They wanted to make us experience online harassment and digital misogyny from the inside. With real messages, actually sent. Really received, above all. They wanted to scare us. And let’s say that in terms of anxiety, precisely, it’s successful.
Posted at 9:30 a.m.
The shock documentary by Léa Clermont-Dion and Guylaine Maroist, in which four women entrust the hell of online harassment (also screaming news, Marwah Rizqy, does that tell you something?), hits hard, certainly big strokes, but fine.
As proof: the film begins with a warning. The images and words that follow could shock. It is also high time that these remarks shocked a greater number, one might be tempted to add.
It is, moreover, the immense merit of I salute you bitch, shot as a thriller, whose poster (the posters, since there are several of them, quite scary thank you) resembles in all respects that of a horror film, which should attract a wider audience than that usually fond of this kind of films. And that’s the goal: to raise awareness, to raise the awareness of as many people as possible, to get things moving, what. Because no, sending a “bitch” here, a “hang her” there, “if I see you, I’ll rape you”, it’s not innocent, we understand. Do we even feel. It hurts. And that’s mostly casualties.
Imagine if, as a bonus, you received a photo of your decapitated, bloody head…
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE ALLEY
Kiah Morris, former US Democratic Representative
Four women testify courageously in this regard. Laura Boldrini, former President of the Italian Parliament; Kiah Morris, former US Democratic representative; Marion Séclin, French actress and youtuber, and Laurence Gratton, a Montrealer harassed for years by a classmate. We follow them on screen in their daily lives, with “beeps” and other notifications on their cell phones or computers (hammered in close-up and, yes, you have to see this quasi-immersive film on the big screen, do you have to specify), when it’s not downright a socket in the mail. Or knocks on the door.
The rhythm and the music pick up speed as the tension mounts. Yes, it’s stressful, and yes, it feels like a horror movie at times. It’s not subtle, actually. But it is wanted. And it works.
Because the reality in question here is indeed a horror.
We can criticize the directors for certain shortcuts (no, the police and the justice system do not exactly do anything), a small side that is a bit Manichean, but it’s fair game: they give women a voice here, it’s their editorial choice, after all, and that’s how they feel in this case.
And very fortunately, the spectator does not come out of it with a feeling of helplessness. It was our fear, a trap in these committed films, which often leave us with our arms hanging. On the contrary. Instead, we are called to action. To mobilization. “Time to get up,” they say. So let’s get up.
I salute you bitch is presented in theaters, in the original French and English version, with French subtitles.
Documentary
I salute you bitch
Léa Clermont-Dion and Guylaine Maroist
With Laura Boldrini, Kiah Morris, Marion Seclin, Laurence Gratton and Donna Zuckerberg
1:20 a.m.