"Foxfire," directed by Annette Haywood-Carter from a screenplay by Elizabeth White, updates Joyce Carol Oates's 1950s novel and updates its characters from a grim working class to a suburban world. In so doing, it transforms a mythic fable of pre-feminist rage into an elegant Hollywood fantasy of female rebellion. The film, like Oates's novel, is narrated by Maddy, a likeable and level-headed art student who falls in love with Legs but cowers in terror when the opportunity for a serious kiss presents itself. The film zigzags nervously between telling the chaste love story of Maddy and Legs (whose eyes fill with tears whenever Maddy is around) and recounting the gang's adventures, which range from breaking and entering to car hijacking.
Annette Haywood-Carter's drama exists on the scale of exceptional productions. These productions have a crucial influence on the lives of young women. The lives of four high school girls change irrevocably in Foxfire. The catalyst for this transformation is Legs Sadovsky (Angelina Jolie), a rebel with no family to bring them together. When Rita (Jenny Lewis) confesses that she was harassed by her biology teacher, Maddy (Hedy Burress), Violet (Sarah Rosenberg) and Goldie (Jenny Shimizu) join her. Spurred on by Legs, they expose the teacher, but are suspended from school. The girls form their own private society in an abandoned house where they share stories, invent various pranks and engage in a bonding ritual.
The students beat him up and run away along with Goldie, who witnessed the scene. The event causes suspension, but at the same time brings the protagonists together. The incredible bond they create starts with fighting for their rights as women, but it doesn't end there. This single scene described above represents the union of women and their extraordinary strength. It may be simple, ordinary, but for a young viewer, the scene can be critical. This unit pictured there can move mountains, and "Foxfire" proves it. While the five spend all their free time together, Legs introduces them to the world of womanhood. Her sanctuary is an abandoned house. They rebel against the boys at their school and Goldie's overprotective and violent father (Chris Mulkey). Maddy invites Legs to sleep over at her house. The young women discover each other's biggest secrets and dreams. After getting closer to Legs, the other girl matures but also questions her sexuality. If I said I love you, would you get it wrong? She asks Legs during one of their deep conversations. As the girl grows closer and closer, Maddy seems to distance herself from her boyfriend (Peter Facinelli). The boy, however, tries to respect the girl's privacy.
The montage sequence behind the opening credits, stylistically deceptive in its frantic pace, is nonetheless thematically appropriate. A fully dressed Maddy (Hedy Burress), who turns out to be the narrator and central character, is taking pictures of her naked boyfriend Ethan (Peter Facinelli) in the woods. This simple inversion of the usual objectification of women in cinema translates into a marginalizing, two-dimensional treatment of men throughout the film: a teacher who paws the girls in his class, an intolerant principal, an incomprehensible father, and police and security guards are all portrayed. In the stereotypical and reduced way usually accorded to women in films about rebellious boys. In other words, they are stock figures rather than characters; even Ethan, who is relatively sensitive, can be described as a sensitive piece of meat.
This gang of girls that Legs unconsciously creates is imperative to the characters' maturation period. Though short but still memorable, their time with Legs transforms them forever. Margaret (Jolie's full role name)'s short existence in their previously stable life stirs something in their minds. The young character becomes a symbol of female empowerment and femininity for other girls. She is a leader, a mentor on her crooked road to adulthood. She teaches them to face themselves to defend themselves. In one particular, highly metaphorical and emotional scene, all five are in the abandoned house - the asylum of their male-dominated lives. In a candlelit space filled with their photos, they decide to unite forever. One after another, each girl tattoos a little fire on their bodies - a symbol of struggle, freedom. In the scene, nudity is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary - it is a celebration of women's bodies, of their autonomies. The scene depicted is a metaphor for a rebirth - katharsis. Like phoenixes from the ashes - Maddy, Goldie, Rita and Violet transform into independent, thinking women who can overcome anything.
