In film representation, the female sex is frequently confined within limiting roles within a defined space. Yet, when faced with the social construction of said roles, there is choice to either repeat or embark an alternate path.

Film Criticism

By Aurora Caruso | Edited By Isabella Sevilla

Photo by Houcine Ncib on Unsplash

Apart from a history of cinema that deals with its content, one can talk about the history of cinematic techniques. The genres of films, such as westerns, crime thrillers and romantic comedies, obviously reflect cultural meanings. Less obvious is that Hollywood cinematic techniques of cinematography and editing—how the camera is moved, shot/reverse shots, lighting, angles, and splicing—also reflect cultural meaning.  

For example, a low-angle shot makes the framed character powerful, while a high-angle shot makes the character weak. Cinematographic techniques often convey a more specific cultural meaning when applied to subject matter, such as the way a director films women differently from men. Thus, the editing and cinematography of films that apply the mainstream Hollywood style, along with the way character development occurs within the narration, represent a social dynamic that, on first analysis, divides the male and female genders.  

However, a deeper analysis reveals that it is the element of power that impacts the frames of a film and their editing, and not gender itself. Therefore, editing, meaning the reorganization and subsequent merging of filmed material, together with cinematography, that is, the creation of images that produce a story, ultimately fuels an unequal sexual dynamic. Without a doubt, the representation of women in films demonstrates how the female sex is associated with very rigid roles: woman as a shelter for the male protagonist, woman as a mother, woman as a lover. The woman is frequently connected to something beyond her person, never functioning independently.  

In response to this patriarchal society that thus favored the male gender, American feminists started analyzing the representation of women’s sexuality in the arts at the beginning of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s. Later, around 1970, the feminist film critics noticed the absence of a critique that analyzed the real way the images were constructed and the ideology they spread (Kaplan 119). Connecting psychoanalysis to the meaning produced by films, the Feminist Film Theory asserts that female characters within films are subordinate to male characters and that their only function is to be objects of erotic pleasure, a concept referred to as “scopophilia” (Kaplan 120). In particular, feminist film critic Laura Mulvey and author E. Ann Kaplan have deconstructed the way that directors and cinematographers can use cinematic techniques in order to represent men and women unequally.  

The cinematographers create a visual power dynamic that presents women as weaker than men, as objects to be viewed for male pleasure. In her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey argues about the sexism implicit in the male gaze, writing that “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly” (62). Consequently, the division present in films between the active part that gazes (the man) and the passive part that undergoes the gaze (the woman), results in an objectification and sexualization of the watched person.  

According to Laura Mulvey, not only is cinema constructed through looks and gazes that impact editing, but the predominant male gaze is a consequence of patriarchal society (Humm 19). In addition, the theory of the male gaze asserts that there are three levels of the male gaze: that of the camera, which is often in the hands of men; the gaze of the male characters within the film; and the gaze of the spectator. As a result, the audience will watch a film from a male point of view. The male gaze thus creates a one-sided vision, constraining the viewer’s gaze to a definite form of representation (Humm 14). Nevertheless, films have the power to reproduce the male gaze as well as the power to challenge and question it. 

Not only does the male gaze reflect a power dynamic that occurs within a patriarchal society, but it also propagates an idea of femininity and masculinity that is the result of a social construction. Within this dynamic, the woman’s function is to embody through her body an aesthetic perfection that divinizes her by detaching her from a human context, while the man’s function is to embody a masculinity that is defined as such because he holds control over the woman and the world around her.  

Since society is responsible for delineating the concepts of femininity and masculinity, the power depicted in the films recreates patterns that are the result of culture. In her work, ‘‘Women as Sign,’’ author Elizabeth Cowie asserts that ‘‘Women as a category, as the effects of definitions produced by political and economic practices, is posited as prior to filmic practices, which is then simply reproduced, reflected or distorted by film’’ (48). Thus, the misrepresentation of women in films is a consequence of the definition of the category of women that occurs primarily at the social level.  

