Article by Sarah Walliss (she/her)
Fresh out of high school, director Lea Thurner (she/her) began teaching herself filmmaking. Since 2018, Lea has been living out her dream making films at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg, while gaining experience as a director’s assistant across Germany and Copenhagen. Tell Me What You Want is a film-based essay exploring the interplay of women, femininity and sexuality. It was nominated in the Documentary Film category of the 2024 First Steps Awards and was presented at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2024, the 58th Hof International Film Festival, the Norwich Film Festival, the Cucalorus Film Festival and more.
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“Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst – burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune.
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Cixous’s words convey the feeling of suppressing something beautiful and powerful – an experience many women feel growing up as we’re taught to contain our feelings, to act demure. The first time I talked about menstruation, I sat in a quiet corner, undisturbed by my classmates, with four other girls. We spoke in hushed voices. One of my friends told me about her sister getting her period. She said it was bloody and painful. I was strangely excited by the reality approaching me, but also scared. I had been taught to fear female body fluids. Excitement and connection with my school friends was overshadowed by shame.
While growing up, I didn’t talk often about my sexuality or “women’s issues”. If I spoke about it, it was in connection to a boy, as if it were embarrassing to express desire that didn’t involve a man. Looking back, I feel a sense of regret. There was so much joy and pleasure to be felt – ‘beautiful forms’ as Cixous called them – when in its place I had shame.
In her film, Tell Me What You Want, Lea Thurner captures this tension, which I and many other women feel. There is a sense of ‘wishing I had known earlier’ – wishing I had known about the intricacies and pressures that form the experience of being a woman.
Tell Me What You Want is an 11-minute short film that depicts a multiplicity of women’s experiences. Taking a journalistic approach, 30 women across Germany were interviewed for the film. The original interviews are heard as anonymous voice-overs, while the visual component consists of actors' performances and abstract sets and costume designs. The protagonists of Tell Me What You Want reflect on their experiences of womanhood, focusing on sex, intimacy, and femininity.
Femininity is a social ideology that defines behaviour and traits, particularly for women and those assigned female at birth. There is no objective set of attributes that characterise femininity because it is culturally defined, but they often include passivity, gentleness, and the presence of maternal instinct. But how a person encounters femininity is much more complex – and sometimes problematic. Tell Me What You Want explores femininity by examining the unique and shared experiences of women through interviews and filmic representation.
Director Lea Thurner first got the idea for her film Tell Me What You Want after reading an interview with a sex therapist about the pressures many women experience regarding their sexuality: the way they have sex, talk about sex and the way they express their sexuality. Lea details further, ‘I read that if women don't orgasm a certain way, they think there’s something wrong. I talked to my friend about it, and we had both heard many times before that a lot of women think: I have sex, but not that kind of sex’. Whatever that kind of sex entails, seems to elude many of us.
In a discussion group, when Lea initially pitched the idea for Tell Me What You Want, she was met with the response that this topic – femininity and women’s sexuality – has already been discussed and was told ‘we already know everything.’ Lea felt confused and disheartened; however, after the discussion, other participants, mostly women, reached out to Lea and said they hoped she would carry out her ideas for the film. This reignited her belief in the project.
This scenario reminds me of what bell hooks wrote in her book Communion (2002) about the women’s body positivity movement: ‘Since all these concerns, first raised by feminist thinkers, were appropriated by mainstream focus on gender, it is much too easy for everyone to forget that awareness of problems alone is not a solution. ‘Heightened awareness’ only gives the illusion that an issue is being solved, but this is often not the case. As bell hooks argues, ‘… we have to critique sexist thinking, militantly oppose it and simultaneously create new images, new ways of seeing ourselves’. (2002) Despite a growing number of conversations around femininity, a resurgence of criticism of women who express their sexuality shows that structural suppression of female self-expression still exists and we must continue to challenge it. By creating a film where women’s stories can be shown freely, Tell Me What You Want opposes this suppression and produces new ways for women ‘to see ourselves’.
Following the pitch, Lea arranged interviews to probe deeper into experiences that women have of relationships, sex, friendship, pleasure and pain. These interviews, which eventually evolved into the script of her film, served as a connecting and healing process for both Lea and the interviewees. As Lea discusses, ‘It wasn’t so easy in the beginning to put myself out there … but to jump into this topic and see all these layers on it, all the joy and feelings, I’ve learnt a lot … At the start, I was super nervous, but then every person I talked to was so open as if they were really relieved to talk about it’. Conducting these interviews allowed women to share their experiences freely, without fear of judgment. The film gives creative form to the interviewer-interviewee relationship and the viewer is thus immersed in this moment of connection.
While the shots in the film are colourful and bold, they are contrasted with the quiet normalcy of Brandenburg countryside. A fictional village connects the multiple stories of Tell Me What You Want. Lea elaborates on this, ‘We decided to shoot it in Brandenburg because I think sexuality and femininity are often seen to take place in cities. It was important for me to find and create an old, bare world, like a village.’ Dreamy and rough, the countryside setting depicts femininity as bold and impressive, but also as quiet and every day.
