Trigger warning: This review discusses sexual violence and sexual assault.
Deep within Isabella Eklöf’s caustic affair, Holiday, there is one of the most brutal, horrific, horrendously real acts of sexual violence depicted on screen. The lead character Sascha (Victoria Carmen Sonne) receives an act of brute sexual violence from her boyfriend, Michael (Lai Yde), a mammoth being who towers over the slender and slight figure that is Sascha. Eklöf’s camera never strays from the act, with Michael’s frustration and unchecked aggression being vented on his girlfriend. At first, Michael chokes Sascha, and her request for him to not do so is ignored and rejected, with him overpowering her and brutally raping her. Where other films that depict the violent act of rape, there has been a purposeful illusion to the act, with no penetration or genitals in view. Holiday pushes the reality and brutality of rape into the spotlight, with actress Victoria Carmen Sonne being required to simulate the act entirely, being required to go so far as to simulate choking on a prosthetic penis.
This act occurs during the daytime, with a house full of people. Midway through the act, someone walks down the stairs, witnesses the act and pauses, and then they simply walk away, never stopping to intervene. While Holiday is an excessively uncomfortable film, with complex themes that make for difficult digestion, the core moment of violence is the one element of the film that people talk about. As per Isabella Eklöf, this is intentional, as she discusses in this interview with Close Up Culture:
I have a long-term agenda to show more of sex and real sexuality on the screen. Like a child, I have to poke at what’s forbidden – especially when it seems pointless that it should be so. All of us handle our own genitals every single day and the lucky ones someone else’s too. Why on earth should that be such a big secret? I think that, as with everything else, sweeping things under the carpet is ultimately destructive emotionally and, as it follows, physically.
Concerning the violence, this is very much about what the core of the #MeToo-movement is about. We have to open our eyes wide to what is going on for a fucking lot of people and not dismiss it as a female issue, (that’s only 50% of everyone) or something too scary, vulgar or unappetising to speak about.
Again, I am convinced that non-communication is always dangerous.
Isabella Eklöf interview with Close Up Culture
There is a sense that Eklöf has become frustrated of the way that rape has been depicted on screen, with the brutality of the act having been sanitised, or glamourised, throughout the plethora of rape-revenge films. Often these films are directed by men, delivering the violence and the vengeance from a purely male perspective. While the act of rape is rarely sexualised, it has certainly become the reason for certain audiences to seek out certain films.
I’ll touch on this a bit more in a moment, but I want to explore the first part of Eklöf’s response. The depiction of the naked human body has long carried through the history of art, but it’s only in the past few decades that the way that sex and nudity has been displayed in non-pornographic films has evolved to a level of maturity and respectfulness. Long gone is the peeping Tom tittering from teenagers from the Porky’s era of cinema (or even more recently with the disturbingly prescient view of the internet with American Pie), with the voyeuristic glare at naked women long gone from mainstream cinema. The sex comedy has changed and transformed into surprisingly honest areas – the openly naked rejection that Jason Segel receives in Forgetting Sarah Marshall is still a major landmark in de-sexualised nudity in cinema, while modern teen-focused comedies like Blockers and Booksmart have rejected any use of nudity at all.
Elsewhere, real sex has been used to create moments of tenderness and empathy, empowering the drama of a scene, rather than titillating. When Mark Rylance received unsimulated oral sex from Kerry Fox in Intimacy, it was displayed with a powerfully open exploration of what it means to be sexually intimate with another person. Yet, when Chloë Sevigny gives actor-writer-director Vincent Gallo unsimulated oral sex in The Brown Bunny, the empathy and thematic relevance that existed in Intimacy is gone, instead coming across more like a director who wanted to utilise every tool in the controversy box just for the sake of being controversial. The film, and the scene itself, is uncomfortably absent of any purpose, with its monopolisation of the trauma that women undergo on a daily basis being used as a means to explain the suffering of the man. It’s bullshit, and the worst thing is that it’s clear that Gallo knows it’s bullshit too.
But, the appearance of straight sex – as is often directed by cisgender straight white men – in cinema is not uncommon, with the act having a long, contentious history in itself. This is not the article for that, but I do want to discuss the way that nudity and sex has evolved on screen to allow the LGBTIQ+ community to be represented on screen. Take John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus for example, which has everything from one man trumpeting the Star Spangled Banner into another mans asshole, or – in an opening that will definitely clear your parents out of the room quick smart – the sequence of a man ejaculating on his own face. Sure, these scenes may visually appear pornographic, but Mitchell’s direction takes the erotic aspect of the nudity and the sex out of the scene, putting the focus solely on the characters, and in turn, reinforcing their LGBTIQ+ life path. Elsewhere, in Gregg Araki’s TV series Now Apocalypse, the rarely seen, commonly considered unsightly, view of a hairy male ass is shown during a sex scene. These two gay directors have an intimate understanding of what gay sex is like, which in turn, provides an informed understanding of how to depict gay sexuality on screen, and why its display is necessary for the gay community.
