Think This is 40 or Bridesmaids meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? meets lesbians, and you get Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf? (WAVW), the new dark comedy by Anna Margarita Albelo. Written by Michael Urban (Saved!) and starring Albelo, The L Word alums Guinevere Turner and Janina Gavankar, Agnes Olech, Carrie Preston and Celeste Pechous, WAVW is a semi-autobiographical inquiry into the existential crisis of a 40-year-old lesbian looking to “have it all.”
“Having it all,” meaning both professional (career) success and personal (love) success, has been heavily bandied about in the media recently, having been deemed the cultural conundrum of women in the 21st century. While “having it all” may arguably rest on a false dichotomy, it’s nevertheless one that has been used to gauge individual happiness, and it is precisely where Albelo’s character, Anna, begins her self-analysis and reflection the moment she turns 40. Anna has three life goals: to make a move, to get a girlfriend, and to lose 20 pounds. But throughout her adult life she has been unable to negotiate the balance between work and love. WAVW is a humorous inquiry into this negotiation or balance; Anna’s story is a working through of the psychological blockages to having it all-or, for her, seeing that she’s already “had it all” all along.
Up until this moment in her life Anna decided to sacrifice love for a filmmaking career, hoping that “getting a girlfriend” would be a by-product of a successful career. Yet, she laments, “ten years later, no dice.” In fact, she doesn’t seem to have either a girlfriend or a successful filmmaking career. This realization sets Anna into a self-reflective, and semi-self-indulgent, navel-gazing spiral in which she decides to make a film in order to woo Katia Amour (played by Gavankar), a seductive graduate student with a penchant for academic jargon who makes Anna go weak in the knees as well as in the lady-parts. But this muse, Anna learns, is a fabrication of the illusion that Anna has been living; her journey throughout WAVW entails the process of her coming to see herself at first mirrored in this illusion, and then through this illusion, to a self that she has avoided and neglected for a host of reasons, including internalized homophobia. Anna’s psychological denouement only arrives through a tough but touching discussion with her mother; only then can she break this self-effacing narrative.
This film is wholly unique in its thematic focus and in its creative employment of Albee’s domestic tragedy as a frame narrative. WAVW is dark and parodic and exquisitely intelligent at the same time. The film’s cunning is displayed in its sharp yet subtle nods to past literary and pop cultures, performed paradoxically by the wonderfully talented ensemble. Guinevere Turner playing a lesbian actress playing Elizabeth Burton playing Albee’s Georgie is flat-out phenomenal; she nails the deadpan satire of the Hollywood actress.
Through internet magic I was able to chat with Albelo, who is in the midst of promoting WAVW at film festivals around the country, not only about WAVW, but about the trajectory of her career and how her life is inflected in her work-and vice versa.
AfterEllen.com: Edward Albee is such a creative-I hate to say “genius”-force but one who isn’t frequently or explicitly invoked in other literary and cultural contexts. How did Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? inspire you to make Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf? (WAVW)?
Anna Margarita Albelo: I saw the movie when I was 16 and I was profoundly touched by [it], and the play, and I’ve seen it and read it. There’s something about being an artist [that makes me think about] Jack Halberstam’s “queer art of failure.” Virginia Woolf and Albee are people who felt like they failed in life, that even “love’s company” but they hate company.
When I first moved to Los Angeles, Guin[evere Turner] told me I could stay with her a month, and I ended up staying a year. During that time, our three favorite movies were Sunset Boulevard, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and we’d always fantasize about one day or another making our versions of these movies, with these intense female characters.
AE: Albee’s play serves as an intertextual frame for your film; another “text” is your life. How much “autobiography” is in WAVW?
AMA: I consider it an “auto-fiction.” There [are] a lot of character traits that are autobiographical, but it certainly has fictional elements.
AE: The film’s epigraph, “for beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself”-a quotation from Virginia Woolf-epitomizes Anna’s storyline. How would you explain this quest to be one’s self in terms of having both a successful professional (career) and personal (love) life? Is the intersection of career and love “having it all”
AMA: My whole life, especially in the ’70s and the ’80s when women starting having to be it all, has been surrounded by the discussion of whether women can have both a career and a family. What’s hard is not trying to be a mother and having a career. What’s hard is feeling that you have to do that; that you can’t do what you want to do. Like, stay-at-home-moms were looked down upon by feminists; being a mom is hard enough.