Starting in a field, we see a young girl wearing long red gum boots marching towards a figure made from branches. Her face is hard and determined. She removes her ballet dress and places it on the wooden figure, then ‘shoots’ it with a branch. The girl runs away, accompanied by the voice-over ‘I used to be paralysed by the possibility of shame. Not even shame itself. But by the possibility of shame.’ In a shot reminiscent of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the figure is set alight and burns as dusk falls on the empty field. The scene encapsulates a core theme of the film: reclaiming personal agency and embracing one’s femininity.
The film also addresses the reality of sexual violence experienced by women. In one moment, a woman recounts an experience from her youth, during a ski holiday, when a man entered her bed and sexually assaulted her. The voice-over accompanying the scene expresses the confusion and long-lasting effects: ‘I did not understand what actually happened for a long time’. For many women, an initial lack of understanding or recognition of sexual violence can lead to persistent feelings of guilt and shame. This shame and societal silence around such topics can prevent survivors from seeking support or acknowledging their experiences.
Tell Me What You Want demonstrates the need for healing through open conversations. Lea recalled that many of the women she interviewed expressed regret over not having had a fuller understanding of their own experiences. She shared, ‘I would say that most of the people that I talked to had had a very shitty experience sexually, and all of them said they wish they had known, because, if they had, it might have happened differently’. By sharing these stories, Tell Me What You Want aims to provide a platform for healing and to challenge the silences that perpetuate guilt.
In ‘Talking Sex: A Conversation on Sexuality and Feminism’, Deirdre English, Amber Hollibaugh and Gayle Rubin argue that following the so-called ‘sexual revolution’ in the late sixties and early seventies, many people, including feminists, seemed to accept the idea that sex itself is an act of violence. (The Socialist Review, 1981) Women were taught to fear sex. Tell Me What You Want rejects this model and undulates through stories of pain to joy, because, as Deirdre English (1981) argues, while women are oppressed by actual violence, we are also oppressed by the fear that we must contain our sexuality. Addressing this, the film shows the strength and empowerment that can come from sharing positive sexual experiences.
One example in the film is when we see a woman dancing in the field at night. Soft music plays, and her dance is sensual and introspective. She is surrounded by people but, as if unaware of what’s happening around her, she is looking inwards and enjoying the pleasure of the moment. The imagery embodies what is conveyed by the voice-over: ‘Being able to feel like you can actually be yourself and explore that side of yourself without anybody judging you is … fucking awesome’.
When there is silence around what is positive and empowering about sex, women’s space to explore their sexuality and desires is compressed. Tell Me What You Want breaks this silence. Lea explains that the viewer should sense the loudness, excitement, and pleasure that can come from sex: ‘We want it to be loud and explicit. Films about women are far too often quiet and subtle, and we want to break with that. But that doesn‘t mean that we lose the poetry and relation … A film that is like sex itself. Loudly intrusive, overwhelming and at the same time unexcited, sensitive and very normal.’
The narrative of the film expresses this loudness. In one scene, a woman recounts meeting someone at a club, thinking, ‘Oh my God, I want to have sex with this person.’ Two young people are shown flirting and kissing, the camera focusing on their faces and capturing the playful euphoria of their emotions. The music builds gradually from slow to vibrant, electronic beats, mirroring the growth of intensity and desire between the pair. In another scene, a woman recalls her first orgasm ‘as a woman’, saying ‘It was alone. That was great.’ In the shot, a woman bites into a bright pink watermelon and wipes the juices away from her mouth. In both scenes, the excitement and intensity of pleasure are vividly conveyed through a sophisticated combination of original audio and expressive visual representation.
The bright, ethereal imagery in the film contrasts with the raw authenticity of the stories, producing a startling juxtaposition between the real and the abstract. This contrast represents the ambiguities of what it means to experience womanhood. Lea writes that the film seeks to ‘find ambiguities, not in a clumsy, hackneyed way but by showing sex as something every day. Not only the act itself but also the thoughts about it.’ Lea further explains: ‘We find it very exciting to open up two levels: one for normality, which we all are: normal people with needs; and a second for our fantasies and our ideas, which only we know.’
According to Lea, Tell Me What You Want is about talking to each other. By showing the layers that women experience, it attempts to break down the barriers of shame that keep people from having open conversations. Lea shares: ‘I would really hope that people, even if it's just a small conversation, can talk about topics they probably thought they never would … I was sitting with my parents watching my film in Munich. I thought it would be awkward to watch with my parents, but afterwards, my mum said she didn’t feel awkward, that it was just interesting and beautiful … I think we often talk about sex in very small private groups, which is fine, but I want to show that you can be open about it to your partner or your friends, and if you want, even to your family. There’s nothing to be ashamed about.’
When I asked Lea what question she thinks the film explores, she responded, ‘I think it's said in the end’. Tell Me What You Want closes with a tranquil shot over the Brandenburg field. The sky is pink, purple and grey; the landscape a black silhouette. The voice-over carries the questions: ‘Are you afraid of someone finding out about it? Are you afraid of experiencing it? Are you afraid that you’re going to like it? Are you afraid that you’re not going to like it?’
Credits:
Written and interviewed by Sarah Walliss
Interviewee and film director: Lea Thurner
Film producer: Begüm Bakirci
DOP: Lisa Jilg
Film editor: Viola Pröttel
Images courtesy of Lea Thurner.