Whoever is responsible for that title should be taken out and shot. (Preferably after being whipped with rubber hoses. It is a war film, after all.)
I mean, ‘Female Agents’? That’s a casting brief, not a working title. OK, they’re agents. Sophie Marceau, Julie Depardieu, probably Juliette Binoche in there somewhere: female, OK, we get it. Making the fact they have breasts the main point of the film is both condescending and insulting: like affirmative action legislation, it suggests these people are special just because of their genes, rather than because of what they did. Yes, female agents were an unusual sight in 1940s France, but you can’t build a whole story on this one fact – and you shouldn’t make it the whole point of the title. What about something riffing on what they achieved, like ‘They Served Too’ or ‘The Quieter Ones’ or whatever? Or even keeping the French title, Femmes de l’Ombre – it sounds better even if it means the same.
chrisworth
July 27, 2008
Aha – I suspect we're looking at two sides of the same problem here: my annoyance (exemplified by the 'breasts' remark) was that this film, judging by its title, is yet another sexist commentary with the subtext of how amazing it is that women (denoted above as 'people with breasts') might actually be capable of being secret agents. My problem with the film (at present) is purely with the title, which just feels wrong.