There is something worse than the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Trope. Saw a french film last week called MY GOLDEN DAYS, which all the critics of course love. But to me it was dreadfully pretentious. Instead of the manic pixie, we have the french version -- the Needy Pouty Alluring Sex Goddess. She's the beautiful adolescent girl who oozes sex appeal and experience, and has the young male protagonist under her tantalizing spell. He's mesmerized (as are all the boys), and literally cannot function without her.
Sexy Goddess is a fantasy, a obsession, a fetish, an object for male pleasure. However, underneath her seemingly confident exterior she's a needy, fragile child with the emotional and mental capabilities of a five year old. She doesn't have dreams/goals of her own (other than mesmerizing boys) and she has no story arc. She exists merely so the young man in this coming of age tale can act out his fantasies and dispose of her when it's time to grow up and become a man.
Sexy Goddess never evolves. She just pouts. And self-destructs. Because her only purpose is to hold up a mirror for our protagonist so he can become the man he is meant to be. Of course, our man ultimately always pines for Sexy Goddess, even as a doughy middle-aged adult male, because he still has some twisted idea that a 'mentally unstable, and sexually promiscuous girl looking for love in all the wrong places' is the ultimate dream girl that somehow slipped away.
This film was not brilliant or innovative to me. In fact, it was cliched and tired in its predictable masculine nostalgia. I am pretty tired of seeing coming-of-age stories told almost exclusively from the male POV. Without women's voices in film, women are relegated time and time again to the sidelines. They become objects. Fantasies. Obsessions. Fetishes. They have no story arcs of their own.
I say death not only to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl but to her french cousin, the Needy Pouty Alluring Sex Goddess. RIP.
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