Happy Fall, readers! Is it cooling off where you are? Have you busted out your favorite boots — you know, the thigh-highs that could crush the patriarchy in a single stomp? How about that bustier that sends the CIA into a tizzy? Gotten your hair redone into a platinum shade so chic it may end up melting the Cold War?
Hey, that’s okay. I’m in my cozy garb, too. We can’t all be like Lorraine Broughton, MI6 spy played by Charlize Theron in the icy action flick Atomic Blonde (2017). Are we talking Lady Bond within moments of the Berlin Wall falling in 1989? Yes. Yes, we are. But can it get better? Is Lorraine not only a badass action heroine in the vein of Angelina Jolie (#Bi2), but also the queer secret agent we didn’t know we wanted?
Let’s get shaken (not stirred) and see what shakes out. Are you in, or are you out?
Before I get in too deep, let’s get the dossier of disclaimers over with. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: This review will absolutely contain SPOILERS for the 2017 thriller. There are also moments of extreme violence and nudity, as well as violence against women. If you need a reminder about the parameters, feel free to get the breakdown over at this page.
In the last few days before the collapse of Eastern Germany in 1989, elite agent Broughton must travel to Berlin and recover a crucial dossier from a treacherous spy ring.
All right, that’s enough recon for now. Let’s go all in.
What I Liked:
The constrictions of the Bond-esque spy flick are practically written in the DNA of popular culture: receive mission, come across a lover who will probably die by the third act, get the villain to monologue about his reasoning for selling the world. Sprinkle heavily with impressive action sequences. But for all the story beats we know as moviegoers, something as simple as a gender flip can feel revolutionary — especially if the Bond girl doesn’t become a Bond guy in the process.
Lorraine in and of herself is not a typical spy hero. She does have the trappings of a Bond — sleek, stylish, well-trained in combat skills — but she is more than a “blunt instrument”, as 007 is sometimes described. Lorraine is smart, capable, clever, and resourceful in her fighting techniques in a dogged fashion that goes into tenacity, to-the-death bouts with her opponents. Sure, Lorraine cleans up great, but she’s not afraid to get dirty — either in combat or spy games.
I loved how Atomic established early on that Lorraine had a male colleague/lover who died tragically in the line of duty. The script deliberately allowed her at least a moment of emotional residue with him, adding a few quick flashbacks to establish their doomed relationship. And when Lorraine starts up her tryst with the French informant Delphine (Sofia Boutella), no one in Berlin really bats an eye. Her connection, Percival (James MacAvoy) acknowledges the partnership but doesn’t belittle or give it any weight or distinction other than how the relationship compromises her mission —regardless of orientation.
It’s also fun to see that Delphine is a pretty well sketched-out character and not just a pretty face. Lorraine of course has more colors filled in, but Delphine does have a past, fears, and hopes. She’s not just a typical floozy with a bad, misogynistic pun of a name.
This dynamic between Lorraine and Delphine takes on even more weight when we consider Theron’s work as an executive producer and her personal input. In the original graphic novel, the genders are reversed, but during the adaptation, Theron and her screenwriter insisted on making her second-act love interest a woman. Theron has bi experiences, which she is not only afraid to talk about, but she wants to normalize in modern storytelling. So we have a woman with bi experiences who is deliberately queering the text for better representation, which doesn’t diminish the structure of the story in any shape or form. This is the kind of leadership we need more of in the higher echelons of Tinseltown.
It may seem small, but I also appreciated seeing realistic same-sex positions during their lovemaking scenes. While the scenes were still stylized (it’s a spy genre, that’s par for the course), there was no scissoring to be seen, and aftercare is present and accounted for. This was not specifically made for the male gaze, and that is so refreshing to see. I almost want to watch the sequences again to see if both of them had trimmed nails.
Oh. Also. #BiLighting, y’all. It’s all over every scene between these two clandestine agents.
What I Didn't Like:
I feel like this is nit-picking, since this whole turn on the genre is exploring a lot of new ground, but I do feel like we made it to third base without making it all the way home in some ways.
For starters, no one ever uses the term “bi”. This seems silly not only in a movie daring to show a bi Lady Bond (before the recent announcement, I should clarify), but Berlin has a pretty rich history of a queer scene. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to think anyone would use the term. Also, while Delphine gets more than a typical “Bond girl” treatment, she still gets killed off (#KillYourGays lives on — boo). We had a shot at doing more than having a bangable, mysterious French girl, and it got bungled in order to hurtle us towards the third act.
The Rating:
While the movie is not without a bleak outlook, there is so much fun and intrigue to be had with Lorraine at the fall of the Berlin Wall. We got ourselves a bi Lady Bond, folks, even if she didn’t use the word herself. Hopefully she’ll get around to that — as well as having more fully developed paramours that don’t bite the big one — in the announced sequel.
I’ll be there opening weekend, just like I was for this one.