Furthermore, the social inequality between the two sexes in cinema is also emphasized by the choice of the protagonist of the film’s narrative. According to the report published by San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, in 2022, women starred in about one-third of the films produced, when in fact women are about half of the world’s demographic (qtd. in Sun). Although the data confirm an increase in the assignment of lead roles to women compared to previous years, they prove simultaneously in the majority of the films produced, the figure of the protagonist is more often given to a man. Hence, this production choice assumes that the audience consists of the male gender.  

Moreover, the division of sexes into male and female that is still repeated within films today is unrealistic, when contextualized within a social context that has seen an evolution of gender identity. A social landscape which has changed the social construction that confined men and women within two sharply defined boundaries. In addition, the division between two opposite sexes diminishes the narrative power of a character, having an impact on the originality of the film. A prime example of this construction of gendered ideologies is Luc Besson’s film The Fifth Element (1997), in which Besson reproduces the sexism of Hollywood films through science-fiction genre norms, the roles of female and male characters, and the use of camera (Ott and Aoki 150). Luc Besson is a French director of high-budget Hollywood films which are aimed at a large audience. He follows, to some extent, the formula of the blockbuster film by casting big stars, including fast-paced car chases and violent action scenes. But he is, more importantly, an innovative director whose movies deconstruct and question the tropes of more ordinary Hollywood products (Hayward 495). He is fascinatingly ambiguous because he both offers the image of the sexualized woman for the male voyeur, even as he questions and even criticizes the masculinism that the male gaze implies.  

His sci-fi film The Fifth Element is mostly set in a dystopian future where the protagonist will have to give up masculinity and learn to love an alien woman to save the world. Here, Bruce Willis plays an ordinary taxi driver (Korben Dallas), while Milla Jovovich plays a sexy extraterrestrial (Leeloo) who has superhuman physical strength and can acquire knowledge at a superhuman pace. One might think that Leeloo, the extraterrestrial, would be the protagonist, but Besson slyly makes her the rather less important character, a mere love interest of Korben.  

Moreover, the director casts Bruce Willis as the protagonist, an actor who symbolizes traditional masculinity in American action films. Through the male gaze of Korben Dallas, the viewer observes the female form of Leeloo (Ott and Aoki 159). While Besson succeeds in freeing Korben from his condition of masculinity that prevents him from loving and thus saving the world, he also makes the female character of Leeloo a mere tool for the protagonist to achieve his goal.  

During the film, Luc Besson’s innovation only emerges from the way he decides to create the male character within the narrative. In contrast, the construction of Leeloo’s female character does not free her from the status of a subordinate woman, despite Besson endowing her with superpowers. Finally, since genre is a social reflection (Bordwell et al. 336), The Fifth Element provides an excellent tool for analyzing the relationship between future-oriented science fiction and gender identities in contemporary society (Ott and Aoki 150). Although Leeloo belongs to a more evolved alien species than Korben’s human species, within an explicitly patriarchal human society her body becomes an object of erotic pleasure. 

Specifically, technique analysis of the film reconfirms a gendered dynamic where the power lies in the man and in his gaze. At the beginning of The Fifth Element (00:25:2500:27:03), the young humanoid woman Leeloo is generated from an organic material, a prop that belongs to the alien world. Leeloo comes back to life at the hands of biotechnologists, who represent a position of power held only by men. Leeloo’s body is imprisoned within a space from which she desperately tries to escape, reflecting a social reality where women are forced to endure the male gaze.  

In addition, by the technique of blocking, the male scientists are statically positioned in front of the glass capsule containing Leeloo. As Laura Mulvey asserts, “the male protagonist is free to command the stage, a stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the gaze and creates the action” (64). In this film, it is not only the protagonist who has power over Leeloo, but also male secondary characters. At minute 00:25:41, an insert of the hand of General Munro, a character in charge of saving the Earth under government direction, emphasizes how it is the man who holds the power. As he inserts a card that activates Leeloo’s regeneration process, pressing the red button would allow him to interrupt it at any time, thus ending Leeloo’s rebirth.  

