We want sex

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Movie
German title We want sex
Original title Made in Dagenham
Country of production GB
original language English
Publishing year 2010
length 113 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 6
Rod
Director Nigel Cole
script William Ivory
production Stephen Wooley, Elizabeth Karlsen
music David Arnold
camera John de Borman
cut Michael Parker
occupation

We Want Sex (Original title: Made in Dagenham ) is a British film directed by Nigel Cole from 2010.

action

The seamstress Rita O'Grady leads a normal, unspectacular life. She is a wife and mother and works at the Ford factories in Dagenham . But then she unexpectedly heads the 187-strong seamstresses department who make the covers for the car seats and has to represent the women to union leaders and company bosses, even though she has no political experience. On the one hand shy and insecure, on the other hand equipped with common sense and a pronounced sense of justice, she demonstrates undreamt-of abilities and talents, reinvents herself and yet stays with both feet on the ground, preserving her unpretentious naturalness.

Rita's path from the inconspicuous worker to the figurehead of industrial action and the emancipation movement is at the center of the ensemble's story. Like all Cole films, We Want Sex doesn't fit into any genre, but rather offers a mixture of light and heavy, light and dark, serious and weird. It's about the dynamic in the women's team - which includes Rita, maternal Connie, frivolous Brenda and cute Sandra - about competition, solidarity and the cheeky slogans that are launched every minute and whose goal is often the union chairman Albert is. It's about improbable alliances when Rita and Lisa, the wife of Ford boss Peter Hopkins, surprisingly pull together, and on the edge also about the relationship between the sexes: If the country gets new women, it needs new men.

Rita's husband Eddie, for example, goes to great lengths to support his striking wife. But the longer the argument lasts, the more it sucks on his nerves, especially since he can no longer work because you can't deliver cars without seats. Concretely and casually at the same time, Cole illustrates here how something changes in society, how the balance of power shifts and a new balance is created - a process that is also reflected at the highest level: Barbara Castle , the "fiery red" in Harold Wilson's cabinet , has to assert itself permanently against narrow-minded and chauvinistic representatives of male glory by means of its proverbial resoluteness.

background

The film is largely based on facts and depicts the attitude towards life in Dagenham, that London suburb that was shaped by Ford like Wolfsburg was shaped by the VW Group : a city where everything revolves around car production and where everyone is somehow connected to the factory stands. It is the era of the swinging sixties with flashy fashion, happy pop music and growing liberality. But the old times can still be felt, for example the traumatic aftermath of World War II or the remnants of early capitalism that Rita and her colleagues suffered from. They work under lousy conditions and for even worse pay than their male colleagues. The swinging sixties have definitely not yet arrived at this workplace. In the end, the strike not only improved working conditions in the factory, it also improved the position of women across the country. "It got to the point when Barbara Castle, the most important politician of the time, became involved," explains director Nigel Cole. “It brought about an agreement with women and from that came the Equal Pay Act of 1970. So these very ordinary women, who had never been politically active before, suddenly found themselves in parliament, negotiated with a leading politician and set a revolution women's rights in motion. "'

Cole integrates historical material at some points in order to capture the color of the time: for example in the title sequence, in which a split- screen montage combines documentary and advertising films in a cheerful, ironic mood, and also later, when everyday production in the factory or pictures from The women's labor dispute will be presented in a mixture of old and new footage .

The title We want Sex , which is used in German-speaking countries, results from a scene in the film in which the demonstrating women do not fully spread a banner with the inscription “We want sex equality!” And only the part “We want sex “('We want sex') can be seen, which amuses passers-by and pupils passing by and is also observed by the minister with a grin.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for We Want Sex . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2011 (PDF; test number: 125 559 V).
  2. ↑ Age rating for We Want Sex . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b We Want Sex . trailerseite.de; Cinema movie trailer
  4. ^ Equal Pay Act in the English language Wikipedia