Looking for a gender (in)equality themed movie? This will be one of my first choices.
Lately somehow I am attracted less and less to comedies. God knows if I lost my sense of humour.. however, this one still wins my heart.
Yep, it’s a comedy movie with a clever twist.
I am not an easy man, in a glance..
It’s a French movie that I came across while browsing on Netflix. It was released in 2018, and I’m pretty sure I watched it way before the pandemic even hits, but can’t remember exactly when..
So I was initially looking for some light romcoms, and what I got was a movie about a chauvinist French guy who got a karma experience. The guy was trapped in an alternate world where females are the alpha gender.
Wait.. what do you mean by alpha gender?
First things first, don’t expect something lousy like a typical gender-bender genre. This is not that genre.
What I really admire from this movie is how they build the role-reversed world. I feel like this is a truly passion-project (instead of your blockbuster-money machine ones), where the writers cleverly convey the gender inequality issue.
Here’s a general idea, it might sounds exaggerated and generalised, but still not too far from reality:
Men are the alpha gender who rule the world, while women are second class citizens who are considered weaker, incompetent, beautiful fragile little things that need to be protected from the danger of the world.
Now, what’ll happen if we switch this? What if female is the alpha gender?
Caption: yes, think about that, Vincent.. 🙂
Unlike many other slapstick comedies, this movie did not conveniently put a man’s soul in a woman’s body and get him wear dresses, or even force him to wear dresses in a man’s body. Nah, that’s too boring.
Instead, in their version of gender role-reversed alternate universe, men are biologically men. Likewise, women are biologically women, with boobies and pregnancy and the whole thing.. but still, they are the strong one, the breadwinner, the alpha gender people who are holding important positions in society. Women are the famous architects, the engineers, the presidents, the bosses in the company you are working at, and the list goes on.
Meanwhile, men are not expected to do much other than taking care of the kids at home, cooking, cleaning, making themselves look pretty–sometimes with rather degrading clothing–and this often involved going through painful beauty salon sessions. Sounds familiar?
When you think about it, it actually makes sense.. women are given a stronger body, able to be pregnant with a new life and survive giving birth. It is not an easy task, at all!
One of the scenes that I am still remembering to this day was a short footage of a woman giving birth while standing up. The woman seems to be hanging on some sort of a bar, almost in similar pose as a gymnast hanging (I’ll try to find a related image to this). Back then I though it was fiction, like the rest of things in the movie.
Then I casually talked about this movie with my supervisor at Uni, and I was so surprised to find that “giving birth in standing up position” is a real thing back in olden days.
Now the more shocking part: current modern practice where pregnant women lay down on a bed is only invented for the convenience of the doctors and crews. Like, seriously?? Wow. 
Think about it, the standing up method is consistent with Newton’s gravity law after all.
Growing up in a rather patriarch society, I guess I’ve been just accepting things as-is. Though, now that I have all grown up and learned things, it doesn’t mean I am suddenly rebellious. You might say I’ve grown into a pragmatic woman who’s gotten used to my corner of the world; and I feel that some things are unchangeable, that any effort to make otherwise will be futile.
That aside, it still breaks my heart to think that many other women around the globe are experiencing the same pain, if not worse, and they, we, are all trapped in this bubble for as long as anyone can remember.
The unfairness is so striking yet so unnoticed, it has been accepted as a norm for many centuries–or even millennia?
We all need a wake up call. Amongst other things, waking up on a satire comedy is quite refreshing.
I am absolutely entertained and delighted that this movie existed. Give it a try, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did!
eunoia 