Women in Horror Month: The Women of X and Pearl
Spoilers for both films and spoilerish comments related to Barbarian, Hereditary, House of the Devil, and Sinister.
I finally got around to having the time to watch Ti West’s 2022 films X and Pearl. I was fortunate enough to go into X without knowing anything about it or that it was meant to connect to Pearl. I merely chose the films because I have been a fan of Mia Goth since my introduction to her in the middling film The Cure for Wellness and enjoyed her performances in Suspiria (2018) and Emma (2020), both of which I loved. X and Pearl were fantastic films. Mia Goth stars as Maxine Minx in X as well as Pearl in both X and the prequel film of the same name. Goth gives a subtler performance in X, but no one can deny her work in Pearl is a tour-de-force that should have gotten her award nominations.
The Film Crew of X
The women of X are powerful. Bobby-Lynne, Lorraine, and Maxine are all portrayed positively as sex workers or SW industry adjacent, even if two of them meet a dark end. I’ll discuss some of my favorite things about each of them here.
Bobby-Lynne
Bobby-Lynne is proud that she makes people feel good and reveals she not only is a talented actress but also has a good eye for directing, as seen by her apt observations at the gas station. She is a good singer, which is no surprise as she is played by Brittany Snow, and clearly enjoys performing for others. Bobby-Lynne is probably my favorite character in the film. She knows who she is and is kind. While she is slightly patronizing to Pearl, her intentions to help the elderly woman are genuine. When Pearl lashes out at her, she has no issue chewing the old woman out. Bobby-Lynne correctly informs Pearl it isn’t her fault Pearl’s life ended up like this. However, this verbal beat down leads to her death, likely the most violent in the film. Part of the violence related to her death is caused by Pearl’s loathing of blondes & Bobby-Lynne’s sweet nature is somewhat reminiscent of her sister-in-law Mitsy. Blondes in general were part of the traumatic failed audition that set Pearl fully over the edge and poor Bobby-Lynne paid for it.
Lorraine
Lorraine starts the film as a quiet crew member helping her boyfriend RJ make his “elevated porno”, as if there is anything wrong with a the standard pornographic film (or horror film ;) ). She slowly becomes less timid as the film progresses and is very into the scenes she is observing. She sees both Bobby-Lynne and Maxine in charge of their own pleasure and fate. She requests to be in a scene, which gets her boyfriend’s hackles up. X and the entire crew critiques RJ’s prudish tendencies. However, the film alone also acknowledges that polyamory is not for everyone, and while Lorraine has every right to do a scene in the film, it is an abrupt swerve that she and RJ did not discuss prior to it. While we can sympathize with RJ regarding the jarring shift in Lorraine’s decision, the film agrees that his controlling and misogynist beliefs may be coloring his views on things. His issues with Lorraine and the crew cause him to attempt to flee the farm and he becomes the first victim.
Lorraine’s kindness and some biases gets her trapped into the basement. I don’t care if someone is 13 or 93, I am NOT going into their creepy basement, because there are always means to incapacitate someone that does not require brute strength (see the drugged pizza from The House of the Devil or the drugged drinks from Sinister or Last Night in Soho). Lorraine does not see Howard as a threat due to his old age and he easily locks her down there with a corpse trussed to the beams, waiting for the same fate, to be used then killed by Pearl (and maybe Howard too). I am being hard on Lorraine, unfairly, in the hopes to remind myself that many women and others need to stop trying to appease and please strangers who ask for our help. I love helping others but am also aware that many fictional and real-life villains/killers preyed upon their victim’s desire to help or aid people.
Maxine Minx
Maxine may be the gruffest woman of our film crew, honestly. She is both an observer and active participant in events. She has a no nonsense & determinator vibe put on full display during the final portion of the film. She tries to save other members of the crew and fights back. Although she is scared and repulsed by the events happening around her, she refuses to give up. She is ultimately revealed to be the runaway daughter of an evangelical preacher “seduced to a life of sin”, but she exhibits neither shame nor guilt regarding her ambition for fame or career as a porn star. She is confident and assured in her skills, but I wondered how genuine those outward emotions are. From what I recall, Maxine is the only crew member seen doing cocaine and spouting mantras. Her determination to be famous is still admirable though. She is a force to be reckoned with and she mercilessly executes Pearl after the latter tried to murder Maxine with a shotgun. Nothing, not even murder, will prevent Maxine Minx from clawing her way into the spotlight, leaving behind her dead lover, friends, and enemies. The film leaves it up to the audience (and the sequel MaXXXine) to decide if her desires will be met or if she will follow Pearl in having her dreams of stardom destroyed.
The Farm Girl and Bitter Woman: Pearl and Ruth
Pearl fits into both categories depending on the time (1918 or 1979) or film under discussion. I’ll discuss her in both films as well as her mother Ruth in this section.
Pearl
Lord, what a character Pearl is! She is hinted the driving force behind the murders and Howard’s choice to capture people to “satisfy” her. In Pearl, he is horrified by her grisly dinner tableau with her parents’ corpses but in X he is her willing accomplice. Does he know Pearl murdered his sister?!? It is she who makes use of the men and women they capture in the basement. It was nice to get to know her as an older lady before seeing her as young girl full of idealistic, if not foolish dreams.
