Not a Pretty Picture review – Martha Coolidge’s recreation of her rape remains shockingly powerful
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- Martha Coolidge's 1976 docudrama "Not a Pretty Picture" dramatizes the moments leading up to and following her own rape as a teen co-ed by a fellow student roughly a decade earlier
- The film employs radical Brechtian fly-on-the-wall sequences showing Coolidge rehearsing and improvising with actors, making the filmmaking process itself central to the work
- Lead actress Michele Manenti, playing "Martha," was herself a survivor of date rape; her dorm-mate Anne was played by Coolidge's real-life dorm-mate Anne Mundstuk
- Jim Carrington, who plays the rapist "Curly" and later gained prominence in 80s teen movies and as a screenwriter, intensified the scene's horror by sympathizing with his character's perspective on camera, then confessing he felt such rage at his victim he wanted to punch her in the face
- The film's aftermath sequences depict bullying from malicious girls in a neighbouring dorm and insidious condescension from a dean when rumours spread
- "Not a Pretty Picture" streams on Mubi from 1 July, with the reviewer questioning whether such unselfconscious daring could be made today
Why it matters: The film's most disturbing element isn't the rape scene but actor Jim Carrington's on-camera sympathy for his rapist character and his admission of rage toward his victim — an unscripted truth the reviewer argues would be hard to capture today, making the docudrama both a historical document of the 1970s and a benchmark for how survivors' stories get told on screen.
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