American Psycho - A woman’s touch

How can you tell a film is directed by a woman? It gives us a montage of Christian Bale doing his skincare routine.

Due to the recent, and sadly familiar, snubbing of Greta Gerwig and Lulu Wang by the Academy Awards, I wanted to revisit some of my favourite female directed films. The first being American Psycho. Directed by Mary Harron in 2000, the film’s audience has evolved repeatedly throughout its lifetime. Once a staple in many men’s top ten lists (for all the wrong reasons) with current film communities, it seems that the film is now a hit with a predominantly female audience. Why does a black comedy centred around a Wall Street tycoon turned serial killer appeal to women so much? Is it Christian Bale’s glassy skin and perfect hair? Quite possibly. However, there is a much more technical answer to this question, the female gaze. 

It’s a parody! Bret Easton Ellis cried when his work was removed from the shelves of book shops worldwide due to its horrific graphic descriptions of violence against women. American Psycho, the book, is not a parody. It’s a black comedy, sure, but parody is a slippery slope and it becomes even more slippery the more heinous the subject you are parodying is. American Psycho, the film satirises its subjects infinitely better than its source material ever did.

Is this real life or is it just fantasy?

With her screenplay adaptation, Harron takes the narrative of the book and turns it on its head. Patrick Bateman is incidental, he is identical in every way to every other man in the film, from the suit, to the hair, to the cold laughter. When comparing business cards each man is a Vice President, for the same company, and they all have the same phone number. Bateman’s only unique characteristic is his psychotic temper and wildly inappropriate conversation topics, but nobody else seems to notice this. Or do they? This is the beauty of Mary Harron. This film can be interpreted in two ways. One, everything in the film happens but Patrick can get away with murder because he’s a rich man (a story as old as time itself), and two, that every depraved act in the film is actually a twisted fantasy. And if the whole thing is a fantasy, does that mean every other business type in the film has the same imagination?

Harron doesn’t stop there, she also casts an eye over horror films and their exploitation of women. Opting to leave most violence offscreen was a smart choice from the director. When Bateman brings two prostitutes back to his apartment for a threesome, Harron doesn’t shy away from showing it, but it isn’t gratuitous. It’s awkward. Painfully awkward. There is no passion and Patrick spends the whole time admiring himself in his bedroom mirror, he looks ridiculous. For many men this would look like a fantasy, for women it's a joke. Within the film the unashamed sexism displayed by the men is taken to farcical levels, it actually feels like a parody as opposed to a fantasy disguised as a parody. Women will gloss over the violent threats and crude remarks almost as if they didn’t happen. Ignorance is bliss after all. 

“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman.”

One can’t talk about American Psycho without mentioning Christian Bale’s performance. It’s phenomenal. The actor stated himself that he based his performance on Tom Cruise whom he says ‘had the biggest smile but had nothing behind the eyes.’ The actor can switch between the many layers of Patrick Bateman in the blink of an eye. From cold, to deranged, to smarmy, to a man who is just excited to tell you exactly what he thinks of Huey Lewis and the News. His sculpted physique and fitted suits, much like his all white apartment, is the perfect visual representation of a man who is so obsessed with outward appearances that he is completely void of personality. Bale did not need the character to be liked, and that is crucial to the film’s success. 

If you want a biting black comedy it doesn’t get darker than American Psycho. A film which I truly believe would not have worked if it had been directed by a man. Mary Harron managed to make a neo-feminist film which was so nuanced that it would be easy to write it off as a testosterone fuelled slasher flick. Coupled with Bale’s understanding of the gaze in which he was operating and a wicked sense of humour, two women managed to create what Bret Easton Ellis thought he was doing when he wrote American Psycho all those years ago.