Antibirth stars Natasha Lyonne as Lou, the most unlikeable, irredeemable woman who lives in repulsive surroundings around the lowest dregs of humanity and discovers that she is pregnant, but she hasn’t had sex. What is going on? This movie is a body horror film that would make David Cronenberg blush, and David Lynch or John Waters clutch their pearls as viewers go on a weird ride to find out what is happening to Lou.
It is understandable if people just dismiss the movie as unrealistic, but I think that it would resonate more if viewers asked themselves how it is rooted in our world. Sure Antibirth is a surreal, psychedelic horror movie, which feels as if a 90s Club Kid wanted to remake Rosemary’s Baby without the supernatural elements, but isn’t the treatment of veterans after serving their country and an epidemic of missing or murdered women, which increases once a woman becomes pregnant, more like our world than we care to admit? The femicide in Ciudad Juarez is only an extreme, concentrated example of a widespread demonic spirit of misogyny that crosses all borders, cultures and language barriers. Women are only the canary in the coalmine. When we devalue women, it is not long before we see men as disposable as well. Lou’s story started long before she was born. The trailer isn’t the only thing that she inherited from her dishonorably discharged dad. Lou was cultivated in a toxic atmosphere long before she embraced it.
Antibirth shows how Lou’s world overlaps with our own, but if you compare whom our world favors versus the filmmakers, our world is more morally repulsive because it sides with anyone regardless of the culpability of their actions against women. Our world views and devalues Lou and women (un)like Lou in a way that she never consents to, and her bar is fairly low. Early in the movie, Lou’s credibility is implicitly dismissed, “She’s a druggie and a bitch,” but the movie wholeheartedly sides with Lou and finds her account credible. The movie never equates being drunk or high with consent or treats her condition like a defense or a waiver. The difference with our justice system is palpable.
Even while victimizing women in Antibirth, people are dismissive, gaslighting and calling them crazy for responding negatively to being victimized. People knowingly denigrate people even as they know that they are responsible for her condition. Be a lady while I hurt you. So if we don’t expect more from people or institutions that are allegedly better than Lou, then Antibirth effectively discards the idea of applying respectability politics to women. Lou matters, and the film makes her nihilistic life an anti-heroic response to a world that has stacked the cards against women.
Lou becomes an anti-hero for embracing every characteristic that makes a woman unattractive, but in a different context such as a comedy with a man behaving similarly, it would be funny. Guys get to be stoned, look slovenly, talk crassly, hang out with their friends and live in their own filth without it saying anything about their character. Sometimes it makes them more loveable to audiences. In a horror movie, she breaks all the rules, and she must pay for it, but she doesn’t go quietly or quickly.
Antibirth proves that you can still empathize and root for a thoroughly unlikeable woman. Lyonne’s depiction of Lou is merciless, but thorough and relentless that the viewer either has to get on board or not. I was shocked as anyone that at some point, instead of frustration, I felt pride in her character as she is completely nonplussed in the face of the void, which is simultaneously unknown and unbelievable yet familiar and normal. The whole situation is bananas, but she remains stubbornly herself neither turning into a simpering beggar for mercy where there is none, devolves into a screaming mess or overcoming it by turning into an excellent ingenious woman who suddenly gains hithertofore unknown skills. She is simply handling it the best way that she knows how, which isn’t that great, but considering the circumstances, may be better than you or I would, and I found myself oddly proud of her deflation of others’ sense of self importance or attempts to pretend like she doesn’t matter.
I enthusiastically loved Antibirth, which surprised me because it is actually set in a world that I avoid and think of as the road to perdition. We’re not talking about simply an involuntary poverty of the pocket, but a willful deprivation of the mind and the body, a wanton wastefulness and an eager contract with meaningless and oblivion, an erratic journey to stimulate an overused nervous system. Lou’s life is not given to reflection or thoughtfulness. She lives the embodiment of the unexamined life, but she still has value and matters because it is her choice and right to determine who she wants to be and how she wants to live given the circumstances. Ultimately her altered vision of the world is the accurate one. She is an instinctual rebel even if she is not a conscious one.
Meg Tilly has a small supporting role as Lorna, a foil to Lou, and she is completely unrecognizable. Her anger and selfless kindness was an oasis in a film filled with awful people. I rarely have the thought, “I wish this person had a gun,” but it was my first thought when she appeared on screen. I immediately pegged Chloe Sevigny’s character. I have no idea if it is terrific acting to completely understand a character within seconds of seeing them or if it gives away too much of the story, but it certainly works. Side note: it feels as if Neville Edwards took a job from Joe Morton.
Lyonne owns the movie in a fearless performance, and I liked her so much in Antibirth that I added Russian Dolls to my queue without knowing anything about it. She is just so impressive and embraces her role without hesitation that if you’re a fan of hers and not the genre, it may be worth it just to see her work.
If I had one criticism of Antibirth, it felt as if the black people that Lou hung out with were a skosh higher in terms of socioeconomic status than she would be able to be friendly with in real life. I’m not saying that it is impossible because maybe being a white woman skewed the curve in her favor, but in Michigan?
I enjoyed Antibirth so much that I decided to see what other movies Danny Perez directed, but it seems like he mainly works on music videos and nothing seems to be in wide circulation. I’m eager to see what else he has to offer and definitely owe him money so I’m willing to make a trip to the theater. Perez is like a soul cousin to Panos Cosmatos, but deliberately messier and less stylized.
