Privilege

Rainer's meditative film on the menopause has a mock-documentary framework: 'Yvonne', a black American film-maker, conducts a series of interviews with middle-aged women. Intespersed are clips from hilarious black-and-white educational films with pompous male doctors. The camera also watches a computer screen, scrolling up provocative texts, messages from the real or the fictional documentary-maker. The menopause is rather left behind as we follow the story of Jenny, a white friend of the fictional Yvonne. Her experiences with a lesbian neighbour and two repellent local men serve to muddle the central issue. In the end the message seems simply to be that we often disparage people who are older or darker-skinned than us, and that men in general aren't very nice to women.