A Life Well Lived

The Pacific Islander experience may be new to some viewers, however, the experience of life is much more universal. It’s scope reminded me a little bit of Linklater’s Boyhood, except here the scope is much larger. Instead of focusing on a child from 8 years old to 18, Vai follows a woman across a whole lifetime. In doing so it encapsulates the entire experience of life in 90 minutes. When you’re watching Vai as an 80 year old, the memories of the shorts of Vai as a 6 and 13 year old are still clear in your head which allows us to enter Vai’s old age with a greater understanding of where she came from. These are memories that we often lose touch of once we hit adulthood in our own lives. Showing it all in one film lets us see life repeating itself and allows us to better empathize with Vai as an older woman.

What to Watch Next

If you’re after more indigenous stories from the Pacific Islands, check out Whale Rider, The Orator, Waru, or even Tanna. For too crossover films you could also check out Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Rabbit Proof Fence.

Or, if you’re looking for more films which follow a single character across different ages, I’d strongly recommend checking out Boyhood and Moonlight. They’re two great U.S. films about growing up.

3

Anishoara – A Country Girl Dreaming of Escape

Anishoara

Anishoara Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Why Watch Anishoara?

  • Follow a girl quietly determined to forge her own path
  • Hear the mythical origin story of the Sky Lark
  • See a rural Moldovan town that looks like it’s preserved in time
From: Moldova, Europe
Watch: Trailer, IMDb
Next: Yara, Mustang, Honeyland

The Breakdown

Anishoara starts with the most unique scene of the whole film. A charismatic man tells the mythical origin story of the Sky Lark in a close up shot with him looking directly at the camera. The story is about a beautiful princess who had suitors lined up for her from across the country. Instead of choosing one of the princes, she chose to love the sun and raced across the land and sea to be with him. But when the sun fell in love with her and embraced her, she burned to ashes and fell back down to earth. Devastated by her fate, the sun decided to reincarnate her as a Sky Lark; a bird that is known for flying vertically before falling back to earth as if it’s trying to reach the sun.

Anishoara a 15 year old is the movie’s Sky Lark. Just like the Princess in the myth, she has suitors lining up to be her partner. There’s a farm boy that teaches her to drive the tractor and a creepy old German tourist that also tries his luck. Instead, she chooses a typical mysterious bad boy named Dragosh that takes her around the country on his motorbike. However, just as the princess was destined to a doom of trying to get close to her love, Anishoara appears destined to chase after Dragosh without getting close to him.

However, her suitors and Dragosh unintentionally change her future, perhaps for the better. Each one of them gives her a gift which helps her to escape from the rural town. The farm boy teaches her how to drive – a method of escape. The old German leaves his binoculars – a tool for her to see outside of the bubble she lives in. Dragosh takes her to the sea, revealing that life exists outside of her town. She uses what she learns from her relationships to seek a new life away from her unchanging home town. Elsewhere she may have the chance to determine her own life. In her escape, she also breaks free from the myth of the Sky Lark.

What to Watch Next

If you’re looking for more films that take place in rural settlements that feel like they’re from another era, check out North Macedonia’s Honeyland and Lebanon’s Yara.

For more films about women trying to escape from their current lives check out Nevia from the streets of Napoli and Mustang from rural Turkey.

Or if you’d like to see more understated films about women chasing after lost relationships, watch Uski Roti, an Indian film about a woman waiting for her unfaithful husband to return, of When the Tenth Month Comes featuring a woman hoping for her husband to return from war.