Before launching her long career as a director of mainstream comedies and dramas for both film and television with the 1983 teen romance Valley Girl, Martha Coolidge mixed documentary and fiction techniques for her feature debut Not a Pretty Picture, a cinematic meditation on Coolidge’s experience as a victim of sexual assault. (Long available only on the fringes of the marketplace, the film received a posh Criterion release in 2024.) This is bracing work with enduring relevance—one of the movie’s first conversations involves women saying “me too” while sharing their stories. In some ways, Not a Pretty Picture provides even more fulsome discourse on sexual assault than is present in today’s comparatively enlightened climate, simply because the actor tasked with portraying the rapist offers a perspective on male sexual impulses that would get a man cancelled today. His honesty reflects the ethos of the project.
Not a Pretty Picture is divided almost equally between dramatic re-creations of Coolidge’s high-school years and behind-the-scenes footage of Coolidge rehearsing her actors. The most ingenious aspect of the film’s structure is that the actual assault is never shown. Additionally, the moments immediately preceding and following the assault are presented only as rehearsal footage, rather than staged scenes. Coolidge has said she wanted the ability to interrupt the assault sequence so she could rap with her actors about their feelings. Michele Manenti, who plays 16-year-old Martha, was also raped in high school, so her ability to compartmentalize her emotions while acting is extraordinary. Meanwhile, Jim Carrington, who plays the rapist but was in real life a longtime friend of Manenti’s, talks about how the male adolescent’s drive for conquest (combined with the pervasive fallacy that all women secretly desire forceful sex) renders the male adolescent blind to moral implications when things get heated.
Not a Pretty Picture doesn’t achieve everything it attempts. The staged scenes are credible but stilted, and the inexperience of the performers is apparent when they read scripted dialogue (less so when they improvise). Coolidge appears onscreen throughout the rehearsal scenes, so it’s both distracting and fascinating to guess at her thought process while events unfold—she mostly lets the film speak for her, though powerful exchanges about agency and guilt happen between Coolidge and Manenti. The movie also doesn’t have much of an ending—hardly a design flaw, since Not a Pretty Picture was engineered to spark conversations, but the lack of resolution is awkward. Viewed critically, the movie comes across as a rough draft for some more polished effort that never materialized. Viewed empathetically, it’s a deeply personal statement in which a filmmaker uses her chosen medium to explore a traumatic experience.
Not a Pretty Picture is divided almost equally between dramatic re-creations of Coolidge’s high-school years and behind-the-scenes footage of Coolidge rehearsing her actors. The most ingenious aspect of the film’s structure is that the actual assault is never shown. Additionally, the moments immediately preceding and following the assault are presented only as rehearsal footage, rather than staged scenes. Coolidge has said she wanted the ability to interrupt the assault sequence so she could rap with her actors about their feelings. Michele Manenti, who plays 16-year-old Martha, was also raped in high school, so her ability to compartmentalize her emotions while acting is extraordinary. Meanwhile, Jim Carrington, who plays the rapist but was in real life a longtime friend of Manenti’s, talks about how the male adolescent’s drive for conquest (combined with the pervasive fallacy that all women secretly desire forceful sex) renders the male adolescent blind to moral implications when things get heated.
Not a Pretty Picture doesn’t achieve everything it attempts. The staged scenes are credible but stilted, and the inexperience of the performers is apparent when they read scripted dialogue (less so when they improvise). Coolidge appears onscreen throughout the rehearsal scenes, so it’s both distracting and fascinating to guess at her thought process while events unfold—she mostly lets the film speak for her, though powerful exchanges about agency and guilt happen between Coolidge and Manenti. The movie also doesn’t have much of an ending—hardly a design flaw, since Not a Pretty Picture was engineered to spark conversations, but the lack of resolution is awkward. Viewed critically, the movie comes across as a rough draft for some more polished effort that never materialized. Viewed empathetically, it’s a deeply personal statement in which a filmmaker uses her chosen medium to explore a traumatic experience.
