Liberation?
Throughout the film Girl on a Motorcycle, Rebecca is supposed to be seen as an adventurous, woman taking control of her life. However, she is solely dependant on men and seen as a sex object during the film's entirety. She starts out living with her father, then moves on to her fiance, and then under the power of her lover. The scene at the border is very poignant too because there she must receive permission to cross and waits under sexually scrutinizing eyes until the border patrol men have had their fill. Her body is a central image and in close up is framed in a very sexually revealing way that objectifies her as just that, a body. Initially, the film tries to portray Rebecca as powerful, but with every male interaction in the film, she is made into a spectacle and castrated because all her power is essentially taken away. I think that the film was supposed to be liberating in that Rebecca is a woman who drives her own motorcycle and that she does what she wants in the aspects respecting(or not respecting in her case) her husband. However, the film fails because she becomes sickly infatuated with a man who has no respect for her, and that is where her freedom is lost and in no way could Rebecca ever be liberated from underneath the male dominance seen throughout the film through the penetrating male gaze.