Pantomime of Violence GENDER AND OUTRAGE IN MIRRAH FOULKES’ JUDY & PUNCH
JUDY & PUNCH IS BOTH OPENLY RIDICULOUS … AND A SERIOUS STUDY OF VIOLENCE – BE IT AS A SOCIALLY CONDONED WEAPON OF DOMESTIC OPPRESSION, A MORALLY RIGHTEOUS TOOL OF VENGEANCE OR A STORYTELLING TROPE, AND BE IT IN A MOTION PICTURE OR PUPPET SHOW.
When Judy & Punch premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, its creator – Sydney-based actor-turned-director Mirrah Foulkes – was nervous about how it would be received. She was a first-time filmmaker, few American audiences are familiar with the 400-year-old puppet show on which it is based and, even in the realm of film festivals, the resulting work was a genuine oddity. ‘I was nervous about it. It’s a weird film; its tone is unusual. It’s nutso!’ Foulkes laughs. Setting out to make Judy & Punch, the director harboured genuine ambitions for her debut: ‘I wanted to make a film that didn’t feel like any other film. I wanted it to feel unique and unusual and bold. And I wanted it to be fun.’
It’s to her great credit that Judy & Punch is all of those things. Her film is a strange, satirical, absurdist, magic-realist tragicomedy set in a suitably Grimm-fairytale village – Seaside, which is, in fact, nowhere near the sea – where superstition is rampant, violence is rife and women are, so often, the victims of both. It’s a ‘made-up origin story’ of Punch and Judy, the deathless tale of bickering spouses that traces its roots to marionettes used in sixteenth-century Italian theatre, and was first performed in England at the ‘It’s this weird puppet show that’s endured over centuries,’ Foulkes chimes, ‘that’s essentially about a man beating his wife up.’
