Reflective Encounters

“Films produced as a response to #MeToo frequently walk a tightrope of conveying the sober, harrowing realities of sexual assault without a concomitant sense of voyeuristic prurience. Bend, wisely, eschews all but the sound of its assault – it is, after all, enough to know that it has taken place – in order to focus squarely on its aftermath: teenage victim Emma’s determination for acknowledgement and accountability, her middle-aged mother Maggie’s nervous reluctance to confront Charles, the assailant’s father, at a social gathering.

Maggie’s hesitancy appears a mixture of natural timidness and a rather British habit of not wishing to cause a scene, keep-a-stiff-upper-lip. But it also seems reflective of a generation unfamiliar with the idea that such incidents are not to be accepted or tolerated. If she herself is unconvinced by the not-all-men platitudes she delivers to her daughter, then her witnessing of Charles’s own casual misogyny in full flow is enough to inspire her to affirmative action of her own. The film suggests that the emboldening of a generation of women this side of the still-nascent #MeToo watershed will also have an effect on prior ones previously resigned to silence. ”

— Jonathan Bygraves