Since its presentation at the last Toronto Festival, 'Wall Street Scammers' tells its public appearances due to fainting. Fading of criticism of the director's (calculatedly ambiguous) boldness, dizziness of sensitive souls in the face of muscular strength (and the other) by Jennifer Lopez, dizziness (accompanied by her rigorous and hateful vomiting) of the conservative wing before the most provocative of the post-Metoo speeches and generalized lipotimias before the deployment of accessories (bags especially) that shine. One of the first scenes of the film places Lopez on the stage with a vertical bar to, before, under, fits, in, between ... the legs (pole dance they call it) . Sounds ' Criminal ' by Fiona Apple and, indeed, overwhelms its refutation without prejudice to the law of gravity. Open bar.
Lorene Scafaria takes the floor (New Jersey, 1978), responsible for all this, and does so with a tone of voice that would be contradictory. "The strippers ' films have always offered the male point of view. My idea was to show women completely free of any feelings of guilt or shame. They do what they do to live. It's their job. I wanted the difficulty to be clear. of the exercise, its strength, its beauty ... It is the point of view of a sports movie, "he says, he takes a second, and continues:" Ramona, Lopez's character, takes control not only of the scene but also from the audience itself. It’s impossible not to feel her power. She’s in charge . " And in the last sentence, although without raising his voice, he clearly demonstrates that he who speaks too.
To situate ourselves, the film tells the story published in 2015 in 'The New Yorker' (real, therefore) of some striptease dancers since their accelerated success in the best moments of financial deregulation, that of the 80s, that of , again, the open bar. They succeed on the back of junk bonds and cocaine, and they take their part by literally teaching their asses. And so on until the crisis of 2008. Then, with the sunken markets and empty clubs, the partners change their strategy. Now, the business consists of drugging, stealing and cheating men. "This country is a huge strip club. You have people throwing money and people dancing at their own pace," says the protagonist in the narrowest definition of capitalism since Marx.
"Capitalism," Scafaria continues, "makes it easier for the poor to remain poor and to enrich the rich even more. Or at least, it has been these last decades. Let's say it is a system that gives little choice to population groups unprotected and there are women. We have seen that after the financial crisis of 2008 few things have changed. Those responsible have even been rewarded . I think it was interesting to explore and tell the story of women who took advantage of the rules of a system that criminalizes them and that they only value them for their bodies. I wanted to tell, above all, a story of survival. I know that they crossed a red line and, therefore, were condemned. Although they also crossed the lines all those, fundamentally man, who they created the crisis. But I don't want to be the one to judge anything. " And at this conflicting point, for now, he leaves.
Scafaria, an expert cartoonist of female portraits in previous films such as 'An imperfect mother', tells us that when she started to propose the film to different studies, the first answer was a clear and blunt no. And it is explained: "I think the refusal is a consequence that in general we are all accustomed to the characters being white or black . It makes producers nervous not knowing if they are in favor or against a character." And it goes on: "My movie is starring women who do questionable things. For a movie to be considered feminist, women don't have to be perfect heroes or moral models ." And there, without a doubt, it is difficult to take the opposite.
However, there are a couple of issues that do touch the questionable. Or so the director admits. It is rare that the presentation and ' hook ' of the tape, in light of the proposed, make its prey in the most obvious. The ' trailer ', for example, little differs from the one that could support the sale of Paul Verhoeven's ' Showgirls '. "Well," comes the defense, "I want to believe that it is like a Trojan virus. It always emphasizes and what it sells is the most obvious, not the dramatic development. I imagine there will be people who choose the movie for banal reasons like watching a dancer from the neck down and then discover something else. " The second objection could be borne by the enthusiastic celebration of the characters in the consumption of branded clothing and chinchilla coats. And this point also has its punctual answer: "Yes, it is a rather empty and superficial gesture of spending money in that obscene way. But the important thing is not so much that as putting in value a gesture that we see constantly in other films. It is a gesture of triumph that the women of the film share with each other and with their families. It's money they have earned . "
Be that as it may, Scafaria is convinced that things have changed. "My film is not directly connected to the Metoo movement, but the environment is already different. The fact that we talk about the percentage of women behind the camera is already a breakthrough. I trust that a thinking scheme will break in which women are valued for their beauty and their body, for sex and motherhood, and men, for money, success and power. That is a change that affects the entire culture. " That said, feminism that explodes.
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