Cinema is done silencing female rage—now it’s putting it front and centre

For the longest time, female rage in cinema was either mocked, vilified, or simply erased. Women weren’t allowed to be angry—at least, not in the way men were. When a man lost his temper, he was seen as passionate, ambitious, even brilliant (shoutout to every tortured male genius in film history). But when a woman did the same? She was often hysterical, crazy, simply too much.

For decades, Hollywood has loved turning women’s rage into something to be feared. Fatal Attraction gave us heartbreak turned into obsession, while Gone Girl handed us Amy Dunne—the ultimate “crazy wife” plotting a masterclass in revenge. These women weren’t just mad; they were branded as dangerous. The message? A woman scorned isn’t to be understood—she’s to be feared.

But let’s be real: Amy Dunne’s rage didn’t just appear out of thin air. Neither did Alex Forrest’s. Their fury was born from betrayal, being discarded, and used up the second they no longer fit a man’s narrative. Still, for years, pop culture forced us to see them as villains instead of women cornered into chaos.

But times are changing. Female rage is finally being shown for what it really is—messy, layered, and painfully human. No more caricatures. No more cautionary tales. Just women, in all their complex fury.

From villain to victim

 

Fast forward to today, and cinema isn’t just tolerating female anger anymore—it’s amplifying it. And honestly, it’s about time. Take Mrs., one of Bollywood’s most talked-about films this year. Starring Sanya Malhotra, this Hindi adaptation of The Great Indian Kitchen taps into a deeply familiar frustration: the exhaustion of being expected to cook, clean, serve, and sacrifice, while a husband simply exists. The moment Richa, the protagonist, pushes back against this ingrained domestic servitude, she’s the one branded “difficult.” Sound familiar? It should.

Then there’s Bulbbul, a Bollywood film starring Tripti Dimri, that channels female rage into something both haunting and powerful. It takes a woman who has been abused, dismissed, and abandoned—and instead of letting her story end in silence, it transforms her into an avenging force, a literal manifestation of justice. Even the 2022 film Darlings flips the script on the usual domestic violence narrative, giving its protagonist (Alia Bhatt) the space to reclaim her power rather than just survive.

Hollywood isn’t far behind. Little Women (2019) gave us Saoirse Ronan as Jo March whose frustration with societal expectations felt more raw and real than any of the previous adaptations. Her anger wasn’t just implied—it was loud, messy, and impossible to ignore. In No Hard Feelings, female frustration is filtered through sharp comedy, taking aim at everything from economic instability to the absurd expectations placed on modern women. And then there’s The Substance, a body-horror film that takes the pressure to remain eternally youthful and twists it into something grotesque—because, let’s be real, that pressure is grotesque.

Lead image: IMDb

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