Never underestimate the clout of male gaze in cinema. It’s so sly that it can make a Hollywood star sell exploitation while believing she is selling a feminist fable. When this gaze bares it claws and fangs, it turns a thriller into a sadistic peep show.
In Francis Lawrence’s Red Sparrow, Jennifer Lawrence plays Bolshoi ballerina Dominika Egorova who meets with a horrific accident on stage. With no career, and the ballet company refusing to sponsor her apartment and her invalid mother, she has no option but to take up the offer made by uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts). Yes, the makers have read the usual suspects of Russian literature.
The offer is essentially a journey to debasement, sexualising Lawrence’s character with alarming ferocity. The first assignment for Dominika is to seduce a politician. She is made to strip, and then become a victim of rape.
Post this, she gets sent to a spy school where she is supposed to be trained to become a ‘sparrow’. Charlotte Rampling plays the school’s matron, announcing how trainees are supposed to master psychological manipulation so that they can exploit the target’s weaknesses. Their body belongs to the state; they must sleep with whoever the state wants them to. So we get Dominika and her comrades learning all about oral sex, how to disrobe on command, and the art of getting into bed with strangers. Literally, a crash course in pornography.
Mata Hari’s exploits, and seduction being a component of spycraft is common knowledge, but this film is not interested in anything other than the body beautiful. If she acts too intelligent, she faces attempted rape. The treatment is so exploitative, and the violence so gratuitous that you wonder whether Harvey Weinstein commissioned it in private.
The screenplay by Justin Haythe is constructed out of the bestselling novel by Jason Matthews, and deals with agents, double agents, moles and several contrived international conspiracies, sadly with zero intrigue. Also, very hilariously, it is removed from the realities of Putin era Russia. Matron tells us the Cold War never ended — it simply shattered into a thousand pieces. The situation is so dangerous that they exchange floppy discs, something that sounds prehistoric in the age of digital revolution and social media.
The greatness of Uncle Sam also looms large since the film makes Americans the nice guys while Russians are the worst possible scums to walk on earth. Americans are emotional and have a heart, and Russians are so degraded that they rape, maim, kill, and are capable of anything terrible you can imagine.
Since Red Sparrow is set in Russia, it casts a wonderful line-up of talents in cold vistas: Jeremy Irons, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, and Ciaran Hinds. All the actors speak in such a peculiar accent that you would choke on your vodka. Lawrence, for her starry part, broods through the film, displaying a tragic ignorance.
The film has an energetic beginning, intercutting a dance performance with an espionage operation. The score-setting also pays off handsomely at the end. Between this beginning and end is a purgatory of espionage so taxing and tedious, even a discarded draft of John le Carré would read better.
At a stating point of the film, a vexed Dominika tells her uncle, "You sent me to whore school.” Yes, and she took us along as well.
(The writer is a journalist, a screenwriter, and a content developer who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. He tweets @RanjibMazumder)
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