It seems painfully obvious to viewers that Pearl is destined to fail & a life that would never fulfill her expectations, even if you did not know she’d meet her, end with a broken hip and crushed skull in X. Pearl is painful to watch at times, as she stumbles and flails about stage you want to cover your eyes, even more than I did when she was trying to seduce the young actors in X. Her sincerity somehow makes either type of seen disquieting to watch.
Pearl is also selfish, letting the stars in her eyes cloud the dismal reality around her, causing others misery. Living though the coronavirus pandemic, it was hard to empathize with her when she would rashly go to the cinema or other events unmasked when she was living with her ill father. She is unfulfilled sexually and is angry that Howard voluntarily enlisted for the war, further leading to her discontentment with farm life. She impulsively has an affair with a “bohemian” projectionist and murders him with an axe after he figures out that she is clearly off. She had already left Ruth for dead in the basement.
Pearl’s life is a tragedy. It’s hard to determine if her murderous ways were always the result of her deteriorating mental health or if her mother’s constant cruelty at her own lot in life contributed to her tenuous grasp on reality. I suspect a bit of both were at play. She is shown experimenting with killing animals around the farm, an early warning sign for dangerous behavior. This killing is not the normal slaughter of animals that would be expected for a farmgirl but malicious.
Mia Goth truly deserves more recognition for these roles (as do many other horror or genre film leads). Pearl’s breakdown after her audition, the 6–7-minute monologue outlining her affair, miscarriage, and dashed dreams, and ending shots were evidence of Goth’s skill. She truly captured how a fragile mind like Pearl’s would start cracking under the pressure of assisting her mother in running an entire farm, just the two of them, but Ruth’s vicious comments to her daughter add extra pressure. Pearl exits her film filled with resentment. She commits parricide, murders her lover, Mitsy, and lord knows how many others before she comes back again in X.
Ruth
It’s also not hard to pity Ruth, Pearl’s exhausted, nasty mother. She is a German immigrant, a country that conflicted with the US, and her farm has fallen on hard times. Since Howard was once one of their employees, it seems they were once prosperous and have recently been struggling. Her husband suffered complications of the flu and she has become his sole caregiver. A huge burden for anyone. She is showing signs of caregiver fatigue by the film’s start and seems to become a vessel of bitterness by the time we meet her. Her in-laws offer to help but her pride won’t let her take their glib charity. All these responsibilities are weighing on her as she also tries to manage her immature, mentally ill, adult daughter. It’s hard to remember that Pearl must be in her late teens to mid-twenties in the film because she acts more like a little girl. Ruth can no longer hire help, so it is her and Pearl running an entire farm alone. I have enough friends who live a rural lifestyle to know how grueling that life can be. Hell, most of society has been trying to get away from working on a farm for the past 200 years or so!
Her anger and bile boils over when she asks if she should slit her husband’s throat and laments that she is no longer his wife but more akin to his mother or a nursemaid. A loyal, good wife would accept that duty with pride in her mind, but Ruth only feels sourness. Her anger at Pearl also seems directed at herself for truly not making the most out of what her life has given her. Unlike Maxine and her mantras, Ruth cannot follow the beliefs she espouses. Instead, she continually degrades her daughter and implies she keeps the girl on the farm because she knows just what Pearl is capable of. Both women are trapped due to the circumstances of their time and punish young people who still have hope as a result.
Pearl, X, and Aging Women
I’d also like to touch on how the X presents aging as well, using the elderly Pearl as an example. X was the one of the few recent films that gave some pathos to the “evil old folks” while making it clear they’re vile people. I am a bit fed up with the use of naked elderly people to induce disgust and terror in the audience, like Hereditary and Barbarian. At least Barbarian implied the audience should pity the elderly woman living in the house on Barbary Street. Pearl and Howard are treated similarly. Aging in our society is presented as a horrifying prospect to a woman. We are constantly told that our beauty, our only value outside of fertility, is directly tied to our youth. Many women admit that they got catcalled/ harassed the most between the ages of 12 – 20 years old. By 27 or 30 years of age we are hitting “the wall” (lol) and long past our prime. While I admit my value is not tied to either of these things, I am not looking forward to the day that my partner and I can no longer be intimate because of our health. Or that my once desirable form is now viewed as ghastly and repulsive.
There is a bitterness in aging and being treated as an invalid that I thought the film really did well. Pearl tries to seduce multiple people and takes it too far with her lust for Maxine, assaulting the young porn star who eerily resembled her in her past. Howard clearly learned about the affair because he seems to begrudge the “bohemian” film crew. He admits that he is no longer capable of having sex with Pearl without risking a cardiac event. Shortly after their sex scene, he dies from Lorraine’s death reflex due to his heart. While Pearl’s and Howard’s fear of aging and obsolescence is relatable, their vicious murders and assaults quickly annihilates most of the sympathy the viewer has for them. I enjoyed that the film acknowledged that although they young characters were well-meaning, their patronizing attitudes towards the elderly led to most of their deaths. While our heroes misstep, the film makes it clear that Pearl and Howard are the villains.
Final Thoughts
Whether you prefer X or Pearl, I found both an interesting look at the idea of dreams deferred through the lens of both Pearl and Maxine. I also enjoyed how the female characters were portrayed and West’s commitment to giving each film a clear aesthetic that ties it to the era it was supposed to portray. I am looking forward to the final film in the trilogy to find out what happens to the dreams of young, murderous girl with stars in her eyes? Will Maxine be able to make it in the big leagues or is she doomed to fail?
Essay by Dee
Twitter: @Sirenofscience
