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The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day was #ChooseToChallenge. So, as much as we should all be challenging structural means of gender inequality, we’re also looking inward to articulate how these big issues manifest under the skin on an individual level.
Mid Life: The Skin We’re In, a short-film by Diverse City, premiered amongst these big questions this International Women’s Day. A series of soft, poetic contemplations, the film follows the stories of three women and their risings through expectations towards deep self-appreciation in mind, body, and spirit.
Coupled with intimate and detailed shots of the performers’ bodies, this is a deeply personal listening experience. Words are orchestrated to really zoom in on how life, love and history manifest through different kinds of physical touch for each performer; Karen fixates endearingly on her hands, staging a speedy yet tender protest in motion that affirms her on-going existence; Jacqui traces parts of her body as vehicles for touching deeper parts of ourselves; Claire’s daughter’s youthful observations and caresses act in soft defiance against Claire’s negative self-talk. These generous voices, bursting with personality, invite us to reflect lovingly on how we touch the world, and how the world touches us.
There’s a collectiveness to this poetry as well — after all, it’s the story of The Skin We’re In. Each voice stands strongly alone on a platform of its own poetic themes, but Monika Davies’s editing splices each in such a way that they converse freely together. There’s a thoughtful but all-too brief universal cry, touching briefly on society’s oppressive etchings onto feminine skin at its various intersections of race, ability and age. “That’s why we’re so critical,” says Claire, “your body’s political.”
An outdoor, natural aesthetic sews much Lucy Richardson’s visual direction together. From Karen’s allotment to Claire’s picnic rug, the slightly tired narrative of women’s innate connection with the earth is re-told. However, a precious moment sees the outdoors come in: Jacqui’s milky bath blooms with flowers that caress her skin in a joyful burst of femininity and modernised connection with nature. In days of “stay indoors” authority enforced over our bodies, a gendered cliche is transformed with rare subtle wit and grace.
Kandaka Moore’s musical accompaniment also laces the film together in a unifying aesthetic; the composition commands the film’s overall pace with fluidity and care. Her voice, sometimes choral and sometimes solo, glides continuously over a sequence of varyingly restless drums that save the energy of the music. In the lyrics, we hear echoes and premonitions of the spoken words, tying it all together with a bow of poetic harmony.
Maybe the timing of its release caught me in a wave of modern feminist thought and anger, but, despite sporadic moments of more sharply focussed attack, I struggle with the overall softness of this film. That balance of staging a protest in gentle, feminine power while rejecting all aesthetic cliches of womanhood is a difficult one to strike. But, for me, feminist poetry asks for a bit more mess and confrontation in this moment.
Nonetheless, the film’s strengths — rich in detail and radical self-respect — cannot be taken away from it. Taking the bright, joyful and vulnerable voices of Mid Life: The Skin We’re In with me, I think I’ll be stepping out with a little more pride and compassion for my body this spring.
‘Mid Life: The Skin We’re In’ is streaming online until 15th March. For information and tickets, see Bristol Old Vic’s website.