Review: M.F.A. (2017)

M.F.A. (2017)

Not rated

Score: 3 out of 5

M.F.A. is honestly the exact sort of rape-and-revenge movie I'd expect to star the daughter of Clint Eastwood. It treads similar ground to the tragically short-lived MTV drama Sweet/Vicious that aired around the same time, being a film set on a college campus in which a female rape survivor decides to exact some vigilante justice on a bunch of frat boy rapists, though here she's actually willing to get down to straight-up murder. Unlike the classics of the rape-and-revenge genre like I Spit on Your Grave (but much like the French film Revenge that came out in 2018), it treats the rape very matter-of-factly and spends little time lingering on it, caring more about the woman's reaction and subsequent downward spiral. That's not the only area where you can tell that this was written and directed by two women, Natalia Leite and Leah McKendrick, as much of its anger is focused less on the actual rapists than on the system that protected them. Add in a remarkable performance from Francesca Eastwood as a character whose crusade and morality increasingly come into question as the film goes on no matter how righteous she may seem initially, and you've got a movie that manages to make up for its relatively dry tone and kills to serve up a rather engrossing story.

The film takes place on the campus of Balboa University in California, where a young art student named Noelle, a solid craftswoman but not particularly creative, decides to head out to a party to meet a handsome male classmate she has a crush on. They go up to his bedroom, he rapes her after refusing to take no for an answer, and when all attempts at legal and social recourse fail, she decides to confront her rapist directly and demand an apology. After a brief argument, she accidentally kills him by pushing him over a railing, and her initial shock soon gives way to a taste for blood. Deciding that if she's in for a penny, she's in for a pound, she decides to look into other rape cases that the school glossed over and make sure that they never hurt anybody ever again for what's left of their lives. All the while, the once shy student starts to let her hair down, and her new identity as a secret vigilante causes her creative juices to start flowing in a way they never were before.

It's rather appropriate that they cast Francesca Eastwood in the role, given how her father's Dirty Harry films had a similar relationship with the street criminals that Inspector Harry Callahan frequently busted, portraying them as merely symptoms of a broken system spiraling out of control that Harry comes close to just giving up on. The act of the rape itself is portrayed as horrible, and the man who did it as a jackass, but while Noelle is left seriously messed up by it, the worst is yet to come. The system designed to prevent things like that from happening instead seems to Noelle like it exists to protect people like her rapist from ever seeing justice, as the authorities seem more interested in interrogating her trustworthiness and second-guessing if a crime even took place than anything else. A campus support group, meanwhile, offers nothing more than empty platitudes and hashtags. It's a system that altogether feels primed to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused even in cases where it should be laughably obvious that they're guilty, as Noelle soon finds out when she finds out about a trio of fraternity brothers and football players who, in a distinctly R. Kelly-esque fashion, were let off despite video evidence of their crimes. Just as Harry's tactics, as, well, dirty as they were, were portrayed as necessary given how lawless his city had become, Noelle's killing spree is portrayed as the last resort of a desperate woman who has exhausted every other option. If she doesn't get justice, she decides, she'll settle for revenge. Watching this movie, I felt within it an anger that called to mind any number of classic crime and vigilante flicks, one that reminded me of something I've long thought: that the recent outpouring of public (especially female) outrage over sexual assault and harassment over the last five years has much the same energy that the public outrage over violent crime in the '70s and '80s did.

And as the film goes on, it seems to recognize this itself. Without spoiling anything, the question of whether or not Noelle, despite her own status as a rape survivor, ought to be claiming justice for others is repeatedly asked, as Noelle's crimes bring back terrible memories for the women who her targets terrorized, who now have to see their rapists' names in the news again and face questions from police given their history. Eastwood's cold performance sells her as somebody whose seemingly righteous quest for vengeance starts to feel increasingly selfish, disconnected from the feelings of those who she thinks she's avenging as it grows clear that she's doing it for the sake of her own feelings on the matter. Make no mistake, the film takes her side and says that, if anyone's to blame, it's the authorities for doing nothing and allowing things to get so bad that somebody like Noelle exists in the first place. But again, just as Dirty Harry made it clear that Harry stretched the definition of "hero" to its limit even as we rooted for him to succeed, this film makes it clear that Noelle is hurting far more than just the people she targets. The way this film ends is not particularly upbeat, but it's honestly the way it had to end, as by that point, Noelle did not deserve a happy ending even if her motivations were very understandable.

My big complaint about this film, and the one major thing that really held it back in my book, is that in many ways it felt like it was playing it safe. It tried to walk the line between portraying Noelle as an avenging anti-hero and somebody who's been blinded by tragedy, but I often found myself wishing that it would pick one direction and dive fully into the pulpy thrills that it so often leaned towards. It was at its strongest when it was focusing on Noelle's pain and growth when she wasn't out killing rapists, but the actual scenes where she does felt surprisingly tame. I get taking the matter-of-fact approach to the rape scene, but a similar approach taken to Noelle's kills made them fall flat. A scene where she faces an actual struggle in killing a man, and another where she ties a guy up while the police close in, were the closest that the action in this movie had to real thrills. This is where Revenge absolutely soared with its brutal, hyper-stylized action providing real catharsis, and where I unfortunately felt another influence from Clint Eastwood: that, in the films he directs, he tends to take a lot of distance from his subject matter and present it in a very "just the facts" manner that, at its worst, can make it difficult to get invested in or attached to the events on screen. The police subplot also felt like an afterthought, one that was predictable and didn't really contribute much except to show that Noelle's killings have attracted the attention of law enforcement. Clifton Collins, Jr. felt wasted as the detective hunting Noelle, turning in a good performance but his character ultimately not amounting to much.

The Bottom Line

As a thriller, it was a bit too much like its chilly and distant protagonist for its own good, but in its slower moments it served up an interesting meditation on vigilante justice and sexual assault. Overall, it was a film that grabbed my attention and never really let go, ending on just the right note. I recommend checking it out.