The Construction of the Female in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Based off of Chuck Barris’s “unauthorized autobiography”, George Clooney’s 2002 neo-noir, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, takes much of its style from the genre which bore it. The film, which follows The Gong Show host on his missions as a top secret CIA assassin, takes many of its visual and narrative elements from the noir genre. One of the most striking and prominent images of the film depicts Barris’s (Sam Rockwell) silhouette performing an assassination in a rain drenched, dark, cobblestone alley. The film also utilizes its female characters very similarly to most noirs by portraying Barris as a womanizer stuck between the sexual draw two women: his femme fatale co-assassin Patricia (Julia Roberts) and his hippy girlfriend Penny (Drew Barrymore).
The film begins, like most noirs, in the present and utilizes flashbacks for the majority of the narrative. In one of the beginning scenes, the reclusive Barris is visited by the outgoing and emotional Penny, who is still longing for Barris despite his inability to commit. He rejects her advances and turns her away, retreating into his seclusion and offers his story to the audience. The story begins with the presence of the second female of the film, Tuvia, and establishes Barris as a sex driven womanizer. The prepubescent Barris attempts to coerce the young girl into giving him oral sex by telling her that his penis tastes like a strawberry lollypop. “And so I found myself in a downward spiral of debauchery, endlessly chasing pussy…My only focus in life to get laid, to get blown, trying to fool myself into believing that given the right combination of circumstances and deception maybe the Tuvias of the world could desire me the way I desired them…I only wanted to be loved.”
Barris informs the audience of this in narration over a scene which depicts a whole auditorium of moviegoers making out while Barris is slapped by his date. However, as the narrative soon discloses, Barris cares not for sex but for the unattainable, which the character of Tuvia is simply a metaphor for. Later in the narrative, when Barris finally obtains Tuvia, he becomes un-attracted to her and leaves her. The unattainable is what Barris secretly desires and this is where Tuvia and Penny’s foil, Patricia, is placed into the narrative.
Upon her introduction, it is clear that Patricia is the femme fatale. Opposed to both Tuvia and Penny, who are introduced with medium close up shots of their faces and bodies, Patricia is introduced visually with just a shot of her ankle, rotating sensually, embraced by a leather go-go boot. Clooney’s choice of visual composition for Patricia’s introduction objectifies the character as simply a sexual object more so than that of Tuvia and Penny. Barris is drawn to her by the flirtatious bobbing of her foot and not the whole entirety of the character. When Clooney cuts to Patricia’s face, it is shrouded by a large brimmed black hat and an extremely dark shadow. This technique, which is also largely characteristic of the noir genre, visually establishes the character as one that is morally ambiguous and gives her the characteristics of a femme fatale right from her introduction. She compliments Barris by simply saying “Very Good Chuck. I’m pleasantly surprised. You’re not like the other murderers,” which sets the narrative up for Barris’s reformation into what Patricia believes the “other murderers” are.
Patricia, like all femme fatales of the noir genre, lures Barris into her moral ambiguity with sex but does not do so right away. She flirts with him and teases him, giving Barris the challenge he relishes for the unattainable, into becoming her object. She later directly links sex and her ability to get Barris to resort to violence at her will when she tells him “Kill for me baby.” While the screenplay for the scene is a bit more obvious by having Patricia state “Prove how much you love me, baby. Kill for me. Then I'm all yours,” the one line of dialogue provides a classic noir link between violence and sex. Clooney furthers this by providing the audience with a montage of Barris killing several individuals while watched on by Patricia.
This montage, however, also intercuts Barris interacting with Patricia’s main character foil, Penny. Their relationships are starkly contrasted as Barris dumps a body down a well in front of Patricia and romantically dancing and kissing Penny. Clooney ends the montage with a shot reminiscent of the love scene between himself and Jennifer Lopez in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, with Barris and Penny kissing and embracing. By ending the montage in such a way, Clooney is drawing the audience to the conclusion that Barris will end up with Penny and that, Patricia, the femme fatale will be done in by her own actions.
The conclusion Clooney draws us to in the montage is absolutely true within the context of the narrative and the genre of film noir. The femme fatale is always made to suffer for her lack of morals and drawing the protagonist into her dark actions. Clooney resolves the issue rather ironically. Throughout the film, Penny seeks Barris for a marital commitment. In the film’s climax, Barris seeking out a marital commitment from Patricia as a cover for his assassination of her while she uses the situation to attempt to assassinate him. Clooney directs the audience to believe that Barris is ignorant to her ploy and will fall pray to her actions. However, since her introduction, Patricia has become the attainable and Barris has become subject of a moral epiphany which allows him to see beyond his sexual attraction and seek out his fate with Penny.
Penny, in the end, is Barris’s ideal female. In the beginning of the film, she indulges Barris’s sexual desires without seeking commitment. In fact, she is portrayed as a swinger. As the narrative progresses and Penny does ask for commitment, she has not completely given in to the concept. She allows Barris to carry on affairs with other women and, while emotionally hurt, she stands by him and awaits his commitment. Unlike Tuvia and Patricia, Penny is the model for the completely attainable female. She opens herself up to Barris and offers herself to him and, while Barris spends the majority of the narrative attracted to the un-attainable, she becomes both Barris’s subject of desire in the end and the ideal female as presented in the context of the film.
The construction of the female is a common trait of film noir. Most often, females are depicted as femme fatales, women who use their bodies and sex appeal to lure their male protagonists to immoral action. This concept also holds true for Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, specifically in the characterization of Patricia. However, unlike most noirs, the protagonist of Confessions ends up with the femme fatale’s complete foil, without repaying society for his immoral actions with either his life or time in prison. Barris is brought back to a position within the audience’s sympathy as he eliminates the source of his strayed actions and finally commits to the film’s ideal female.
Comments