In today’s digital culture everything is about expressing and communicating, but no one knows what they really like or what they really want to do. We’re so concerned with other people’s opinions, and posing for it and posting it [online].
You’ve really got to ask yourself, “What is important to me?” Give yourself time to understand yourself and express yourself.
AE: In Anna’s storyline, a woman turns 40 and feels disenchanted with her life; that something is lacking. Is there something about women in their 40s that makes it difficult for them to negotiate career with love? Can the two mutually, simultaneously, exist, or must there always be a hierarchy: career over love, love over career? Can’t the “libido” be in two places at once?
AMA: The midlife crisis is really the existential crisis of “who I am” and “what am I suppose to be”- “The world is yours, Tony!” (that’s from Scarface). Life is a full-time job and a lot of people have crises: kids, kids in college, adults. I wanted to expand the notion that this isn’t a movie about a woman having a midlife crisis, which is traditionally something had by men. It’s not a midlife crisis really, it’s an existential crisis.
I feel like the more you’re doing what you want, the more you feel good about yourself, the more joie de vivre you have, the more you want to see people. What runs us down is trying to fit into the picture of things instead of figuring out what makes us happy and how to be good to ourselves.
I have a lot of successful filmmaker friends who are married or have partners. [The hierarchy] was definitely my philosophy-that was very autobiographical. I had a relationship really late. I always said that what I don’t understand my relationships, but what I do understand is my work.
What I realized was that I fell for the “Disney” concept of love; maybe i believed in that unconsciously so it became this huge El Dorado that I nor anyone else could do.
I think the next half of my life will have a lot more leisure, will have more caring and openness to having more of a personal life for sure.
AE: In the film’s synopsis you write that your character Anna’s crush on Katia-the cerebral, somewhat bombastic, graduate student played by brilliantly by Janina Gavankar-paralyzes her “with fear of intimacy, rejection, and her own internalized homophobia.” I wonder, however, if Katia is not so much the catalyst as a mirror to Anna, who is attracted to Katia for the very reason that she represents an illusion, the very illusion that Anna sees in herself. There’s comfort in an illusory love, because people who chase after the illusion, or “the unattainable,” person intuitively know that they will fail, so they will never have to make themselves vulnerable. Would you say that Anna’s life, “of living an illusion,” is represented by this false muse? That Katia is a projection of Anna herself?
AMA: I didn’t think of Katia as a projection of Anna but she is! I really thought about it, and I said, ‘What attracts us to other people?’ A lot of these women I’ve always met have been intellectual. The idea that the illusion is really kind of the carrot: What gets you out of bed? What makes something worthwhile?
AE: She seems like such a block, though, but I feel like what what usually happens is that an individual who is unavailable picks someone who is equally unavailable-it reifies her narrative and keeps her comfortable in that narrative.
AMA: Absolutely. I think part of choosing the unattainable is not seeing what is really there. Anna is still projecting what isn’t really there. She’s still projecting on her. Everytime Katia talks Anna goes back into her head instead of listening to her. So, in a way, yeah-it’s not that Katia is unattainable, it’s Anna who makes Katia, Julia, Penelope, everyone unattainable. And I think when people really think about it, when people say “I always choose people who are unattainable,” it’s really about you not being-not giving other people a chance. Even more than hurting or isolating yourself. It’s really about you not giving yourself a chance to get to know someone.
AE: I love the deconstruction of the ideal of the muse in WAVW, because ideals are nothing less than illusions, Plato be damned! The humor here is so subtle it’s fantastic: “Katia Amour” translates into “Pure Love,” again the ideal, the illusion. Throughout the film we witness Anna experience moments of enchantment speckled with moments of disenchantment, particularly when Katia is spouting her rhetorically vapid, theoretical jargon. Why did you employ the trope of the muse in this film, and how does it work to expose Anna?
