El Presidente de la República

Taking Lives takes masculinity as its subject, just as much, if not more, than it takes femininity, 116

making its ideological twists even more complex than its narrative. The film offers the vision of a woman investigating masculinity and finding, at its heart, it is either empty or murderous, or indeed, both. Philippa Gates writes of a certain kind of investigator, a group in which she includes Ileana Scott, “In a continuation of this strong female model, the contemporary criminalist is also masculinized or de-feminized and offers a resistance to male violence by tracking and bringing to justice the male serial killer. While detective films with a male protagonist focus on investigating the masculinity of the hero, those with a female protagonist are concerned with examining their heroes struggle as women in a man's world trying to balance a professional and personal life--and losing.”22 Gates seems to be saying here that films featuring a woman detective don’t investigate femininity per se, nor masculinity. But I would argue that when directly confronting a deeply gendered universe, as these films inevitably are, one is inevitably investigating gender itself. Taking Lives is indeed a study of masculinity, but of a failed masculinity. The fact that Ileana Scott was attracted to this masculinity does have complex things to say about her and her femininity. The film opens with an extended pre-credit sequence that is almost a complete little film in its own right. It features two teenaged boys (Paul Dano as Martin Asher and Justin Chatwin as Matt Soulsby) who meet on a Greyhound bus leaving Canada and strike up a friendship. When the bus breaks down, the two pool their resources to buy a broken down car to continue their trip. The feel of this opening segment is rather idyllic, feeling like a coming-of-age film as the more awkward Asher is taken under the wing of the older, more confident and certainly cooler Soulsby. Asher watches Soulsby intently, taking in his ease and attractiveness, his bravado and guitar playing. They listen to The Clash (“Should I Stay or Should I Go”) as they drive through a lush

22 _{Gates, “Manhunting.”}

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and tree-lined landscape. Suddenly, like a gunshot, a tire blows on the car and the two boys get out to assess the damage. Asher seems apologetic and Soulsby gets down to the business of changing the tire as Asher watches the road. Asher mumbles, “We’re about the same height” as a large SUV approaches. In a strike of sudden energy and violence, Asher kicks Soulsby into the path of the truck, causing a spectacular car crash. Asher assesses the damage in the quiet after the abrupt burst of violence, his expression hovering between delight and horror. After looking at the bloody mess in the truck, he returns to Soulsby—bloody and gurgling—in the deserted road. Asher reaches down and takes the injured boy’s wallet before picking up a rock and smashing it down on his head. Then we see Asher walking across the fields, with Soulsby’s bag and guitar singing the song Soulsby had been singing when the accident happened.

This opening offers us several clues about the rest of the film, both in terms of its structure, tone and subject. In the first few minutes of the movie we have been offered a dramatic generic shift, from road movie, or perhaps coming of age film, to horror and this shift of generic tone serves to reveal truths about the characters. Structurally, what seems like an ending (and is for Soulsby) is actually a beginning, quite literally beginning the film. In addition, the sequence addressed one of the films primary concerns—an interrogation of masculinity. It shows a “good”— easy confidant, attractive—masculinity in Soulsby, but reveals it as vulnerable and even stupid, and finally destroyed. Martin Asher, by contrast, is awkward, scraggly, lacking confidence and pathologically violent, but still squarely within a realm of recognizable masculinity-if of the awkward adolescent variety—but certainly a bad object.

After this sequence, the credits begin in a strange amalgam of black and white micro film images detailing murders—crime scene photos, newspaper articles, maps, and mug shots— interspersed with extreme close-ups of a man changing his appearance: a contact lens inserted into

an eye, hands cutting and dying hair, replacing a photo on a driver’s license, a razor scraping through stubble, washing and removing rubber gloves through the bottom of a basin. Images of fingerprints are interspersed with a pumice stone sanding off the tips of fingers. Signatures coupled with a close-up of a hand practicing a signature, articles about dental records being removed cut with images of a mouth with false teeth being inserted.

The details of changing one’s appearance, shown here not as vanity but as transformation, are the details of male grooming. This emphasis places certain notions of gender performance into the forefront. Masculinity itself is seen as a performance in the opening sequence. More typically, masculinity is seen as intrinsic, as natural, and is naturalized through detective films, although it is less unusual for a “bad guy” to be pictured as somehow not properly masculine (Peter Lorre’s marvelous performance in The Maltese Falcon, complete with lavender calling card and exquisite manners comes to mind). But without this performance being corrected by a more normative masculinity (Bogart), a narrative imbalance is created in the film.

In this instance, there is no counteracting masculine force, but because the bad guy is not properly masculine it allows access for a female to unlock the crime. We see that the investigating woman emerges on the scene after an explicit failure of the male, either in terms of gender performance or problem solving (although in terms of narrative and ideology these two are frequently entangled). Femininity is rarely put in direct confrontation with masculinity. We rarely see successful women paired with successful men, the underlying assumption is that of course, femininity could never win, so masculinity must be handicapped from the beginning, embedded

in the premise of the film.23

But there is a sense that Martin/Costas is not a “real man.” It is not only that he is masquerading as these men whose lives he steals, but that he is masquerading as a man at all. We will see, however, that at the end of the film he needs to assert his masculinity through heightened sexualized violence, and Jolie provides him the foil by being extra feminine. He asserts his masculinity by beating up and stabbing a pregnant woman, pregnant with his child at that. He does not know it is a trap, that it is false, that he has been maneuvered into a subject position by her assumption of feminine traits. He tells her that she isn’t in love with the persona he was wearing when they met, the sensitive art dealer, but rather to the raw masculinity he is underneath it.

