It is exciting to know exactly how many cultures have struggled to control their women. It’s encouraging, in a way, to see how backwards the most forwards of countries seem. Take Switzerland; here’s a country that, in my youth, was the standard-setter for time measurement. Here’s a country that lies smack dab in the middle of Germany, Italy, and France and managed to avoid WWII. How do you do that? (Well, sure, terrain, but that’s not the only answer, is it?) Doesn’t it seem a little like if even Switzerland can have caveman moments in the modern age, maybe my own country isn’t so stupid after all. Maybe not.
The 1970s arrived and Switzerland still had yet to give women the vote. That seems amazing to me. Heck, Libya gave women the vote in 1964. More backwards than Libya … impressive. Nora (Marie Leuenberger) becomes the pulse of the Swiss women’s movement. She enters the decade in unassuming fashion – a modest housewife with a modest house, a modest number of small children (2), and a modest military husband, Hhans (Maximilian Simonischek), for all those scrapes Switzerland keeps getting into. Huh, what do Swiss army personnel do all day … practice defensive maneuvers armed with only a flip corkscrew or nail file? Cosplay for Pope duty? Learn the phrase “not our fight” in dozens of European languages?
Nora is kinda bored, but under Swiss law she can’t work unless Hans says it’s ok. Hans has decided this is where his foot is down. It’s hard to tell whether his “no wife of mine is gonna work no way no how” pronouncement is a function of true belief or simply an expression of dominance. Pronounce, however, he does and Nora ain’t pleased. Meanwhile, a friend of the fam gave approval to their daughter being jailed for sexual relations out of wedlock. Yeah, there’s a double standard on par with the pro-life movement.
Apparently, if you rile enough women up, they don’t just march on Washington. They … withhold. Uh oh. Looks like a serious Swiss Miss depletion. Well, heck, I’d probably be upset, too, if my daily cocoa were suddenly devoid of tiny marshmallows. Without much prompting or warning, The Divine Order took a sexual route. The suffrage movement in Switzerland paralleled a sexual awakening of sorts. We even get a scene of Nora and her buds attending an awareness class where they are encouraged to match the shape of their vaginas to the helpful chart. For the modern audience, just think of it as a Facebook “What Vagina Do You Have?” Quiz. “Oh! Oh! I got a tiger!” “I got a rabbit!” “I got Frodo Baggins!”
If I may be serious for a moment here – I hate that so often the tipping point in a local women’s movement comes down to sex. Heaven forfend you chauvinist douchebags grant voting rights
because, I dunno, it’s the right thing to do or (gasp!) because women are actually people just like you and me. Yeah, it’s always gotta be about, forgive the expression here, tit for tat. Oh well.
It is a shame that films like this one are still relevant. You want to sit back and laugh at the Neanderthals who have convinced themselves that only men know what they’re doing when it comes to anything important. It would be almost funny were it not so tragic. And then folks like me remember that this is the current prevailing attitude in the United States for all three branches of government. As for the movie, well, it was well-meaning but not well shot. I felt for Nora, but didn’t find much besides her POV to root for. Did the cinematographer and screenwriter deliberately conspire to make Switzerland dreary as if this were one giant “before suffrage” montage? Do we revisit the town in a sequel to see how it’s suddenly become Pepperland in the interim? Nora, your cause is just and the conclusion, however mismatched from the action, is obvious, and if that by itself did it for me, I’d be ecstatic.
Switzerland giving their women the squeeze
Out of politics wholly, if you so please
A thesis is so sound
Yields truth, profound
It holds water just like Swiss cheese
Not Rated, 96 Minutes
Director: Petra Biondina Volpe
Writer: Petra Biondina Volpe
Genre: Suff’rin’ suffrage
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Hillary voters
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Men so small their own shadows frighten them