The montage of the scene alternates between inserts of Leeloo’s fragmented body made in CGI (00:26:26, 00:26:28), close-ups (00:26:33, 00:26:59), and medium close-ups (00:28:33, 00:28:50) with a direct angle of the men looking at the woman initially naked, only to be partially covered by bandages. In addition, the regeneration process of Leeloo’s body emphasizes her objectification because of the fragmented creation of her parts reflected visually (Neroni 38). Using the eyeline match shots, the viewer watches the scene through the male gaze (Neroni 27). Not only does this scene visually translate the male gaze but it also correlates it with the element of power, which in the film is owned only by men. 

Moreover, Leeloo’s character becomes an erotic object devoid of any narrative power, with the sole function of making the male protagonist act. By the time Korben is at the end of his transformation arc, he collects the trophy as a reward for completing the mission: the body of young Leeloo (Ott and Aoki 161), At the end of the film (02:01:19 – 02:01:34), a crossfade and a zoom in made with CGI show a close-up with a shallow focus where Korben kisses Leeloo inside the initial glass capsule. In this case, the velocity of the frame mobility also emphasizes the passionate atmosphere (Bordwell et al. 202).   

In response to the imbedded masculinism in mainstream Hollywood films, feminist filmmakers consciously counteract and deconstruct this implied sexism in their own work, challenging these social norms. A prime example of a feminist film that deconstructs the social gaze that objectifies women is Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) by Agnès Varda. The French director was part of the groundbreaking French New Wave that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s in France. In addition, she was the first woman director of her generation and the only one in the French New Wave, breaking gender barriers (Haskell).  

In the film Cléo from 5 to 7, she seems to visually anticipate the concept of male gaze that would be coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey only 13 years after the film’s release. The film is about a young, beautiful Parisian woman named Cléo who has an anxious relationship with her body and the attention it receives, only to discover later those men, and society in general, are not staring at her as much as she thinks. In this film, Varda comments on the way women internalize the idea of the male gaze and are taught to desire and reject it at the same time.  

Varda shows a sophisticated understanding of the male gaze as something that is not only about what men do but also how women are taught to depend on male admiration to form their own identity. The purpose of the film is to encourage women to break free from dependence on male approval and to develop a healthy sense of self-worth independent of men. Thus, Cléo from 5 to 7 creates a narrative in which the editing and photography reflect the evolution of women’s perceptions of their own identity. 

Throughout the film, Cléo embarks on a path of liberation from a gaze alien to her own, while at the same time changing her relationship with her female body (Neroni 39). The film by Agnès Varda investigates the state of female identity, showing how much society impacts a woman’s personal identity. To do so, the director decides to construct the story by focusing on Cléo’s subjective point of view. Thus, the way the viewer sees Cléo is the way she sees herself. Through this restricted narration of the film, the film illustrates the change in the protagonist’s identity in relation to her own body. Specifically, at the beginning of the film (00:23:44-00:30:33), a scene shows Cléo preparing for the arrival of her lover, José (José Luis de Vilallonga), while being helped by Angèle’s character (Dominique Davray). During this scene, Angèle picks up Cléo’s clothes; thus, her function is that of a maid. Therefore, according to Cléo, Angèle is in a lower state than hers (Orpen 39). The scene establishes a hierarchy even within the female sex. 

Subsequently, Cléo changes costume by wearing a white-colored angelic dress, changes her hairstyle, and lies on a bed with kittens, passively awaiting the man’s arrival. The artificiality of the depicted femininity is reflected throughout the mise-en-scène, but the objectification of Cléo’s body also occurs through a series of close-ups (00:25:05) and inserts (such as Cléo’s hands at minute 00:25:03) that fragment her body into distinct parts. When the doorbell rings, Angèle warns Cléo, reminding her not to reveal her illness because men detest it. Angèle’s character thus serves as a restatement of the cultural construct that sees women as perfect objects, not mortal human beings.  

Immediately before the man’s arrival, Cléo checks her reflection in the mirror to see if the preparation of this trop of female beauty has been completed (Neroni 105). As the woman and the man interact (00:25:40-00:27:40), the soft focus along with the long-focus lens (Orpen 74) create a mystical atmosphere around Cléo’s character that helps to reinforce an ethereal type of femininity bound to a perfect aesthetic ideal. In this scene, the cinematography and editing emphasize how Cléo has not yet freed herself from what being a woman requires to be appreciated by men: having an ethereal beauty, being frivolous, passive, and looking like an angel untouched by human mortality. 

