Ladies Room (film)
Encyclopedia
Ladies Room, is a documentary film
directed by Valentina Ippolito about women's views on men. It is set in the ladies toilet of Goose, a pub in the city centre of Oxford
.
The film poses questions such as: ‘Are women tyrannies or victims when it comes to their true relationship with men? Can a balance ever be found in the old tensions characterizing gender dichotomies?’ While it illustrates how contemporary women are still compelled to perceive sexuality, marriage and motherhood within an unbending traditional framework, the film also shows how relentlessly they struggle to overcome these ties and emancipate themselves. As Ladies Room is a documentary, which aims at contributing to turn women’s disappointment about their present conditions into confidence in their future, it concomitantly raises two other important questions.
The first is how women can acquire the inner strength to renew themselves and progress after a shock or disillusionment. The second is whether patriarchal society can ever be made explore female identity from a more egalitarian and compassionate perspective.
Ladies Room confirms, but at the same time challenges the idea that men play a major role in women’s lives. Women’s personal voices and testimonies play an active part in the narrative technique, while men represent the absent subject under scrutiny.
The director’s active involvement in the film is presented as a first person narrator, who asks questions directly to the women who have entered the toilet, unaware of what is expecting them.
This documentary film finally reveals its true mood and ideology by going beyond gender dichotomies to explore similarities and dissimilarities existing among the women interviewed, some of which show degrees of disenchantment, bitterness and irony, which do not emerge in others. At the metalevel, through the symbolic presence of the toilet-mirror, the different scenes and shots remind viewers that they are part of a vibrant and dynamic reality, fabricated on individual perspectives, among which the one reported by filmmaker Valentina Ippolito.
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
directed by Valentina Ippolito about women's views on men. It is set in the ladies toilet of Goose, a pub in the city centre of Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
.
Film Synopsis
Ladies Room foregrounds issues about female individuality and faces questions concerning the role of women in modern societies by keeping a positive attitude towards its subject matter.The film poses questions such as: ‘Are women tyrannies or victims when it comes to their true relationship with men? Can a balance ever be found in the old tensions characterizing gender dichotomies?’ While it illustrates how contemporary women are still compelled to perceive sexuality, marriage and motherhood within an unbending traditional framework, the film also shows how relentlessly they struggle to overcome these ties and emancipate themselves. As Ladies Room is a documentary, which aims at contributing to turn women’s disappointment about their present conditions into confidence in their future, it concomitantly raises two other important questions.
The first is how women can acquire the inner strength to renew themselves and progress after a shock or disillusionment. The second is whether patriarchal society can ever be made explore female identity from a more egalitarian and compassionate perspective.
Ladies Room confirms, but at the same time challenges the idea that men play a major role in women’s lives. Women’s personal voices and testimonies play an active part in the narrative technique, while men represent the absent subject under scrutiny.
The director’s active involvement in the film is presented as a first person narrator, who asks questions directly to the women who have entered the toilet, unaware of what is expecting them.
This documentary film finally reveals its true mood and ideology by going beyond gender dichotomies to explore similarities and dissimilarities existing among the women interviewed, some of which show degrees of disenchantment, bitterness and irony, which do not emerge in others. At the metalevel, through the symbolic presence of the toilet-mirror, the different scenes and shots remind viewers that they are part of a vibrant and dynamic reality, fabricated on individual perspectives, among which the one reported by filmmaker Valentina Ippolito.