What justifies this stylization is not a tit-for-tat adjustment of feminist scores, but the dreamy adolescent subjectivity that informs the entire film, including the spotty lighting. Since the film is about teenage bonding, I suppose it has something to do with feminist empowerment, but Foxfire is much closer to a lyric than a treatise: It's too on topic to sound boring. As with much of Joyce Carol Oates's fiction - or so a friend told me - the action is organized around the appearance of a mysterious stranger. Usually this stranger is male, as in Oates' story "Where are you going, where have you been?" But in this case, the outsider is Legs, memorably played by Angelina Jolie.
The fact that Legs is initially mistaken for a boy by a (male) security guard as she enters a school to get out of the rain - thus setting the plot in motion - is probably the closest the film gets to a commentary on gender papers. Most of the time he is so completely immersed in the atmosphere of his closed world that such questions seem like distant thunder, and in this dream world Haywood-Carter's enchanted lighting schemes and magical staging become wholly his own. In an interior night shot, Legs is lit in blue light as the other girls flutter around her like moths; in another indelibly intertwined configuration, the five heroines gather around a sink in the school bathroom; and Maddy's darkroom glows with as many mysterious points of light as a planetarium.
The script, while set in the present, the murky narrative betrays the book's original setting - the 1950s. This is especially evident in the way the girls' complaint is handled by school authorities and their male peers. It is inconceivable that any principal in the 1990s would suspend students for weeks without further factual investigation, without giving them a chance to voice their grievances. Another issue is the conflicted and confusing portrayal of Legs. There is physical intimacy and the exchange of vows of love and loyalty between her and Maddy (Hedy Burress), the central and sympathetic figure. However, lacking honesty and courage, the filmmakers simply drop the subject - as they do with numerous other subplots. The film spirals out of control when Legs kidnaps the father of one of the girls, at gunpoint, and blackmails him into paying for his daughter's drug rehabilitation. The last half hour is an inferior imitation of countless male bonding photos, filled with stolen cars, wild driving, police chases, arrests and so on.
Elizabeth White's script is confusing and misguided. Without exception, all male roles, from school principal to Goldie's father to Maddy's boyfriend. For bullies, they are defined so narrowly that they seem borderline and laughable caricatures. Things aren't helped by helmer Haywood-Carter, who can't decide whether to emphasize the social message - that it's okay. To challenge the status quo and question the patriarchal system - or make it a fun film about the adventurous coming of age of "rebellious" girls, misunderstood by their parents. The picture's richness of beautiful imagery exaggerates the material so much that it almost annihilates any emotional resonance. Night shots are perfectly lit, with the girls often silhouetted against streams of blue light. Playing a glamorous anti-heroine, Jolie is given the star treatment by the director, with the camera caressing her sensual lips and beautiful eyes. The set is attractive but very uneven. Jolie is obviously a talented actress, and Burress has natural charm, but Shimizu looks and acts like she's still a Calvin Klein model.
In the end, "Foxfire" is a story that will delight many young women who are entering an age of maturity and growth. It's not about amazing action and full of twists. It's about the surprising story and well-crafted female characters that Annette Haywood-Carter and Elizabeth White created. The female friendship featured in "Foxfire" is unique and one of a kind. We might even call the film "ahead of its time". Back in the 90s, productions often depicted female friendships as artificial, where one woman looked down on the other and often stabbed her in the back, stole her boyfriend, cheated at work, etc. Like a beautiful pearl in the ocean.
The film's lore is still very much present and relevant to today's world. One would think that 1996 was a long time ago and a lot has changed in twenty-three years. This, incidentally, is unfortunately not true. Women still fight for their rights - freedom of reproduction, equal pay, right to abortion, etc. This happens not just in the United States, but all over the world. The stories told in other films with similar themes positively influence the development of young women. They prove and show an authentic and healthy image of femininity and true female friendship, which is not fake, but rather the opposite - it can last a lifetime.
Unfortunately, in the case of "Foxfire", it's time for Legs to go. The girl is not the person who stays in one place for a long time. "You're in my heart, Maddy" is the last thing Legs says before getting on the bus and leaving. The scene is very emotional, not only for Maddy's character, but also for the audience.
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