Alternately hilarious, touching, and wearisome, WOMEN IN REVOLT is one of the more uneven Paul Morrissey films of the 1970s. Despite the flaws, however, there is a lot to like about this drag-spoof of Women's Lib.
Against the backdrop of the nationalized Women's Movement in 1971, WOMEN IN REVOLT follows the paths of three very different New York women and how their association with political action changes their lives. Jackie (Jackie Curtis) and Holly (Holly Woodlawn) are soul sisters in the group,
PIG--Politically Involved Girls, which rejects the oppressive patriarchal society around them. They and the other women in their circle try to raise money for the cause from wealthier women, including the young actress Candy (Candy Darling), a new recruit, and the dowager, Mrs. Fitzpatrick (Sean
O'Meara).
In between political protests and fundraising events, Jackie and Holly betray the cause by having sex with men. First, Jackie pays Mr. America, Johnny Minute (Johnny Kemper), to have sex with her as a heterosexual experiment. When Johnny abandons Jackie, however, she begins using PIG money on
other men. Finally we see Jackie rearing Johnny's baby, reduced to a life of diapers and domestication. Holly, too, continues to have sex with men, despite the years of abuse from her boyfriend, Marty (Marty Kove). Holly winds up a drunken bum on the Bowery.
Meanwhile, Candy only involves herself in PIG in order to launch her acting career. Candy emerges as a Hollywood star after allowing a sleazy agent, Max Morris (Michael Sklar) to molest her. During an interview on the set of her latest movie, however, Candy is stripped of her pretensions and sham
feminism by a lesbian journalist (Jonathan Kramer). All three women, thus, suffer for their political ambitions.
WOMEN IN REVOLT was made by Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol's Factory filmmaker-in-residence, during the same period as his famous trilogy, FLESH (1968), TRASH (1970), and HEAT (1971). Ostensibly, it is the most political film of Morrissey's unusual canon--but just what are the politics? It would be
too easy to dismiss WOMEN IN REVOLT as Warhol's aesthetic revenge on feminist Valerie Solanis, the woman who used Warhol for target practice in 1969. (Solanis served as the subject of the 1996 film I SHOT ANDY WARHOL.) But WOMEN IN REVOLT is not simply a broad spoof of Women's Lib. By casting
transvestites in the main women's roles, Morrissey questions gender roles as much as he undercuts the earnest, separatist side to radical feminism. Moreover, despite the parodies of then-cliched events like women's support groups and such mantras as, "Women will be free!" (shouted by Holly during
her rape scene), WOMEN IN REVOLT makes a good case for the Movement by showing social inequities through a skewered but ultimately sympathetic point of view.
Where WOMEN IN REVOLT becomes frustrating is in some of the excessively long performance-art pieces by the Factory set. During the lengthy takes, the mixture of improvisation with rehearsed lines visibly disturbs the performers, creating a break in mood that is closer to THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW
than Brecht (or even COLD TURKEY for that matter). The more sustained control of Morrissey's other films is needed here (perhaps Warhol, who operated the camera on this one, was around the set too much). Morrissey's artistic control is evident in most of the Candy Darling sequences (the scene with
the agent, and, best of all, the interview at the end), giving WOMEN IN REVOLT its strongest (and funniest) moments. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, adult situations, substance abuse, extreme profanity.) leave a comment