At the end of Cléo from 5 to 7, one scene (01:05:0 particularly7-01:08:06) questions the extent to which the other’s gaze affects the relationship women have with their own bodies. Through POV shots (01:05:10, 1:05:29) from Cléo’s perspective, the viewer sees for the first time Cléo observing something that is not her reflection, or a reality that amplifies her perception of being watched. The POV shots show a park, a natural space that comes into sharp contrast with the urban space shown earlier in the film. While among the streets of Paris, Cléo seems imprisoned within a space from which she would like to escape, at the end of the film, she enters a place where she reconstructs her fragmented identity.  

Crossing the park gateway, a long take (01:06:10-01:08:10) shows Cléo wearing an understated black dress with a minimal hairstyle. Next, a wide shot frames Cléo’s body in its entirety without objectifying it (01:06:15), and a tilting movement precedes a tracking shot (01:06:4001:06:57). During this scene, Cléo carries out a performance that brings out her femininity authentically and lightheartedly. If previously Cléo performs her sensuality by addressing an external gaze, in the natural space she has no spectator but herself (Neroni 103). Indeed, Cléo achieves a state of identity that frees her from the anguish caused by appearance. In this scene, an independent gaze that does not fragment Cléo’s body into pieces emerges through editing and cinematography. Cléo then regains the power of her gaze and breaks away from the artificial definition of femininity that cultural society produces, creating her own definition of being a woman. 

Finally, most films produced following the Hollywood film style recreate a patriarchal dynamic that sees women sexualized and subordinated to the narrative of a male character. The filmmaking and editing techniques of this style have dominated the world film industry and have been considered basic techniques for making a film. Nonetheless, while cinema as an art is based on previously applied techniques, the filmmakers who were part of the French New Wave disrupted the classical way of filmmaking. If cinema is a space that is inspired by reality, at the same time, it produces new meanings and new ways of seeing the world. In a gaze that looks to the future, Agnès Varda’s film, released in 1973 and made without CGI, anticipates concepts and social dynamics that are still relevant fifty years later. While in her finale, Cléo discovers a new, previously unexplored space isolated from humankind, Leeloo returns to her initial cage, becoming once again a sexualized object for the male gender. 

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Works Cited  

Bordwell, David, et al. Film Art: An Introduction. 11th ed., New York, Ny, Mcgraw-Hill  

Education, 2017. 

Cléo from 5 to 7. Directed by Agnès Varda, Ciné-tamaris/Rome Paris Films, 1962, Raiplay,

Cowie, Elizabeth. “Women as Sign.” Feminism and Film, edited by E. Ann Kaplan, Oxford  

University Press, 2000, pp. 48-65.   

Haskell, Molly. “Cléo from 5 to 7.” The Criterion Collection,

Hayward, Susan. “Luc Besson.” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, edited by John Hill and  

Pamela Church Gibson, Oxford Univ. Press, 1998, pp. 494-495.  

Humm, Maggie. Feminism and Film, Edinburgh University Press, 1997, JSTOR,  

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.” Feminism and film theory, edited by  Constance Penley, Routledge, 1988, pp. 57-68,

Neroni, Hilary. Feminist Film Theory and Cléo from 5 to 7. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. 

Orpen, Valerie. Cléo De 5 À 7: Agnès Varda, 1961. First edition, I.B. Tauris & Co, 2019.  

Ott, Brian L, and Eric Aoki. “Counter-Imagination As Interpretive Practice: Futuristic Fantasy and the Fifth Element.” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 27, no. 2, 2004, pp. 149–176.,

Sun, Rebecca. “Men Out-Talk Women Almost Three to One in the Movies, Study Finds.” The Hollywood Reporter, 7 Mar. 2023,

The Fifth Element. Directed by Luc Besson, Gaumont, 1997. Internet Archive, uploaded by  MR901, 26 May 2014,