It Was Rape

Eight rape survivors share their experiences in Jennifer Baumgardner's sympathetic, non-exploitative documentary, which features no graphic imagery (although the women do describe disturbing situations in some detail). The first subject is Baumgardner's sister, Andrea, who remembers a high school party where a student forced himself on her when she was trying to take a nap after drinking too much. Andrea's morose feelings worsened after false rumors made the rounds, and no one offered her any support; as with other speakers, the aftermath almost proved as painful as the actual incident. Staceyann Chin talks about growing up in Jamaica as the product of rape: her father (who has denied paternity) raped her mother, but he was the one to raise her, and she had an unhappy childhood. Staceyann grew up to be an outspoken lesbian, but suffered a sexual assault in college, which encouraged her to move to New York and work through her issues via slam poetry. Annie W., a molestation survivor, contacted the police when she found out she wasn't alone in her situation, but once her father learned that the cops were after him, he fled the scene and killed himself. Other remembrances here deal with domestic abuse and date rape, which, in one case, led to a university policy change. As Karen Durbin's friend Ellen Willis once told her, "Any time a person has sex out of fear, it is rape." (Both women went on to become notable writers.) Baumgardner employs home movies to bring her subjects' youth to life, while subtitles provide biographical details and epilogues, but otherwise each speaker steers her own story. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)