[Editorial] “How Do Girls Know How To Do That?” – Female Adaptation And Evolution In Spring Pt.2

*Content warning-this article contains discussion of sexual assault and real-life violent crime which some readers may wish to avoid. *

In the second part, the threat of male violence, evolution and monogamy set the stage for a further exploration of Spring as a romantic horror with an empowering female character at its heart. This final article shifts the focus to Louise, love as religion and the probable loneliness of immortality.

The hypocrisy in the treatment of women finds its place in horror and thriller perhaps more than other genres with just two examples I’ll reference in Lily’s Speech from Assassination Nation (link has spoilers) and Gone Girl’s book and film both have Amy Dunne’s Cool Girl speech (also spoilers here).

While Lily’s speech directs her rage primarily at the men holding up systems, Amy saves just as much of her anger for other women’s complicity. A sneering example of internalised misogyny, for the most part, Amy assumes that the appearances of the women she passes are a direct result of moulding themselves to the image of a man rather than their own interests. In addition, women moderating their behaviour, as already mentioned, is often a protective response, so it makes sense that this would also translate into aesthetics. Being the ‘right’ kind of woman as set out by the sphere you’re currently in can offer protection from ridicule or violence. Even within the text of Spring, there exists a largely unremarked upon aspect of Louise and Evan’s relationship that he is at least, in some part, likely to be in love with an aspect of her she inherited from a previous male partner. There are moments, especially early on, where Louise can be seen to fall into conventional romantic figure tropes and even at times, veers into being the impossibly beautiful, perfect and quirky model that can appear to tip into types like the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ or the ‘cool girl’. As a side note, Nadia Hilker’s performance feels effortless, no matter the demands placed on her and is truly the glue that binds everything together. The ‘cool girl’ takes on traits that are specific to their partner at the time, malleable and secondary to their whims and likes. Women are subject to a constant barrage of guidance on how to behave and how they may suffer if they don’t behave in that way. In this sense, Louise is the evolutionary ‘cool girl’ - a mass of observations, driven by both biology and social knowledge. That her transformation includes appendages from various other creatures, including tentacles adds a cosmic element and further connection to a past so far behind us that we struggle to comprehend it, but one that still influences.

The film explicitly references oxytocin as a driving force behind Louise’s condition. Indeed, oxytocin serves as a building block for romantic relationships (and plays a role in parent-child bonding too). Spring presents the hormone as the decider, rather than the traditional romantic ideal of being led by feelings – no matter how she feels, her chemistry decides for her, neatly bucking the trend of portraying women as more led by their feelings than their male counterparts. Louise is driven by science to gather understanding about herself. She is content in her immortality but is keen to romanticise her parent’s relationship. The gender flip is refreshing as many films allow the male to be the one harbouring the dark secret and seniority that means they end up with a doe-eyed female partner hanging on every word. Louise becomes a tour guide, not just of the immediate area but throughout the time she has lived. In terms of gender and sexuality, although Spring does concern a heterosexual relationship, these evolutionary elements apply just as much across the queer spectrum. While much attraction appears centred around the potential for children, there is evidence to suggest that our evolutionary adaptation means we apply the same kind of ‘would I have good children with this person’ regardless of if children are possible as a result of that pairing. While she resents the transformation process and does all she can to stop it, her end goal never appears to be ridding herself of immortality, just the need to maintain it. There is also a sense that if it were not for the need to be pregnant to continue the cycle, Louise would not seek a connection with anyone.

