'I definitely knew I had lost my place' ... Gwyneth Paltrow speaks out. Photograph: Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty
In Cannes, speaking at the press conference after the screening of Two Lovers directed by James Gray, in which she has a leading role, Gwyneth Paltrow spilt the beans. She said aloud what we all know: in Hollywood, you better not take time off to have children or if you do, do it fast and make sure you don't lose your looks, or the parts will start drying up. "If you're a woman and especially if you're not 25, Hollywood is pretty cut-throat. I was very realistic about the fact that there might not be any more room for me. I definitely knew I had lost my place when I left," Paltrow told journalists in Cannes.
The same day, in Paris, 48 Hours a Day by Catherine Castel was screened at the headquarters of the Medef, the employers' union (see trailer here). It tells the story of a couple with two kids. Both parents are high-achievers, but the mother's career has stalled because she has to juggle her work and look after the children while her husband hasn't changed his work routine. One day, she tells her husband that her company is sending her to Japan for six months. In truth, she's moving to a colleague's flat a few streets away in Paris. While she enjoys late nights out, she can also work longer hours and very quickly gets promoted. In the meantime, her husband, who now has to leave his desk by 7.30pm every day, sees his boss's discontent rising and his chances of promotion fading away. This film may not be a masterpiece, but we certainly need more of this sort of thing to nail the argument again and again: more égalité in the workplace, please.
Hollywood is not that much worse than more mundane industries: women are hugely under-represented in key positions such as film directing and film financing (according to this recent report in the Los Angeles Times, of the 250 top-grossing American movies in 2007, only 6% were directed by women, down from 7% in 2005 and 9% in 1998). Hollywood is, however, worse in the way it treats actors. Top female actors in particular - fantasies projected on the big screens of our imagination - must always appear as a feminine ideal. Of child-bearing age, they should be the image of fertility but just not be mothers yet, complying with the image of eternal jeune fille. Top actresses try to make that moment last as long as possible before entering that other world where they'll only be considered for less interesting parts: that of mature women. There seems to be no room in Hollywood cinema for a sexy 40-50 year-old wife and mother in the leading part of a film. Indeed, in James Gray's film, Two Lovers, we see Isabella Rossellini, who seems to have changed in just a few years from the status of auteurs' muse to that of grandmother-to-be. The evolution couldn't be more dramatic.
Being an independent, ambitious, yet caring mother and a beautiful woman has always been difficult, and the topic has indeed been occasionally brought to the big screen by American directors. Remember Mildred Pierce, Michael Curtiz's 1945 gem with Joan Crawford in the title role? Yet, as Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in TV and Film at San Diego State University, points out: "Hollywood is in denial, and as long as they're in denial, then they don't feel they need to do anything about it."
Perhaps Hollywood should learn from European cinema, which eyes its actresses differently. Jeanne Moreau and Sofia Loren, Victoria Abril and Catherine Deneuve, Vanessa Redgrave and Monica Vitti, were all given leading parts throughout their career - parts that never denied their sexiness or their intelligence despite the fact that they had taken time off and grown from jeune fille to mamans.
