SHE SAID : Tuesday 22nd November 2022.

I saw the M Rated 'SHE SAID' earlier this week, and this American biographical drama film is Directed by Maria Schrader whose prior film making credits are 'Love Life' in 2007, 'Stefan Zweig : Farewell to Europe' in 2016 and 'I'm Your Man' in 2021, as well as helming the Netflix mini-series 'Unorthodox' which won the Director the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special in 2020. This film is based on the 2019 book of the same name by The New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey titled 'She Said : Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement'. The film saw its World Premier screening at the New York Film Festival on 13th October and was released in the US and here in Australia last week having garnered generally positive reviews. Costing US$32M to bring to the big screen, the film has so far grossed just US$3.6M.

The film opens up in 1992 with a young girl in her early twenties walking her dog along a secluded beach somewhere on the Irish coastline. She comes across a galleon anchored just off the coastline and a small vessel approaching the beach with two or three 18th Century looking sailors marching onto shore and depositing a chest. The young girl has stumbled across a film set, and before long she has a job wrangling extras on that same film set. We then cut to that same young girl running frantically down a street, sobbing and clutching at her torn clothing. 

Fast forward to 2017, and New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) receive a tip that actress Rose McGowan was sexually assaulted by Hollywood Producer Harvey Weinstein back in the early nineties. Kantor speaks with McGowan who initially declines to comment saying that she and The Times are hardly the best of friends, but later calls Kantor back and describes a situation in which Weinstein raped her when she was 23. Kantor also speaks with actresses Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow, who describe their own sexual encounters with Weinstein, but both ask not to be named in the article for fear of career limiting reprisals. Somewhat frustrated by a lack of progress in her investigations, the Editor of The Times, Rebecca Corbett (Patricia Clarkson) suggests to Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) who is just back from maternity leave, to either continue hounding Donald Trump, recently elected to POTUS or to assist Kantor with her investigations into Weinstein. Twohey agrees to help Kantor. 

Twohey traces a woman who worked as an assistant to Weinstein at Miramax some twenty years previously and then suddenly disappeared. The woman says that she waited twenty years for this moment but then tearfully declines to speak on the matter due to a signed Non-Disclosure Agreement between herself and Weinstein. Twohey later pulls up at the home of the former CFO of Miramax who invites her in. Standing in the hallway with his wife, she asks about former payouts by Weinstein against his accusers, but he is reluctant to divulge any information about the matter. She is also rejected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after enquiring about information surrounding these payouts. She then speaks to a former member of the District Attorney's office about why criminal complaints against Weinstein were dropped so quickly and she learns that Weinstein had deep rooted social connections with the DA's office.

Kantor receives an anonymous tip-off about three former Weinstein assistants who may have been abused - a Rowena Chiu (Angela Yeoh), Zelda Perkins (Samantha Morton) and Laura Madden (Jennifer Ehle). Kantor flies out to confront each of them individually. She is unable to meet with Chiu in Silicon Valley in San Francisco as she is out of the country for some weeks but speaks with her husband who is clueless about what Kantor is eluding to. Perkins in Wales, UK recounts an incident in which Chiu had a breakdown due to a sexual encounter with Weinstein while working at the London Office. Madden who is living in Newquay, Cornwall, England and is about to undergo a double mastectomy surgery initially declines to speak with Kantor, but changes her mind after a representative of Weinstein reaches out to her after a couple of decades to discourage her from speaking to reporters about her experience. We subsequently learn that it was Madden who was in the opening scene back in 1992 as the young impressionable 21 years old extras wrangler who was later seen fleeing down the street in tears. 

Weinstein learns of the investigation and sends one of his lawyers, Lanny Davis (Peter Friedman) in an attempt to appease the journalists, Corbett and the Executive Editor of The Times, Dean Baquet (Andre Braugher), but declines to go on the record and denies any and all wrongdoing. The lawyer acknowledges a number of past financial settlements (less than forty) but declines to say how many exactly. Kantor receives an anonymous tip to speak with Irwin Reiter (Zach Grenier), one of Weinstein's former accountants who says (without going on the record that the number is somewhere between eight and twelve). At a subsequent meeting in a restaurant over dinner he opens up his mobile phone and disappears to the bathroom saying for her to do with it what she will. On it, it shows her an internal memo that circulated at Miramax in 2015 detailing abuse allegations from a former employee, which Kantor photographs and sends to Twohey and Corbett. Reiter returns a few minutes later, picks up his phone and leaves. 

The Times advises the Board at Miramax of the soon to be released article and asks for a statement within two days, but Weinstein counters saying that he needs two weeks, but Baquet stands firm saying that he has two days. Weinstein denies the allegations and pressures the journalists to name their sources, with the Producer continually asking is they have spoken with Gwyneth Paltrow and if she is named within the article which Twohey repeatedly says no! He also threatens to talk to other publications, including Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to discredit the story. Weinstein eventually releases a statement acknowledging that he's caused pain to others in the past and that he is taking a leave of absence from Miramax. Kantor and Twohey attempt to convince their sources to go on the record but they all initially decline. Just before the publication of the article, Kantor receives phone calls from Judd and Madden who agree to be named, believing it is the right thing to do.

The New York Times publishes the article on 5th October 2017. In a pre-credits script following the article's publication, 82 women come forward with their own allegations against Weinstein, leading to workplace and legal reforms. Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence for rape and sexual assault in New York, with additional charges pending in Los Angeles and London. 

I have to say that I was left wanting more from 'She Said'. It lacks the necessary Oooomph! that we saw in 'Bombshell' or 'Spotlight' for instance and what we're left with is a fairly pedestrian procedural by the numbers account of what went down to bring Harvey Weinstein crashing down. It's all about e-mails, telephone calls, clandestine meetings and dogged investigative journalism that may have been the way it played out in real life, but there is hardly a thrilling moment in this film apart from a sequence when Twohey receives a call late one night from an anonymous caller saying that he is going to rape her, murder her and dump her body in the Hudson River, and when Kantor leaves the restaurant after meeting with Reiter and is followed for a few short steps by a menacing looking black SUV that quickly speeds off when she turns around. The performances of Mulligan and Kazan especially are top notch aided admirably by Clarkson and Braugher who all keep the story grounded in a journalistic, personal and emotional journey that never lets a story get in the way of the unflinching truth. Sure it's an important subject that needed to be told, and much good has come from it that is still fresh in the mind of the collective audience, but perhaps this film is two or three years premature as the Weinstein case is still unfolding, and we have yet to see the full ramifications of his actions against countless women he has wronged.

'She Said' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-