The feminine indistinction in Susanne Bier's cinema: The Brothers (2004), In a Better World (2010), Bird Box (2018)

Abstract

The chapter explores how the distinction between the inside and the outside and its different articulations (the local and the global, home and abroad, the present and the apocalyptic, the normal and the exceptional) are operationalized in a gendered fashion in Susanne Bier's films: The Brothers (2004), In a Better World (2010), and Bird Box (2018). The films subvert this distinction, giving important twists to the (im)possibilities of female subjectivity. While the 'outside' permeates the inside, society and nature, the present world and the apocalyptic, law and violence become indistinct categories. The chapter suggests that the apocalyptic paves the way to a messianic opening and the move from vision to touch marks the transition from the realm of the masculine symbolic order to the primal feminine ground zero. © The Author(s) 2020.