The Sense of Discomfort in “Una”

(image via Variety)

            There is no question that most moviegoers watch movies to be entertained. Film has always been a medium of entertainment, and even critics are not immune to the pleasures of a day of escapism at the cinema; even the prestigious Sight and Sound lists, mainly comprised of challenging arthouse classics such as Au Hasard Balthazar and The Passion of Joan of Arc, makes room for such audience-pleasing works as Singin' in the Rain and Some Like It Hot. However, despite their challenging nature, Balthazar and Passion can also be considered pleasurable in their own ways, offering deeper insights into society and human nature through the tragedies they present. But what happens when both "entertaining" and "pleasurable" are replaced by “uncomfortable”? Can the quality of a film be diminished by the discomfort it evokes in the viewer? These are important questions in assessing the critical response to Una, a film that explores topics which have made many viewers uneasy. The resulting response to it has been notably divisive, indicating the difficulty in approaching a film where viewer discomfort is intrinsically woven into the narrative.

             American cinema is certainly no stranger to controversy and taboo subject matter, but Una is different from most films that have come before it. It is a topical film, addressing the issue of sexual abuse of minors that is seeing increased attention in mainstream media, but it complicates the already difficult subject matter by introducing something that far fewer people are willing to address: the affection that some victims develop for their abusers. Significantly, the film offers viewers no time to adapt to this unsettling subject matter: it opens with a graphic sexual encounter in which the viewer immediately becomes aware of Una's detached emotional response, and then transitions straight into Una’s road trip to visit a man named Ray, whom the viewer will soon learn is her former abuser. While this information is not yet known, Una's detour to vomit in some bushes before the meeting offers an obvious signal that something is wrong; indeed, the meeting will devolve into one long confrontation between Una and Ray, one that is increasingly protracted and exhausting as it is revealed that there are no easy answers to the questions being raised by the two central characters. As becomes clear as the film goes on, it is too easy to label Ray as “abuser” and Una as “victim”: these were their roles in the past, but by choosing to see Ray again, Una upsets this balance and creates an opportunity for these roles to be renegotiated. This is what the viewer expects to happen--primed by a cinematic precedent of rape revenge narratives--however, the film repeatedly challenges or outright subverts these expectations. A heated moment sees Una digging through her purse as she screams that her father wanted to kill Ray, to which Ray responds by frantically grabbing the bag from her and dumping it out on the table. “Did you think I came here to kill you?” she asks incredulously, and the question is not only addressed to Ray, but also to the audience, confirming that this is not that kind of story.

            Much of the film is shot in the break-room of the warehouse where Ray works, with its soundproofed, glass walls increasing the sense of claustrophobia rather than easing it. Passerby cannot hear what is being said, and thereby cannot actually understand what is going on, but they can certainly make judgments about what they see. While the film viewer is given the benefit of hearing the characters' dialogue, the visual of the small, transparent room enclosing the characters offers a sharp commentary on the function of the theater or TV screen in distancing the viewer from the characters, and questions the ability of the viewer to accurately read the characters at such a distance.

            At the beginning of the film, Una is hostile to Ray, but as time goes by, her tone softens. It becomes increasingly clear that she does not know what she hopes to accomplish, or how to accomplish it if she did know. She painfully recalls memories of being a social outcast, her community in some way blaming her for her abuse. It seems that Una was not the right kind of victim: she really believed that she was in love with Ray, and the public took her innocence and twisted it into a sign of deviancy. The film plays with these perceptions, foisting them upon the viewer as Una offers herself up to Ray, and they begin to have sex. The viewer is disgusted, repelled by the personal discomfort summoned by this image. One simplistic reading is that Una is emotionally regressing, choosing to re-enter the cycle of abuse she was forcibly removed from when the authorities originally separated her from Ray. However, Una clearly understands the severity of Ray’s abuse, so her motivations require a more complex interpretation. Further complicating matters is the fact that Ray, rather than Una, ultimately ends the encounter. The answer to Una's confusing motivations can be found in the other sex scenes of the film, particularly in the opening scene in which she fails to express any emotion. Even when reminiscing on her affair with Ray, she speaks of it as though from a great distance; she remembers the pleasure Ray got from the consummation of their relationship, but cannot recall if she enjoyed it herself. She asks him if he remembers if she did. As a result of her abuse, sex means very little to Una, and consequently, her attempt to have sex with Ray undoubtedly has different connotations in her mind than in that of the viewer. It is merely another effort, in a series of many, to resolve the trauma she still carries with her from the combined blow of being abused and being violently separated from the abuser she had come to “love”.

            At the end of the film, Una faces a great moral conundrum, one that is also presented to the audience as they share Una's confusion in pinning down Ray's true nature. He is determined that he is not a pedophile, arguing that he cannot be one because he was only ever attracted to Una. The viewer is forced to consider the ethical dilemma inherent in this argument: is Ray really a better person because he had only one victim, rather than several? Is Una's singular trauma preferable to the group trauma of a serial pedophile's victims--a utilitarian view in which the pain of one is preferable to the pain of many? This dilemma reaches its climax at the end of the film, when Una discovers that Ray has a stepdaughter. He pleads with Una, promising that he would never hurt his stepdaughter because he was only ever attracted to Una. She walks into the night, straight into the camera’s lens, and the film’s final shot sees her 13-year old self staring, again straight into the lens, and straight at the viewer: “What would you do?” her gaze asks. Can you believe Ray? After witnessing the whole conversation, the viewer is complicit in Una's future and off-screen decision, and is invariably left with the same heavy, discomforted heart as Una. The film succeeds in placing its viewer into the shoes of a trauma victim, and apparently fails exactly because that is the last place its viewers want to be: they do not want to be Una, preferring to see her enclosed within that transparent room that allows the viewer to judge her, maybe empathize with her, but ultimately to see her as a fictional character to be analyzed, not ever to simply be.