[The movie "Look Both Ways" was written before Roe was overturned,
but director Wanuri Kahiu and star Lili Reinhart have said in
interviews that its pro-choice. Im not so sure. ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

NETFLIX’S ‘LOOK BOTH WAYS’ ISN’T THE FEMINIST MOVIE IT WANTED
TO BE  
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Rodlyn-mae Banting
August 17, 2022
Jezebel
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_ The movie "Look Both Ways" was written before Roe was overturned,
but director Wanuri Kahiu and star Lili Reinhart have said in
interviews that it's pro-choice. I'm not so sure. _

, Photo: Netflix

 

The trailer for Netflix’s _Look Both Ways,_ which debuts on the
platform on Wednesday_,_ positions the movie as timely commentary on
pregnant people’s bodily autonomy in our post-_Roe_
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The _Sliding Doors_ premise is simple: Natalie (Lili Reinhart)’s
life splits into two alternate realities after having a one-night
stand on the eve of her college graduation. In one reality, she gets
pregnant, moves back in with her parents in Texas, and becomes a mom.
In the other, she simply has a pregnancy scare, moves to Los Angeles
with her best friend Cara (Aisha Dee) to pursue a career in graphic
design, and eventually makes it big. Because the two trajectories are
wildly different, it would appear as if the choice of whether or not
to have a child would be a heavy one for Natalie’s character. But by
the end of her story, the film didn’t deliver on any sort of
thoughtful post-_Roe_ beat, and might have actually done its viewers
more harm than good.

For what it’s worth, the movie wasn’t intended to be a blazing
feminist film in the first place. According to Reinhart, the script
was written two years ago, and she was drawn to it for its
“heartwarming” feel—an appeal that also attracted director
Wanuri Kahiu to the project. But when _Roe_ was overturned in June
(long after the film had wrapped), Kahiu had other ideas for what it
could stand for. In an interview
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Cagle—in which Cagle called the film “very not political” and
“very non-judgmental”—Reinhart recounted the moment Kahiu texted
her, shortly after _Roe_ was overturned, and said, “I really want
to take this opportunity to use our movie as a support of being
pro-choice.” It seems, though, that the director has since changed
her mind about this political messaging, saying in an interview
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week that “though this film is not necessarily about choice, I love
that it tells any young woman that regardless of which way your life
goes, if you truly follow your heart, you’ll be good. You’re
making the right decision for yourself.” So...which one is it?
Is _Look Both Ways _just a simple feel good romcom or is it a
commentary on the importance of choice?

Over the course of the film, the concept of choice is a pretty murky
one. The two universes that Natalie’s life diverge into are not
hinged on her choice of whether or not to keep the pregnancy, but on
whether or not there is a pregnancy to take into consideration at
all—remember, in the second universe, Natalie is simply embryo-free,
and her pregnancy scare is just that. It’s a weird plot choice
altogether, and fails to meet the moment (even the moment of two years
ago, in which abortion rights were already widely under attack in the
U.S.).

In the universe where Natalie becomes pregnant, termination doesn’t
seem to even be on the table, despite how drastically she knows a
pregnancy will change the course of her life. In a conversation with
Gabe (Danny Ramirez), the potential father-to-be, he tells her that he
is “pro her choice” (woof), a line of dialogue that feels far too
on the nose (I was waiting for him to break the fourth wall and wink
at us). Her parents, who are initially livid about the news (to a
comical degree), take for granted that she is going to keep the child,
knowing full well that it’ll derail their plans (a trip to
Barcelona) and their daughter’s (building a career in her 20s). In
the end, Natalie decides that she’ll keep the baby, which she feels
she “has to do.” A pretty understandable product of centuries of
societal pressure.

Despite Kahiu’s insistence that “you’ll be good” as long as
you “follow your heart,” Natalie’s pregnant universe still seems
to fare much worse than her baby-less counterpart. After the birth of
her child, Rosie, Natalie experience a particularly dark shade of
postpartum depression—not only does she feel like she’s missing
out on her life, scrolling sadly through her friends’ posts on
Instagram, but she stops drawing (her passion) and feels like her life
has been reduced to motherhood. In a conversation with her mother,
she’s let in on an allegedly little-known secret: “You mourn, you
know, the person that you used to be. Because the fact is, no matter
how much you want to be a mom, you’ve never not going to be one
again.”

When she visits Cara, who actually _did_ move to L.A. to follow her
dreams, Natalie’s shares a view of her life that’s nothing short
of a bummer. When they’re out to dinner, Natalie says, “I really
cannot imagine what my life would have been like here,” adding that
it’s “overwhelming” and “not meant to be.” Meanwhile, just a
universe’s throw away, Natalie’s nascent L.A. life is going
swimmingly; she’s an assistant to her animation idol and has a
budding relationship with a coworker, Jake. Whether it’s intentional
or not, for most of the movie, its message is that women have to
choose between having children or a career. And if she chooses the
former, she’ll suffer a one-dimensional life and will eventually be
resigned to this sorry fate—apparently, in the year of our lord
2022, women really _can’t _have it all.

Though both version of Natalie’s life end up in relatively similar
places—Mom Natalie channels her love for her daughter into a comic
that is featured in a South by Southwest panel, and Career Natalie
writes an animated short that is screened at the same
festival—there’s a clear bias about Natalie’s life in LA being
the preferable one, and a handful of tired sexist tropes are
strengthened along the way. Of course, in true romcom fashion, Natalie
does end up with her respective men in both universes, reminding us
that in the end, what _really_ matters is that a woman is validated
by male attention. So we might just leave it at that: In this life and
in all other parallel ones, we’ll put _Look Both Ways_ next to our
other heartwarming Hallmark movies and look for our political pictures
elsewhere.

* Roe v. Wade
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* Feminism
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* patriarchy
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