The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) is a Swedish mystery film that enjoyed some wide distribution and release in the States and became an international sensation. The psychological thriller stars Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander and the late Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist.
The story centers on Blomkvist, a recently disgraced journalist, who is hired by a retired tycoon with a family dynasty ready to take over his business to solve the cold case of his favorite niece, who disappeared decades before at their summer home. Lisbeth, a hacker, becomes Blomkvist’s research assistant to crack the case.
The story is based on Stieg Larsson’s novel Mån Som Hatar Kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women), the first in the author’s Millennium novel series, published posthumously. While there is an American adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, we will be centering on the original Swedish version.
The focus of this entry is Lisbeth, one of the two main characters in the story. Lisbeth has a distinctive punk look, covered in multiple facial piercings, goth makeup, and (yes, dragon) tattoos.
She is by far the most fascinating character in the film. She is smart, resourceful, emotional, and determined. While she is open about being bi, it is not a focal point of her character, and the other main lead character, Blomqvist, treats her with the utmost respect. She is likable, but she doesn’t always appear approachable.
She is an active character in the story, both in her triumph after a brutal rape by her ward, as well as being crucial to helping to crack the case. While the term “bi” is not used in the film, it gets used plenty in the promotional materials for the film, and not in a way to sensationalize the character.
Rapace was a big fan of the books and fought for the character during the making of the film, asserting that Lisbeth’s freedom is not just about her sexuality, but about everything.
From an interview with Charlie Rose:
ROSE: She is also — I mean, her beauty, there is toughness… she is also her own person in a remarkable way. In the way she dresses, you know, [and] the sense of her sexuality.
RAPACE: Yeah.
ROSE: —is so clearly ‘this is who I am, and I like who I am.’
RAPACE: And she refuses to play the roles that everybody expects her to do. And that’s liberating, in a way.
And from an interview with Film Festival Today:
Your character is so realistic and convincing. Did the pierced, bisexual communities approach you to serve as their spokesperson?
No, but Lisbeth did become a big icon in Sweden. I think that she in a way paved the way for many young people in Sweden. Also she opened up many things. She doesn’t define herself as bi or hetero; I think that she’s a very free spirit in a way and she’s very impulsive. […] Swedish people are a bit repressed and stoic and they keep everything inside, and sometimes it’s really difficult to know what people really feel and really think because they don’t show anything. And everybody’s trying to keep this nice, neutral, normal, surface, and you don’t know anything about what’s going on inside of them, and it can be pretty difficult to live in a society like that. So I think that Lisbeth has opened up things in a way.
While Lisbeth may be an antihero, she is a fascinating one — a fighter, whip-smart with a strong sense of morals and empathy. Though her bisexuality is more of a side note than a main focus in the film, it is an important piece of her personality and a powerful form of self-expression. In short, Lisbeth is a sensational example of bi women in film.