In the past fortnight I have had the misfortune (somewhat self inflicted) to have seen both Wanted and Priceless in the cinema and following Peter Bradshaw’s review of Wanted, I wanted to compare the two to see which was (a) more misogynist and (b) worse .
Bradshaw describes women in Wanted as being represented by:
‘irrelevant sleek babes and obese comic foils, an ugly whorehouse aesthetic which really does sock over its contempt for femaleness very, very powerfully indeed.’
Bradshaw is quite right in arguing that femaleness is contemptible in this film. The girlfriend is whiny and bitchy, telling him that he won’t amount to much, then she then becomes the bitch who cheats on him with his best friend. His boss is the most fully drawn and her obesity is lovingly caricatured during his ‘panic attacks’, when time slows down and the special effects team are given every opportunity to make her wobble. The only woman with any power is Angelina Jolie and her character is drawn so harshly that its hard to think of her as holding any ‘feminine’ traits
However much of the film is misanthropic. Seen through the perspective of Wes who reminds me of someone who would be a member of the audience of one of Tom Cruise’s lectures in Magnolia; chanting about respecting their thing and taming that other thing. That kind of problem has as much to do with a lack of a stable identity (as provider/protector) as it does with asserting their power over women (which is a symptom of the earlier problem).
Now onto Priceless. Now I think that I have already said something along the lines that its a charm less sex comedy where Audrey Tatou plays a high class gold digger on the South of France. Cue spectacular scenery, a poor but industrious hotel worker who in a case of mistaken identity manages to get lucky with Tatou. She exacts revenge by raping his credit card at the various local shrines to capitalism (hello Chanel, hello Azzaro). The twist comes in when he can’t pay the bill at Hotel du Cap and winds up doing exactly what she does, taking a rich widow and pouting until she buys him shiny baubles. I don’t want to ruin the ending for you, but the two of them riding into the sunrise, penniless but for the Chanel on their backs did not give me the warm fuzzy feeling that I would expect.
It is an exceptionally charm less film where not one of the characters have enough redeeming features that make you want, for them to be successful. It puts the women’s’ movement back by about a million years and in spite of the dresses and shiny pretty things is, sleep inducing boring (Guy did fall asleep).
As which is worst, well, I am getting bored of this post so I shall do a simple scoring system:
Wanted:
Angelina Jolie (boys think she’s hot, a lot of straight women probably would ‘go there’) +10
Lead character that just needs to grow up and stop being a douche bag -8
Hinging the plot around the ‘loom of destiny’ -75
A plot with more holes in it than a slice of Swiss cheese -55
Total Score: -128
Priceless
Audrey Tatou +15 (I really liked that film Amelie)
Amelie in high fashion + 5
Pretty scenery + 8
Subtitles -30
Mean spirited film with no redeeming characters – 75
Total Score -75
Conclusion: Don’t waste £9 on seeing either of these films. Don’t waste the bandwidth on your internet connection to pick up the torrents. Watch Big Brother instead, it will be more intellectually stimulating.