Nicole Kidman has called out Martin Scorsese for the lack of female perspective in his films with elegant simplicity.
The actress, 57, shared which directors she hopes to work with someday, listing Kathryn Bigelow, Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Michael Haneke as dream collaborators.
She also said she’d love to work with Scorsese, but pointed out his preference for casting male leads and telling stories with undeniably masculine perspectives.
The director, who has won one Academy Award and been nominated 16 times, tends to work with actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Daniel Day-Lewis – and rarely casts A-list actresses.
Kidman told Vanity Fair: ‘I’ve always said I want to work with [Martin] Scorsese, if he does a film with women.’
She’s not the first supremely talented actress to point out the gender disparity in Scorsese’s work, with Meryl Streep expressing a similar view in a 2011 interview.
‘I would like Martin Scorsese to be interested in a female character once in a while, but I don’t know if I’ll live that long,’ she said.
Indeed, Scorsese’s films frequently depict women being affected by the actions of men but rarely portray female characters as dynamic and autonomous in their own right.
Kidman, who won the Venice Film Festival’s Volpi Cup for best actress for her upcoming film Babygirl, is known for playing psychologically complex characters who tend to be the driving force of the narrative.
Scorsese has never written a female part that would be worthy of a powerhouse like Kidman, and she’s absolutely right to call that out.
What is the Bechdel test?
Created by Alison Bechdel, the Bechdel test is a way of evaluating whether or not a film or other work of fiction portrays women in a way that is sexist or characterized by gender stereotyping.
To pass the Bechdel test a work must:
Feature at least two women
These women must talk to each other
Their conversation must concern something other than a man
Her recent turn as an author with a secret in the hit Netflix show The Perfect Couple reaffirmed her versatility and talent, and Baby Girl is sure to be yet another testament to her power as a leading lady.
According to a recent study, only 29% of Scorsese’s movies pass the Bechdel Test, an incredibly low bar for female representation in media but one that shockingly few films surpass.
In fact, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy famously only features a single instance of two women talking to each other about something other than men, and its about 15 seconds long.
When confronted with his own films failures to meet this standard at a press conference for his 2019 film The Irishman, Scorsese dismissed it as ‘a waste of time.’
‘That’s not even a valid point. That’s not valid,’ Scorsese said. ‘I can’t…’
He continued: ‘That goes back to 1970. That’s a question that I’ve had for so many years. Am I supposed to? If the story doesn’t call for it, then it’s a waste of everybody’s time. If the story calls for a female character lead, why not?’
Luckily, Kidman doesn’t need Scorsese and his regressive views to make exciting cinema that centers the female experience.
Babygirl starring Kidman – as Romy, an ambitious tech CEO – alongside Harris Dickinson, 28 – as Samuel, an intern at the company – is set to come out Christmas day in the US and January 10 in the UK.
According to The Sun, the Oscar-winning actress called shooting the erotic film ‘liberating.’
Halina Reijn directed the A24 thriller that features sex scenes between Kidman and Dickinson as well as between Kidman and her husband in the film, played by Antonio Banderas, 64.
This meant many days of filming featured an overwhelming amount of touch for Kidman, which she said could lead to ‘frustration.’
She explained: ‘There was an enormous amount of sharing and trust and then frustration. It’s like, “Don’t touch me.
‘There were times when we were shooting where I was like, “I don’t want to orgasm any more.”‘
She continued, sharing that sometimes she would feel exhausted by the process: ‘”Don’t come near me. I hate doing this. I don’t care if I am never touched again in my life! I’m over it.”
‘It was so present all the time for me that it was almost like a burnout.’
While we eagerly await Kidman’s newest role, we can only hope that Scorsese takes her dig as a challenge and finally gets with the times.
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