FemmeFilmFest21 Review: Blow the Man Down (Bridget Savage Cole, Danielle Krudy)

There are two types of women in Easter Cove, the small fishing town where Blow the Man Down takes place: the good, honest women who marry fisherman and hide the unsavoury parts of themselves, and the women who don’t. Blow the Man Down, from filmmakers Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, centres around women put in impossible situations in a place they don’t quite belong.

The main narrative follows the Connolly sisters, Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor), after Mary Beth murders a man who tries to assault her. In the aftermath of covering their tracks, they get caught up in the secondary storyline. That of Enid (Margo Martindale) feuding with a committee of older women who want to shut her brothel down.

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There are relatively few men in Blow the Man Down, but the women still work mostly in the shadows and keep their conflict between themselves. When Officer Brennan (Will Brittain), the most prominent male character and the only one who thinks to look twice, digs in, he’s met with a stone wall. These are situations are best handled by experts, without outward interference.

Blow the Man Down begins with the funeral of Mary Beth and Priscilla’s mother Mary Margaret, and it’s her absence that initiates the plot and conflict, but the clues we get about who Mary Margaret was are conflicting. At the funeral, stories are told of Mary Margaret turning up in the nick of time in order to help her friends, someone selfless and strong. Even as it’s clear her daughters have come to resent a matriarch that left them with a profitless shop and a draughty house.

Later, Enid will look at the same pair of boots that Mary Margaret waded through floods in, and tell her daughters that she used them to smuggle alcohol out of the house. The more Mary Beth and Priscilla learn about their mother, the more unknowable she becomes to them, if they ever really knew her at all.

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Women in particular, are taught to hide the parts of themselves that are ugly or distasteful but Blow the Man Down is much more interested in the hidden parts of their characters then what they choose to present. The thesis of the film is outright stated by Enid: ‘A lot of people underestimate women, it’s why they can get away with a lot’. But it’s clear at least some of the women in Blow the Man Down are deliberately hiding the unpleasant parts of themselves.

Mary Margaret didn’t want people talking about how she co-ran a brothel or snuck alcohol from her parents at her funeral. Mary Margaret deliberately hid those parts herself, so her legacy after death is that she was a good mother, and a good neighbour, even though that’s not all she was. Despite the prickliness between them, Mary Beth and Priscilla’s relationship is the heart of the film. Mary Beth and Priscilla embody the two different types of woman you can be in Easter Cove, one who shows everything outward, and another who hides her unpleasantness within.

Mary Beth happily takes on the role as the uncouth sister, with foul language and shoddily dyed hair. But this all means she wears her heart on her sleeve – proud of the parts of her that don’t fit in. But in the aftermath of the murder, she’s the one who can’t keep it together while controlled, composed Priscilla takes charge.

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Priscilla presents herself as unassuming and demure, but she’s the one with a plan for cleaning up the blood and the body. Priscilla isn’t emotionless, she struggles with the ethics and the practicality of getting away with murder, but in the end she’s the sister who handles Enid, Mary Beth and Officer Brennan.

A sweet through-line is how Officer Brennan gets flustered around the reserved Priscilla as he’s harboured a secret crush on her since school. This isn’t a love story though, not by a long shot, and when Priscila’s uglier, more manipulative characteristics come into play to save her and her sister, Brennan decides he doesn’t like her anymore.

Brennan wants Priscilla to be the perfect girl she pretended to be, but he also wants her to follow the moral compass that he does, a luxury Priscilla doesn’t have. Similarly, Enid, in a stunning performance by Margo Martindale, isn’t given the choice of only presenting her acceptable qualities. The older council of women have an open disdain for the women who work for Enid, and although Blow the Man Down seems to sympathise with the sex workers, it often fails to define the women beyond their occupation.

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Enid is terrifying and sympathetic, conniving and warm. In a town defined by men, she refuses to bend to them and instead manipulates them for her own profit. But Enid’s refusal to hide any part of herself and her disdain for those who do means she’s shunned by the other women in the town. It’s a specific, feminine ostracization, one that’s is evident to everyone involved, even if outwardly nothing seems wrong.

Enid doesn’t attend Mary Margaret’s funeral, despite the fact that they were clearly close, and has no-one to rely on apart from herself – eventually, she’s betrayed by the very women she tried so hard to protect. Blow the Man Down is not a film celebrating the sisterhood or female solidarity, but women trying to survive, no matter the cost.