Film Review: All About Love (2010)

All About Love (2010) as a cultural text represented how we imagine women, men and lesbian. Basically, people usually stereotype women as passive and submissive. They are represented as feminine with weak personality, less sexually experienced, dependent and irrational. In contrast, Men are usually stereotyped as masculine with strong personality, sexually experienced, independent and rational. Cranny-Francis, Stavropoulos and Kirkby stated that this kind of stereotyping is in a binary opposition, which means they are mutually exclusive to each other. Women and men are positioned as oppositional in nature. Men are generally categorized as positive and become the standard whereas women are categorized as negative (p.1-40) However, All About Love seems subvert this stereotyping of both woman and man images.

In All About Love, woman can have strong personality. For example, Macy is very clever and good at dealing problems. She has professional knowledge in law so that she can solve the problem for her gay friend. Macy had a fake but legal marriage with her friend Antonio so that he can become the permanent resident and lived in Hong Kong with his partner. Moreover, she even helped Robert to deal with his sex life difficulties. However, Robert is represented as a relatively weak personality. Although Robert was an investment bank owner, he had relatively weak personality. The film did not put much effort on describing his career but focus on his attention to his love affairs. He has family problems but he doesn’t know how to deal with it. Instead he used violence to solve the problem and that make his wife to charge him. Macy, as his lawyer, did not just provide professional opinions about the case but also gave suggestions to solve his marriage problem. She shared her sex experiences with Robert and taught him how to fulfill his wife’s sex life. Finally, Robert fulfilled his wife in sex and retained his marriage. Here, we can see that Macy has more strong personality than Robert as she is more capable to deal with the problems than Robert.

Moreover, woman can be more sexually experienced than man. In the film, Anita had more dating experiences and even more sex experience than Mike. In contrast, Mike was less-experienced. He had his first sex with Anita and was felt ashamed of being early premature ejaculation during the sexual intercourse.

In addition, women showed in the film were independent while men were dependent. In the film, Anita was a middle class woman who was well educated. She worked in the bank. She was capable to support herself financially and was independent woman. In contrast, Mike was more dependent as he is just a university student. He probably still dependent on his family although he has part-time job. He did not have a stable job as always changes his job. For examples, at first he was the bar tanker. Then he worked in a supermarket and a food express shop.

Women can be rational while men can be irrational. When Anita and Macy know they are pregnant, they seek for help in Mother’s choice and consult the opinions. They decide to keep their babies and make rational decisions through discussing with each other and friends. However, Robert and Mike are superstitious. For examples, when Anita rejects Mike’s love, Mike took out his tarot card to make prediction that he may have competitors. Also, after Robert and Mike were rejected by Anita and Macy about being the babies’ father, they were depressed and finally made the decision based on the tarot card result.

To a certain extent, All About Love, as a Lesbian or bisexual text, stereotype lesbians and bisexuals in terms of their social status and appearances. The film stereotyped lesbians and bisexuals as middle class. Both Macy and Anita lived in Central. They had dinner in high class restaurant. They focus on lifestyle and taste. For example, they put paintings and decoration at home. They liked wine and enjoyed western style dinner at home.

Lesbians are also represented as well educated. Macy was a lawyer. She set up her own law firm. Anita is a bank staff. Wai Wai is a doctor and Connie is also a professional. She got grade 8 in piano and obtained four master degrees.

In terms of appearances of the characters, lesbian couples are always represented one as a masculine role and one as feminine role. For example, Macy is relatively a more masculine female character than Anita. She got short haircut and less make up. She always wore formal suit in black and white color tone which gave coolness to the audience. She spoke in low frequency voice which represented her masculinity. In contrast, Anita was more feminine. She always wore sharp color long dress or blouses. She got long and curly hair, put on makeup and accessories. She spoke in relatively high pitch voice which gave femininity image to audiences. Therefore, the film stereotyped lesbians in terms of their social status and appearances.

In conclusion, All About Love subverts the stereotyping of women and men images whereas failed to subvert the stereotyping image of Lesbians and bisexuals.

Reference
Cranny-Francis, A., Waring, W., Stavropoulos, P. & Kirkby, J.(2003). “Ways of Talking”. In Gender Studies: Terms and Debates, p1-41. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Shu Jui Ying, Amy