Amanda Kramer’s new reverie Give me Pity! is a strange and unsettling affair. At once a parody and an ode to 70s and 80s TV variety shows, the film – on its glitzy surface at least – focuses on Sissy St Claire (played by U.S. actress and daughter of Bette Midler, Sophie von Haselberg), a young performer who’s finally been given her shot at stardom: she is starring in her own Saturday night special, an 80 minutes all singing all dancing one woman show. And Sissy is up to the task: She’s been dreaming of this moment forever, working relentlessly towards it. Her sacrifice has finally paid off: all clad in white like a small child about to be christened, she confesses to her adoring audience that, just like Jesus Christ, she too is “dying to be known, really known, by each and every one of you”; An analogy that feels completely apt by the end of the show.
Just as Sissy’s glamorous set is all smoke and mirrors, it is not long until the cracks start to appear in her flamboyant on screen persona, letting us glimpse the insecurity and delusion that accompanies her ambition. Only 7 or so minutes in, as Sissy finishes her first dance routine (aptly titled ‘Making it”), she glimpses in the wings of the sound stage a sinister presence, wearing a demonic mask. These interruptions, like glitches on a VHS played too many times, quickly multiply and the hostess’ composure unravels at the sequined seams of her sanity.
Sissy brushes off the incident, but the atmosphere increasingly shifts towards a nightmarish ambiance. The next segment of the show, a skit involving a faceless clairvoyant, turns into a haunting confrontation: the psychic recoils at the suggestion of taking Sissy’s hand to give her a palm reading, growling at her in a menacing tone ‘I would never touch you’ and that ‘the energy surrounding you is demonic’.
The price of fame, it seems, is selling oneself out until there’s nothing left. Unlike our protagonist, the film never loses its sense of self: Sissy’s monologues contain some incredibly biting observations on gender performance, maternity, desire and self loathing.
Throughout the 80 minutes running time, Kramer holds a shattered mirror to the idea of fame and performance, but also of performative femininity, one which simultaneously demands the spotlight and loathes the scrutiny, terrified to pull back the layers of its own hypocrisy. Ultimately, what appears to scare Sissy the most is the risk of not being desirable. She is consumed by the idea of not seeming “new” to men who show interest towards her, she confesses to seeing all other women as competition, even dreams of having a baby so that someone will look at her for the first time. There is a sense of desperation emanating from Sissy akin to that of the eponymous character in Pearl (West, 2022), crippled by her own desire to be seen and loved, although in the hand of Kramer, the resulting violence is directed towards the self.
In a segment titled “Wife Hooker,” Sissy is trying to entice men on the street with offers of domestic tasks like cooking dinner for them, meeting their mother, carrying in groceries or waxing their floors. At the end of the skit, she is stabbed to death by an invisible figure, while the masked man looks on, patiently waiting in the wings like a vulture. The price of fame, it seems, is selling oneself out until there’s nothing left. Unlike our protagonist, the film never loses its sense of self: Sissy’s monologues contain some incredibly biting observations on gender performance, maternity, desire and self loathing.
I feel a disconcerting connection to the film – partly because it reminds me of the hours spent in my bedroom as a child, singing into my hairbrush, inventing elaborate choreography, pretending to be interviewed and making up dramatic scenarios. I’ve never really stopped playing these games in my mind, although admittedly, I’ve stopped singing into my hairbrush, to the relief of neighbors.
As I’ve gotten older, however, the dramatic but ultimately heroic scenarios have been infiltrated by life experiences that I would much rather leave in the dressing room before stepping on stage in front of an audience, no matter how fictitious: humiliating breakups, self doubt, negative body image, daily microaggressions… In that sense, Give me Pity reflects a tragically common experience for womankind. For most of us, the masked man standing in the wings of our own one woman show is simply patriarchy.
Give Me Pity! is in cinemas and on demand 10 November