In a seeming break in the case, a witness is brought in who came upon the killer as he was smashing a new victim’s head with a rock. During the Scott’s initial interview with Costas the camera examines him as if he were a woman, breaking up his features, focusing on lips, eyes, hands, in tight close-up, mirroring the POV of Agent Scott, and like a woman, he is both sexualized and suspicious, the camera not differentiating between the two. After the interview the antagonistic (but extremely attractive and masculine cop) confronts24 Scott, attempts to physically intimidate her. Costas calls to her as he passes them. And apparently he is attempting to rescue her, “I have three sisters who get that same look in their eyes when they are cornered and don’t like it.”

In a rather elaborate sting operation orchestrated by the cops, Costas is once again treated, both narratively and visually as a woman. First, there is a scene where he opens his shirt exposing

23 _{We see this change rather dramatically in contemporary television shows like Bones or}

Law and Order: SVU. Although we see that the terrain of those films is frequently “feminized” by explicitly addressing crimes against women and children.

24 _{Thus again setting up the duality we saw in the first sequence, but twisting its valence.}

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his smooth white chest in a way that is very sexualized. The camera lingers over his skin as one of the (male) agents tapes the recording device to him. Then he is set up as bait. He is alone at a bustling nightclub, nervous, every approaching man a threat as Scott and the other agent listen in from the car. We will see later in the film how the notion of bait is reversed in its sexual polarity later in the film. Intriguingly, this scene only happens after we find that Scott is sexually available, the ring she wears on her finger a ruse. (“What does Mr. Agent Scott think about this?” “I’m not married.”) This revelation of her inherent femininity asserted by bringing the issue of her sexuality to the forefront, serves as an early tectonic indicator of an ideological shift.

As Costas sits nervously smoking, he gets a note written on a cocktail napkin, “Meet me in the Restroom.” While women are frequently portrayed as having whole conversations in public bathrooms, men seldom are, especially with this air of assignation, unless there is a (straight or gay) sexual component. The club is hallucinatory, disorienting darkly lit with manic laughter over the susurrus of conversation and the intrusion of the Philip Glass score taking over the diegetic music of the club.

That particular sting is called off, the next attempt is at his gallery opening, which coincides with the chaos of the Montreal Jazz festival, the streets are full of music, revelers and fireworks. When a mysterious man shows up (Keifer Sutherland), the cops are on the alert. He jumps out the window and they chase him through the streets only to lose him again.

The team decides Costas should get away, go to Toronto. His cover is blown. The older cop picks up him up to take him to the airport. Costas treats him as a porter, loading him down with small bags to take the car, leaving Costas alone to finish packing. As he is almost ready to go Sutherland appears. The encounter has a high level of sexual intimacy reengaging the ambiguous performances of masculinity. Sutherland has him by the neck, strokes his face and whispers gruffly

in his ear, “You have something that I want.” Costas kicks him in the groin (a strangely feminized move, not a punch or a shove or anything that requires strength, but the girly dirty blow). Costas reaches for his gun only to have it misfire (he forgot to cock it). The cop outside finally hears the cries from above and rushes in to investigate. Scott arrives (too late!),25 hears gunfire and enters the apartment only to see the cop shot dead on the floor and the backdoor open. From outside she hears yells and then a car start. Before you know it she’s back in her mustang in hot pursuit. The front car crashes and Costas emerges, Sutherland's character through the windshield, grabs the gun and shoots him hollering, "It's him, it's him! It’s Asher!” Scott runs up and pulls Costas away right before the car explodes.

Asher, as his “true” self, seems to exhibit a far more traditional, if excessive, masculinity, with his heightened aggression, verbal, physical and sexual. He asserts that this underlying masculinity is what Scott responded to, not the sensitive art-y type. To a certain degree, he is correct. She certainly seemed to respond to his masculinity in the bedroom, where there was very little about the sensitive art dealer about him.

The focus on a single individual for the exploration of a gender becomes absurd. While femininity is frequently treated this way (indicted for the behavior of one exemplary character), masculinity is not. More typically, and especially in genre film, we see masculinity glorified in the protagonist. But if it is the investigation of masculinity, it is of a specific form, a masculinity that is destroyed by women. We have seen the explicitly links in character between Scott and

25 _{See here Linda Williams on melodrama in "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess." Film}

Theory and Criticism 5th _{Edition. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. (New York: Oxford} University Press, 1999). This “too late” points to a new generic shift that is activated: the move from investigation to melodrama. This transformation will be borne out in the closing sequence.

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Asher/Costa - both the assumed persona each take on and something seemingly more intrinsic, at the core of their characters. But if this were a film truly interested in an exploration of masculinity, why is there only one figure that it is really interested in, why are there not a series of men under investigation? Why doesn’t the female investigator’s look turn to others? While there are certainly other men in the film, their masculinity is assured (the other investigators) or they are killed off. The victims are all of questionable masculinity - boy in the beginning, the character played by Keifer Sutherland, the cop who is killed is the most gentle and kind and thoughtful of the bunch, not even getting the wrong idea when Scott knocks on his door in the middle of the night, but rather follows her around so he can set off her brilliance - these clearly being less masculine traits in the film’s gendered universe obviating the problem.

So at its heart then, we have the investigator checking into a “wrong” masculinity, which reinforces the way in which the investigator leaps in only after a failure of masculinity. Here the failure isn’t necessarily those of the cops (although that certainly is the anxiety hanging over them) but rather the failure of masculinity of the criminal, and it is a failure very neatly laid at the feet of a woman, his mother.