TIFF 51: Denmark’s “Woman Unknown” is an unnerving proposition

by Cláudio Alves It’s funny, sometimes, how films can converse with each other. And those conversations aren’t even limited to a festival’s program. As I watched May el-Toukhy’s somewhat controversial Golden Lion winner, Woman Unknown, my mind drifted to The Odyssey. Not just Nolan’s blockbuster, but all the adaptations I’ve seen of the Homeric poem and how they deal with the mass femicide near the end. Or, better yet, how they ignore it, erasing a part of the story that might have a modern viewer regard Odysseus and Telemachus as nothing but cruel men, as monstrous as any of the creatures that tried to prevent Ithaca’s king from returning home. Do the maids that served Penelope’s suitors deserve to die? Were all of them co-conspirators or women caught in a patriarchy that demanded their total subservience to the desires of violent men? And what if, like Emily Wilson, we read the word “δμῳαί” as “slave” instead of “servant”? To define culpability and blame isn’t something we can…