AMA: When we start the story Anna’s at the very bottom of the barrel, and so she doesn’t feel good about herself and she doesn’t believe in herself. So Katia is like a buoy in The Titanic, and I think that the testament about having a muse-the muse in itself and Anna choosing Katia as a muse-is not giving up. It’s a testament to Anna that this person gives her another reason to try again. Whether she’s a muse or not, she inspires her because Katia is exciting and beautiful and she cares. The muse is a testament that Anna still has hope no matter what. Again, when everything falls apart, one of the messages of the film is to inspire people not to give up.
The [relation of] artist and the muse is the difficult thing. There’s not a “real” relationship, even though you can have a muse as a lover, like Dali. Anna calls her a muse and sees her as a muse, but what she really turns out to be is a catalyst.
AE: Yes, because meeting Katia inspires Anna to make a movie. Another L Word alum in the film, in addition to Janina, is Guinevere Turner. Is it true you wrote the part of Penelope for her? Her parody of Elizabeth Taylor, who stars as Georgie in the film adaptation of Albee’s play, is hilarious. While I’m curious to know if Guin studied Lindsay Lohan’s portrayal of Taylor to achieve such heightened parody, I am more interested to know what it meant for you to have her as “iconic lesbian actress” play “iconic actress”?
AMA: The role of Penelope was written expressly for Guinevere. Guin was so instrumental in even making the movie happen. For me, she incarnates an old Hollywood glamour and finesse, and you feel it when she’s on the screen and [also] in person. I love older movies, so for me one of the reasons I wanted to do these movies (hopefully Baby Jane will be next), was so that people would get excited about the original play/film.
I love camp absolutely; I knew everyone was expecting an over-the-top “YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!” [in one of the film’s earlier scenes], but she does an amazing job.
AE: Yes! When she changes the tone from melodramatic to more serious and demure when replaying the scene, it really showcased her ability as an actress.
AMA: Exactly. Guinevere has an incredible range, and I hope to see her play this range more and more.
AE: WAVW screens at LGBT film festivals throughout the summer, including OutFest in LA and QFest in Philly. Are you hoping for a larger distribution after the festival circuit? What’s next for you?
AMA: I’m definitely going to QFest; we are a Saturday night Centerpiece on July 13th, [and] I’m so thrilled about the audience reaction so far. Then Outfest, which starts July 11th; the film plays July 19th at 7:30-for someone like me, with a history at Outfest, it’s a huge achievement.
During Outfest, too, I will be directing one of the screenwriters labs, which exists to help screenwriters get their scripts selected.
AE: So you’ll be helping nurture someone bring their project to fruition.
AMA: Yeah, and for me it’s a great opportunity to work with a screenwriter and bring something to life someone’s been working so hard on.
What brought me to America originally is what I’m hoping will be my next project, The Papaya Factory, a coming of age story of a 14-year-old Cuban-American girl set in Miami in 1984. It’s the time of pop culture and Miami Vice and Scarface and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And everyone in the film doesn’t want to be who they are. It’s the “Me Generation.”
AE: Which is interesting, because now everyone is saying that Millennials are the “Me Generation.”
AMA: But the origin of the “Me Generation” was in the ’80s, which is why there was the backlash of grunge in the ’90s. The ’80s were so flashy and sparkly and pop, and so gender-bending.
WAVW is also in consideration for indie film festivals in Europe, and here in the States, too. I’m submitting [it] to a lot of the indie fests, because, as bell hooks says, if you want to be pertinent, you have to move between the center and the margin.
AE: WAVW is not a coming out narrative or a gay shame narrative. I think those films have a difficult time segueing into more mainstream communities. This is another why I loved WAVW too, because being a lesbian is just a facet of Anna’s story in the film.
AMA: I hope also that people appreciate and understand that she’s a Cuban-American raised with certain values, and a certain appreciation for America-hence I live my life that way. But I also want to cross over and hope that the “gatekeepers”-programmers, buyers, distributors, Judd Apatow-discovers me.
AE: Me too! I look forward to seeing you at QFest in Philly this weekend.
AMA: Yes, I’ll be there this weekend, with my vagina costume, of course.