So, sexuality can be beneficial on screen. It can inform the marginalised about their own sexuality. It can enlighten people as to how they interact with partners. Then, in the case of Intimacy (and, to a lesser extent, Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs), they can help strengthen characters, working as character development, helping provide context to the bonds in a relationship, and to contextualise the actions of the characters. The taboos of the depiction of physical intimacy in cinema and television has been gradually reduced over time, almost allowing the same kind of assessment of the human body and sexuality as has long appeared in literature, sculptures, and the paintings, throughout the breadth of history.
But, I can hear you saying already, that’s sex, and what you started off talking about – sexual assault on film – is most certainly not sex. And yes, you’re right. It’s not sex at all. It’s sexual violence. It’s violence against women. It’s a brutal, depiction of a very real threat that women face day in, day out.
And yet, this subjugation of women has been so prevalent in cinema that it’s spawned its own sub-genre of rape-revenge films. Gore driven affairs monopolised the humiliation of rape and turned it into a cause for revenge, with films like I Spit on Your Grave, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, and more recently, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films, all utilising the act of rape as a reason for their ‘heroines’ violent actions. I Spit on Your Grave torturous thirty minute gang rape opens the film, with the men who engaged in the rape all getting their comeuppance in the second half of the film. Thriller: A Cruel Picture gleefully engages with the suffering of the lead character, forcing her into dangerous and disturbing situation after dangerous and disturbing situation, culminating in the loss of an eye (of which is depicted on screen as the piercing of the eye of a cadaver of a woman, so strong the disgust for women from the director is). It lives up to its title, fully embracing every ounce of pain and torture.
Which raises one of the main issues with displaying sexual violence on screen. Cinema, for many, is a form of entertainment, and unfortunately, given the depths of depravity that exists within humanity, there are many out there who enjoy seeing these intense, horrendous acts of violence on screen. Digging into the subculture of gorehounds and horror aficionados, you’ll quickly find that there’s a wealth of people who have their ears prick up when they hear that a film has a particularly brutal rape scene. Yes, this is not a full representation of the entire group, but it’s still a wide proportion of ‘fans’. And, the majority of these fans are male.
When news came out about audience walkouts from Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale, facebook groups and twitter threads were alight with male horror fans getting excited at the news that there were ten minute long rape sequences that don’t shy away from the graphic brutality of the assault. There was little realisation from these people about what they were actually cheering for, other than that they will eventually get to watch someone be submitted to sexual assault. That violence itself is the cause of the glee. Yes, these same fans also get excited about the news of particularly brutal deaths in films, but there is a difference between sexual assault and a comical death at the hands of a maniacal, evil doll. One is real and occurs every day in society, being wilfully ignored by the masses, and the other is the work of fiction.
We have a culture that has been raised on enjoying seeing violence against women, and it’s so rare that the actual real world context of the violence is comprehended. The slasher genre, for example, is one that thrives on the ‘final girl’ format, where characters are slain one by one til there’s one final woman standing who is given the brunt of all the villains violence and aggression. Disturbingly, the horror community thrives on the villains actions, holding up the Jason’s and the Michael’s as their iconic anti-heroes. Silent, mouth breathing, uncaring villains. Are the males of the horror community seeing themselves in this role? And, if so, do they then also wish that they were the instigators of the violence against women in films where rape is the core violent action?
This is grand generalisation for sure, but given how many films that have featured rape and sexual violence have been directed by men, with their unwavering male view point driving and directing the narrative, and more importantly, deciding on how we – the viewer – watch the violence unfurl, one can’t help but wonder what impact this mildly blasé representation of sexual assault has on society as a whole. Especially when paired with the lionisation of violence and gore. The more brutal the act, the more exciting and enticing it is to the horror viewer. Is this little more than just an endurance test, or is there something deeper running underneath?
When I look back at my first viewing of Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, I admired the extended takes that made the viewer beyond nauseated. He imbued his viewpoint of what it would be like to experience trauma through his woozy, unsettling camerawork. Yet, as the film progresses, after the extended nine minute one shot rape sequence, he manoeuvres the audience into a calming, yet elegiac tone, allowing us to contemplate the violence that caused the beauty of the world to be torn away. After watching Holiday and Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, I wonder if my respect for Noe’s film is misplaced and woefully wrong.
