The film with the strongest “female empowerment” vibe at TIFF may just be Made in Dagenham, a film about the feminist movement taking over an unlikely corner of working class England in 1968, when female factory workers who sewed seat covers for the Ford Motors plant went on strike.
For once, we have a film about women where they do something interesting and important, and talk about things other than the men in their lives or fashion. Hallelujah. It’s kind of the anti-Sex and the City — a Norma Rae tale of the British working class with a vibe tonally similar to Calendar Girls (also directed by Cole) or The Full Monty (not directed by Cole), so if you liked either or both of those films, you’ll almost certainly like this one.
Made in Dagenham stars Sally Hawkins, whose presence in a film is always a good thing; Toss Bob Hoskins in the mix, and you up the odds considerably of the film being a winner.
Hawkins plays Rita O’Grady, a wife, mother and factory worker at the Dagenham factory where she works alongside 186 other women sewing custom-made seat covers for Ford cars. The women are downgraded to “unskilled labor” and end up striking not just to be reinstated to “semi-skilled” but for equal pay, at a time when the tide of feminism was rising and threatening to sweep the corporate world by storm. This film is really about much more than this particular strike at this particular point in history, though; it’s about what’s fair, what’s “right” versus what’s a “privilege,” and the need to stand up for what you believe in, even in the face of adversity.
The film dramatizes how the men — both in management and the women’s own husbands — are at first patronizingly tolerant of “the girls” going on strike, but when push comes to shove and their own jobs at the factory are jeopardized by the shutdown, it’s another story. Although the women supported their men when they went on strike, the shoe being on the other foot doesn’t fit quite as well with the male perspective on women’s place in society.
And to an extent, that’s every bit as relevant today as it was in 1968, the year in which I was born. I work, and travel for my job, and I’ve experienced a lot in my own career having people dare to question my commitment to my family and whether my work conflicts with that — something I daresay my male colleagues have largely never had to deal with. Things have changed a lot on the one hand with regard to women in the workplace and pay (although we still have yet to achieve that whole “equal pay” thing across the board), but on the other hand societal attitudes towards working women haven’t changed all that much over 40 years later. We’ve still got a long ways to go, baby … but it’s thanks to women like Rita O’Grady that we’ve come as far as we have.
I could see Made in Dagenham playing very well to the female audience in America with the right marketing and enough critical support behind it; it’s a relevant film about an important topic, and moreover it’s enormously entertaining. In addition to Hawkins and Hoskins, by the bye, Miranda Richardson is on-hand as British Labour Party firebrand Barbara Castle, and she does a hell of a job bringing that great lady to life.
Overall, Made in Dagenham is solid, entertaining, even inspiring. I’d love to see this film get a little momentum behind it, because Hawkins is every bit as good in this film as she was in Happy-Go-Lucky.
