Award winning writer, director and producer.
I distinctly remember the first time my heart was broken. I was 16 and I went to my first boyfriend’s house to celebrate half a year together. I assumed I would wake him up, we’d go to McDonald’s to eat leftovers as usual and continue our day. All I cared about then was when would be the next time I would see him and love him and feel how madly he loves me back. I had no idea at that moment that everything was about to change; that my innocence would crack, that my heart would shatter and that I would need two whole years to realize there’s life without him.
I walked into his house and saw him in bed with his ex. They slept hugging, naked and beautiful. So beautiful, that I couldn’t breathe. At the moment my brain froze. Everything inside shut off as if there was a power outage. I didn’t know what was happening to me but I knew it was bad and that I need to fall on someone now because I can’t stand. I went to a female friend who suggested we take revenge on them and buy them candy so they’d feel bad about themselves. Due to the fact that my brain was out for a smoke break and my sense of judgment was unavailable, I said all right. We bought a huge bag of gummy snakes and went back there. They were still asleep. I saw them and everything awakened. I was overcome with a wave of rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt. I took the bag and threw it on them in the most violent way I could. You broke my heart? I’ll break your face.
Once every few years a film comes out which takes me back to those moments of pure rage. Once every few years, an amazing film comes out, like The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, the superb Laura Casabé’s excellent new film. The film screening in Utopia is an opportunity to delve into feminine rage onscreen.
We’ll start with The Virgin of the Quarry Lake. Argentina, 2001. A country falling apart, nothing we’re not familiar with. Natalia (the mesmerizing Dolores Oliverio) falls in love with her good friend, Diego. Natalia wants to lose her virginity to him, but is too shy to act or hint until Silvia, an older girl Diego met online, comes into the picture. Natalia gets the nerve to act, but it’s too late. Diego and Silvia are already together, which elicits uncontrollable rage in Natalia. The difference between Natalia and other girls is that she possesses supernatural powers. I don’t want to spoil anything, but in the end, Natalia’s heart shatters, and she uses her powers to hurt Diego and Silvia just like they hurt her – only physically, but no less cruel to her… Natalia’s rage overtakes her and causes a disaster.
In modern society, rage is perceived differently in men and women. To men, anger and violence are an integral and legitimate part of their nature. But when a woman is angry, she’s immediately perceived as crazy or flawed. Hurts, but true: for us women, rage is something to which society doesn’t respond as it should, when we express it. We need to hide our rage real good so they won’t tell us we’re bitches or whiny or hard to work with. Rage belongs to men so it’s good for us to stumble once in a while upon an angry woman onscreen. Someone with the guts to be mad without shame. Because sometimes rage is the embodiment of freedom.
Still from Carrie, 1976
In the cult film, Carrie (1976, dir. Brian De Palma, based on the debut novel by Stephen King), Carrie White (played by the legendary Sissy Spacek) is a shy girl living with an uber-religious mother. Carrie gets bullied in school and like Natalia from The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, she has telekinetic powers: she can move objects with her mind. One of the famous scenes in the film is when Carrie showers at school and gets her period, something no one ever told her about. She’s startled when she sees the blood and the girls around her smell the fear, mock her and throw tampons at her. The principal who doesn’t remember her name sends her home and gets a taste of her rage when she breaks his ashtray with her telekinetic powers. On the way home, a boy harasses her, and through the growing rage inside her, she causes him to fall off his bike. When Carrie asks her psycho mother about the period, her mother says it’s a sin, slams a bible in her face, and locks her in a closet. In other words, fun it is not.
Still from Promising Young Woman, 2020
Beside all that shit the poor girl has to go through, Tommy, a boy from her school, invites her to prom – where he plans the ultimate humiliation with his friends. Carrie goes to prom despite her mother’s objection and at first experiences the night of her dreams. She dances with Tommy and they even kiss, but then the worst happens: a moment after she’s voted prom queen, she gets drenched in pig’s blood from a bucket. Everyone laughs and she gets overtaken with rage, electrocutes the principal who didn’t know her name and burns all the students and teachers in the school. Carries walks through the streets soaked in blood, wearing her period and rage proudly. It’s a world akin to ours, a world where women cannot show rage or express dissatisfaction or feel bummed. This emotional censorship directed at womankind pushes it into a corner and forces it use violence to achieve liberation. And indeed, sometimes it ends with complete destruction.
Another film where feminine rage is practically the lead is Emerald Fennel’s debut film, Promising Young Woman, from 2020. The film takes place in a world where rapists aren’t punished and no place is safe for women. Sounds familiar? As society and police are reluctant to change the status quo, the film’s protagonist, Cassie (the amazing Carey Mulligan), is forced to do it herself. Cassie’s rage stems from the suicide of her best friend Nina following a brutal rape. Cassie discovers that Nina’s rapist is having a bachelor party in the woods. She drugs all the men at the party and takes the rapist to a room to carve her late friend’s name on his body… but Tommy manages to break loose, kills our heroine and reaffirms for us that this is a world where rapists get to live and opinionated women get killed (a good time for a reminder that the rate of female murder victims in Israel reached an all-time high in 2025). But Cassie’s death doesn’t stop her, and even after her body is cremated she proves that rage does not require a pulse. She took the possibility of murder into account and notified the police about Tony’s rape. Cassie’s rage might be slow and elegant, but it’s real, burning and pure.
Still from The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, 2025
In these three films, feminine rage is perceived as dangerous. It’s not a difficult feeling we go home with and struggle to fall asleep because of it, like in real life. It’s an eruptive force. A force that comes to punish and educate a world that expects women to shut up and say thank you. This massive, terrible, and heavy rage doesn’t come along for no reason. It comes because these women are done an injustice. A ticking bomb isn’t born out of nothing. The world and society assemble it slowly and determinedly and give it reasons to tick.
The primitive outlook presents feminine rage as a problem, as a psychosis accompanied by the question, “What’s wrong with this girl?” Today we know to ask, “What’s wrong with this society or this country?” And most of all, what’s the big deal… what’s so scary about an angry girl?