Historically, Austin’s South by Southwest is a film festival with a very specific, off-kilter vibe. Unlike the prestige or awards-season-centric offerings of Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, Sundance, or Tribeca, SXSW favors pulpy genre, and oftentimes laddish films. It’s a film-going experience that blends perfectly with the city’s famous motto about keeping things “weird.”
But there was something different this year. Not only were there more high-profile premieres than ever before, but even as the festival maintained its midnight-movie energy, a new kind of SXSW hero took center stage: the battle-tested and badly bruised action heroine. And in a year where millions of women—still recovering from the presidential election—continue to flood the streets in a show of resistance, it’s more important than ever to see the heroines of Free Fire, Atomic Blonde, and Colossal get knocked down and get up again.
There’s been a resistance growing—even among those who clamor for more female-fronted stories in film and television—against the catch-all phrase “strong female character.” Those three little words are often thrown up in defense of characters who are two-dimensional at best. If she can punch like the guys (or, as is often the case, better than the guys), then she must be strong, right? But actual progress is not about women being superior to their male counterparts; it’s about them being treated equally. And when most action films starring women are precious about their leading ladies, seeing the real consequence of violence on a female body is both shocking and refreshing. The heroines of SXSW offerings Free Fire, Atomic Blonde, and Colossal, just like generations of male heroes before them, grit their teeth through swollen faces, split lips, and bullet wounds to keep fighting their way out.
On its face, Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire is a fairly standard, 70s-set bloody, black comedy; a stylish, locked-room shoot-out that leans heavily on the likes of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. But there’s a wrench in the macho posturing and gangster-on-gangster violence: Brie Larson’s Justine, who—despite not really being on any side but her own—nonetheless gets caught in the crossfire. Since she’s a woman without a side, there’s an understanding among the thieves, at first, that she should be protected from the hail of bullets whizzing around the warehouse. It doesn’t spoil anything to say that this thuggish chivalry doesn’t last—and despite the extreme, cartoonish violence inflicted on all the men in the cast, there’s a shock in seeing bullet after bullet sink into the body of an Oscar-winning blonde.
But just like her male counterparts, Larson isn’t stopped by a few bullet holes. Like the rest of them, she bloodily, grimily limps, drags, and shoots her way toward self-preservation. Only one line (“ugh, men” as she takes a break from sending bullets flying into the room) feels a little too on the nose. Otherwise, Free Fire subjects Larson’s character to exactly the same amount of mayhem to which it subjects the men, without ever making her seem like a victim.
Anne Hathaway’s Colossal—which made a splashy debut at Toronto last year—takes this concept of female resilience to an even deeper level. To talk too much about the details of the film—which sees a monstrous Kaiju projection of Hathaway’s self-destructive Gloria rampaging through the streets of Seoul, South Korea—is to spoil its most delicious surprise; suffice to say that both its director and male stars, Nacho Vigalondo and Jason Sudeikis, called Colossal a cautionary tale about toxic masculinity. Though they’re right, the film is also about Gloria’s self-empowering resistance to that toxicity. Having taken a fairly serious beating—once again, the audience gasped at the sight of the The Princess Diaries star absorbing some nasty punches and repeated kicks from a male aggressor—Gloria makes her final stand with a nastily bloodshot eye ringed with bruises.
But the ultimate give-as-good-as-she-gets star of SXSW was Charlize Theron’s titular platinum-haired spy in Atomic Blonde. This isn’t exactly new territory for Theron—she also took a battering in Mad Max: Fury Road. But thanks to a flashback-framing narrative, in Theron’s opening scene, the camera—which has spent decades objectifying the dancer-turned-actress’s body—pans over a stripped-down Theron, highlighting every cut, bash, and break the movie will soon inflict upon her. The section is extended as Theron’s Lorraine goes from a restorative ice bath to stand before a brightly lit mirror, naked, to regard the damage. The film forces viewers to acknowledge the stakes of the dazzling stunts they’re about to see and reckon with the notion that, despite her sky-high heels and alluring wardrobe, Lorraine is a true brawler.
That promise is born out in a string of brutal action scenes in which Theron’s body is viciously slammed, kicked, and punched by a steady stream of faceless goons. At one point during the film’s flashy, single-take stairway fight, half of Lorraine’s face has become a swollen, purple mass. The better to hide a stunt double, maybe—but also an unfamiliar sight for women on film outside victim roles. Whenever you think Lorraine is down, she heaves back to life. And even if she has to stumble and stagger to do it, she always gets her man.
These movies are far from the only time women have take significant bodily harm on film only to come back swinging. Much was made of the brutal treatment of Jennifer Jason Leigh in 2015’s The Hateful Eight, though as a villain and ultimately a victim, Leigh’s character doesn’t quite fit the model. But Furiosa, Uma Thurman’s Bride, and certainly some Michelle Rodriguez characters have kept fighting through vicious bruises. What’s remarkable about the women of SXSW is that there are (at least) three of them. This particular brand of gender parity feels less like an unusual spectacle and more like a trend toward the norm.
Sure, men aren't always feeling the true impact of extreme cinematic violence, either. For every Bruce Willis picking glass out of his feet in Die Hard, there are endless supposed non-superheroes like Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne or Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, who absorb a preposterous amount of amount of violence without really slowing down. Film seems to be generally trending toward more grounded physical stakes—more of Hugh Jackman’s shredded rib cage in Logan and less of Dwayne Johnson breaking a cast off his arm just by flexing in Furious 7. And seeing women participate in that trend makes it feel all the more revolutionary.
It’s especially significant that Larson, Hathaway, and Theron arrived on the scene at the same festival where male-driven comedies like Everybody Wants Some!!, Sausage Party, Neighbors, and 21 Jump Street had often been the main events. There’s clearly more progress that can be made. Women of color and female directors are still rarely part of splashy SXSW headliners. But still, as a majority of American women continue to cast around for inspiration on how to accept a bitter defeat and keep resisting, they could do worse than Justine, Gloria, and Lorraine as cinematic role models.
