Rent Oleanna (1994)

Gender Bias - Oleanna review by Steve

This is a photographed stage play adapted by writer-director David Mamet from his own controversial off Broadway production. It's a provocation which probes the inflammatory divisions of what is now called gender politics. Naturally, we bring our own opinions to the controversy and are expected to take a side.

William H. Macy is the self-absorbed, middle aged university professor who patronises a female student at length about her personal problems, his new house purchase and the principles of education. Debra Eisenstadt plays the weaselly/flunking undergraduate who fights back against this patriarchal persecution...

The academic unravels when her protest/entrapment leads to his suspension. Which may already push buttons. And then it goes further... It's a two hander set in an office. The performances are necessarily abrasive. It's not an easy watch as Mamet turns the screw on ultra-sensitive themes like gender, class, sexuality...

And he puts the audience through the emotional wringer. Yet afterwards, there is an impression this is black comedy and the situations absurd... and it begins to seem schematic... It's more a wordy dramatisation of ideas lifted from a sociology journal than pure entertainment. But on those terms, this is dynamite!