After all, for so long, the visualisation of sexual violence in film has existed as a lesson, or a cruel motivational tool thrust upon the women characters of the film. The concept that this is something that they will ‘grow’ from still exists. This is an idea that extends as far as the suffering writer narrative, or the societal concept that to ‘become better’ we have to be at our worst, so we have something to grow from. Which is a profoundly privileged concept to implement either in society or on film. And, yet, it’s often the men in society who are the ones who arguing for suffering. Irreversible is Noe’s pure vision, just like I Spit on Your Grave is Meir Zarchi’s vision. Men directing women, continually expecting them to suffer for entertainment. But for women around the world, the very real daily suffering and threat of sexual violence is not a tool for growth.
Which leads me to another obvious issue that’s worthwhile raising – the way that violence against women is discussed in the media. In particular, the way that films with violence against women are discussed. Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m guilty of what I’m about to talk about – as a man, I can never know or comprehend what it is like to live a life as a woman in todays society. Nor would I deem myself able to write about a film like Holiday from a viewpoint of understanding. Yet, the wealth of the reviews for the film out there are written by men, from a male viewpoint. They often applaud the ‘audacity’ of the director for depicting rape in such a ‘powerful’ manner.
Surely it shouldn’t require a film to depict rape from start to end with all the abrasiveness and trauma that comes with sexual assault for people to realise the brutality of sexual assault? As Eklöf mentions in the interview above, non-communication is dangerous. But, women have been vocal about what men have put them through in society for the longest period of time. Why does it take the visualisation of sexual assault for men to realise, well, this is not nice at all? What happened to just believing women?
I can’t say for sure whether sexual violence needs to be depicted on film or not. I simply do not know. I’ve long believed that there are no taboos in what can be depicted on screen – buying into the notion that there simply needs to be a reason for an action or event to be there. But after watching Holiday, I’m doubting myself. The violence and assault is so brutal, so impactful, yet, at the same time, it’s so matter of fact. The closeness of the assault to the intensity of much of the male directed pornography available for free on the internet is disturbing. Maybe it’s a further reminder of how terribly deep this culture of violence against women runs.
Isabella Eklöf’s Holiday displays how insidious the tendrils of masculinity are. Sascha directly benefits from the privilege of masculinity, and while she clearly is distraught by her assault, there’s a strong suggestion that she simply takes it on the chin so she can continue benefitting from her wealthy boyfriends endeavours. This concept is beyond unsettling, so much so that I find myself struggling to engage with it.
With that said, that’s why it is so important for the voices of women to be amplified. Looking through the wealth of male reviewers applauding the film, I finally came upon Marisa Mirabel’s review for Slashfilm. How Marisa writes about the way sex and violence is utilised in Holiday is done so from an informed perspective. There is a realisation of what Eklöf was aiming for with this film, and she clearly outlines why the film worked for her.
This is even more relevant when looking at the controversial Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Blue is the Warmest Colour. The great Manohla Dargis talks about the film at length in this New York Times piece, discussing her reaction to the film, and in turn, her male film critic colleagues reactions to her negative review. Within this piece is a quote from the author of the graphic novel that the film was based on, Julie Maroh, who had this to say about the film:
It appears to me that this was what was missing on the set: lesbians.
Julie Maroh, author of Blue is the Warmest Color
Both Dargis and Maroh go on to talk about the eroticisation of the sex in the film, which Maroh believes to be pornographic. Again, this is a film directed by a man, about two women falling in love.
There is a lot that needs to change about representation in cinema, this is not news. For the LGBTIQ+ community, it’s being able to present sex and sexuality in a way that represents their community as it is. When applying that same concept to women, it then becomes terrifying that the almost matter-of-fact toxic relationship that exists in Holiday is one that Isabella Eklöf felt necessary to depict on screen. This is an uncomfortable film, but it’s one that feels like a rebuttal of decades of misrepresentation of toxic relationships on screen. For further reading about sexual violence in films, I recommend giving this article by Elena Lazic a read.
As one closing remark, I want to stress that it’s not just violence against women on film that needs to change to one being delivered from a women’s perspective, but also the way that women’s pleasure and sexuality is presented needs to be changed. Just like much of this article, this is not a field that I am confident enough to write about with any authority, so I strongly suggest giving this recent episode of the Scriptnotes podcast a listen, where Crazy Ex-Girlfriend creator Rachel Bloom talks about the way that sex and sexuality is presented on screen. There’s a lot to learn from it, and in turn, there’s a lot that we – the men of the world – have to learn. If we can just step back, relinquish our arrogance for a moment, and let women take control, then we might be able to see the world from a completely different perspective.