blog four
In the film “Cusp� we see Alice, a young girl on the brink of becoming a woman. I, as well as any other people at Alice’s age, know how difficult it can be to go from being a child to an adult. There is always a grey area where people are unsure of how to treat someone at Alice’s age. With no real positive male role models in Alice’s life she must resort to the female influences, whether positive or not. Alice is told so many contradictory things by her mother and Lila that it is no wonder she struggles from time to time. Examples include when Lila dresses her up and tells her that she has to be pretty to find a man, then in the end tells Alice that she doesn’t need a man to make her happier; all the while struggling finding her own happiness after Sam left her. Even Alice’s mother gives her conflicting advice, telling Alice to wise up (when Alice is shorted change) then yells at the man who gave her incorrect change saying that she is only a kid. Another female authority figure in Alice’s life is her school teacher who ignores the girls and listens to the boys, perhaps giving Alice the idea that the male sex has power over the female sex. From all of these examples, frustration builds up inside of Alice and at the end of the film she finally stands up for herself and her power against her “friends�, boys, and the idea that her power is limited. Overall Alice is still in a learning stage, somewhere in “limbo�, where she is still finding out how to act and figuring out how people should treat her.