【Friend’s Mothers 4】

In the '70s,Friend’s Mothers 4 The Stepford Wivesemerged as pop culture's response to Betty Friedan's seminal 1963 feminist text, The Feminine Mystique. Intentionally or not, the Stepford Wivesbook (which was written by a man) and the Stepford Wivesmovie (which was produced, written, and directed by men) came across as manifestations of the male consciousness reckoning with patriarchal oppression, and with what women had been trying to tell them for decades.

Similarly, Steven Soderbergh's new horror-thriller Unsanecaptures a watershed moment of women's liberation in our generation, but from the perspective of a collective male unconscious finally forced to face the truth.

SEE ALSO: Trump was a disaster for women in 2017. It may be his undoing.

Granted, Soderbergh shot Unsane several months before the Harvey Weinstein exposé that opened the floodgates to millions of #MeToo stories. But to his credit, Soderbergh has proven throughout his career to be one of the rare male auteurs who actually cares about women's issues and perspectives.

From Erin BrockovichtoSex, Lies, and Videotapeto The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh's female characters are as well-written and complex and multi-layered as their male counterparts (if not more, in some cases). Their experiences and sexualities often ring true, or at the very least are presented with a gaze that does not turn them into fetish objects for the pleasure of male viewers.

So it only makes sense that Soderbergh, out of all the most respected male filmmakers in Hollywood, would've been the one to sense something rumbling on the horizon, as a storm which originated from decades of abuse against women in his own industry took shape.

Let's not give Soderbergh all the credit, though. Writers Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer delivered a script that you cannot help but retroactively classify as a manifestation of male guilt and atonement. Even then, the creative talent that allows Unsaneto transcend into a true conduit of the stark and ugly reality of women's abuse is lead actress Claire Foy.

SEE ALSO: Matt Damon has more to say about sexual harassment and, oh boy … It is hard to not read Unsane as a cautionary tale about the cost of complicity.

In her first major role after a Golden Globe-winning performance in The Crown, Foy embodies protagonist Sawyer Valentini's descent into Unsane,solidifying her status as a powerhouse of spellbinding versatility. As with The Crown, the film could very well have teetered on the verge of being unremarkable -- if it weren't for her believable, yet electrifyingly ambiguous portrayal.

In Unsane, we meet Sawyer as she struggles to cope with PTSD after being stalked by a man named David to the point of having to move and restart her life in a new city. She attends a support group with other survivors, where she admits to feeling scared, alone, and even suffering from hallucinations and the occasional "suicidal ideation."

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This sets off a chain of events that happen at an uncomfortable breakneck speed, when she is involuntary committed to a mental facility. The dizzying speed leaves both the audience and Sawyer herself uncertain about whom or what to believe.

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In the current climate, it is hard to not read Unsaneas a cautionary tale about the cost of complicity — one that says no one wins in a culture that doesn’t believe women, or refuses to face the repercussions of their trauma.

It tackles the depressingly common experience of women who are first sexually assaulted, then gaslit into believing that they themselves, not their predators, are the one to blame. Unsanegoes even beyond that, though, deftly capturing the repression and eventual explosion of female rage stemming from these abuses -- and society's desperate attempts to suppress that rage for fear of its powerful consequences.

Perhaps most chillingly, Unsanenails its depiction of the seemingly "hapless stalker" through David. He epitomizes the real-world risk of pop culture narratives like Twilightand TheBig Bang Theory, which normalize predatory male behavior to the point where clearly disturbed individuals are treated as harmless nerds or just boys being boys. Meanwhile, women's rational response to their harassment is mischaracterized as a social ill and danger to be medicated into submission.

SEE ALSO: We urgently need to talk about the grey areas of bad sexual encounters

Unsanealso has plenty of salient points to make about the unspeakably inhuman state of mental illness and the healthcare system in America. Its premise is frighteninglyrealistic, like something you might have read before in a newspaper or heard on NPR.

It all culminates into a surreal experience that we wish was further from reality than it actually is. Suffice it to say that (spoiler alert) a whole lot of people are forced to reckon with consequences that could’ve been avoided, if only they’d taken a woman’s warnings a bit more seriously.

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In a Daily Beast interview, Soderbergh expressed a worry and understanding of #MeToo that not many other men in his industry seem to grasp. "The intensity of it is the result of many, many, many years of pent-up frustration coming out. That’s why it feels so all-encompassing. There’s just been this pressure that’s finally being released," he said. But, "my fear is that, men being men, going forward, as opposed to changing their behavior, they’re just going to stop hiring women."

Some might disparage this as yet another bad take on sexual assault from the men in Hollywood. But unlike others crying witch hunt, or cautioning against the movement's consequences with faux feminism, Soderbergh's comments come across as a bleak awareness of a patriarchal system that will do everything in its power to resist change, and undermine women's power.

Unsane is a movie that does not undermine women's power.

Unsaneis a movie that does not undermine women's power. It's as empowering as it is matter-of-fact about what life in the aftermath of surviving sexual abuse is like. It does not shy away from making a statement about complicity as a choice, and the banality of evil that perpetuates systems which knowingly victimize women -- and other vulnerable populations -- for profit.

"Diversity wins in all of these situations," Soderbergh said in his interview on #MeToo. Explaining how that male impulse to resist change inevitably backfires, he continued: "If you become a company that, for instance, decides — tacitly or explicitly— to hire fewer women because you don’t want any problems, you’re going to get beat by other companies who do continue to hire women, because they’re going to have a better result."

Unsanedepicts Soderbergh's visceral understanding of what we all are in danger of losing when our society thrives from systemic corruption and oppression. And let's just say: it isn't pretty.

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