Not a Pretty Picture

The film begins by setting up a shoot. An actor and a would-be actor rehearse a scene: what happened one night to a sixteen year old girl at boarding school. The scene is shot. Then the camera stops and the actors talk with the director. The director was that girl; what is described happened to her. The actor has been through something similar. The two argue over how the scene should be played: what is true, what can be acted, and what cannot be shown. Martha Coolidge directs and appears in the film. It dates from 1976. The form joins fiction and documentary; the staged scenes alternate with rehearsal and conversation. The real matter it builds is representation; the film argues directly about how a rape is to be shown, and does it in front of the viewer. Coolidge worked in mainstream cinema in later years and this is among her early work. The film was long unavailable and was restored and shown again years later. The narrative reaches no conclusion; the actor and the director do not agree and the film does not close it. Its limit is technical; the image and sound carry the conditions of independent production of the period. Who it is for: viewers who like experimental documentary and films that argue about their own method. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the structure loose, and the technical quality low.