Spring does touch on religion in a sensitive way, although it clearly doesn’t subscribe to one, with Louise referencing multiple Gods. Evan and Louise admire the artwork it creates and the devotion it requires. Sara Pascoe’s Animal contains a line about popular culture’s treatment of love: ‘About how it’s worth dying for or fighting for and life is not worth living without it. That it is immortal, priceless, liberating, courageous, comforting and – Love is described like GOD’. While Spring’s tagline is ‘Love is a Monster’, love Is treated as God here too, with the hormones associated with it capable of undoing something as powerful as immortality. In her desperation to overcome her transformation, Louise, a scientist herself, turns to occult ritual to try and slow the process - perhaps a natural instinct where over 2000 years of trying to tackle it scientifically have not produced a long-lasting solution. Sacrificing the companion rabbits she keeps in her flat, it is presented as a moment of frustration and also of giving into a primordial hunger.

One of the film’s standout scenes involves the pair in a church, notably because of how animated and excitable Louise is while recounting her past lives (plus a killer comedy line at the scene’s close). As she details her pasts to Evan, the way she has had to adapt and learn in order to survive comes to the fore. As Louise does have something of the supernatural about her, this is obviously exaggerated but still contains that sense of being a woman and learning all the tips and tricks to keep ourselves safe, shared across generations. Within this section, she breezes past footnotes of discriminatory history (including the burning and torture of women and even the beginning of atrocities in the 1930s) and her ability to recognise the signs that she is in danger and move quickly from it. She is, on some level, showing off – that she has been able to navigate all this danger and remain intact, immortality or not, is an achievement that she is proud of. This marks a moment where she truly drops her guard, for the first time she doesn’t pick up on her transformation starting, after spending much of the runtime hyper focused on even the earliest signs. The dialogue concerning that sometimes science takes a while to catch up to the myth again brings in that sense of the cosmic as something with the potential to find rational explanation one day, given enough time.

Louise is a balance of almost whimsical femininity and colder rationality. She keeps her important transformation-blocking drugs that she has researched meticulously in a bottle marked with a smiley face. Her first appearance, shot in slow motion, presents her as so beautiful that everything else in the area seems to fade away, enhanced by the focus on that red dress. The skirt of the dress features fur-like material, the film’s earliest subtle hint that all is not as it seems. During their visit to a museum the camera holds on her reflected in the glass as she looks at the fertility imagery, later revealed to be looking at herself, or at least an ancient version of herself. Her admission that her accent makes her ‘sound weird as fuck’, is a further marker of her unique condition and again, one that makes sense for surviving in multiple times and places. When taking Evan’s food, she remarks that if it was the 1700s, he would consider her too skinny. Her internalising of acceptable beauty standards at different times allows her to successfully mimic a place in society that guarantees sexual interest and therefore, increases the chances of pregnancy and the continuation of her immortality. Louise’s own attempts to understand herself and others allow her to engineer herself for maximum safety and survival. Throughout the film, the beauty of nature is contrasted with danger – scorpions and dead birds are seen in the street and more explicitly, Evan watches as a snake crawls through the skull of a sheep. Death is taken as a part of life and the need for that cycle to continue to progress.

Crucially, we only see Louise through Evan’s eyes and only the history she chooses to detail to him. She admits that she doesn’t want to die or watch anyone else die, which explains her largely solitary existence, but in doing so, she doesn’t partake in the sharing of all her experience with anyone else. She cannot pass the lessons of her life onto friends or family members because the nature of her condition means while she will survive the threats or even outright violence, she is powerless to stop it happening to anyone else. While her body adapts rather more quickly and contains more built-in, sharp and damaging attachments, any female companions do not and so, like the outpouring of grief outlined in the opening paragraph she would potentially be forced to watch them fall victim to the same punishments across time without being able to relate. Her survival is based on enacting the same rituals every time so she cannot disrupt this by revealing what she is as she would almost certainly become a focus of intrusive attention or even experimentation. I realise this is a very grim conclusion to reach, but that Louise manages to be a likeable and empowering figure despite that aspect of her makes her more complex. That she has no one to share her lessons with adds to a sense of pathos that eternity would be punishing without the ability to connect with other humans. That she finds a companionship with Evan based on complete honesty and safety is perhaps more comforting than the romantic element.

Louise’s reveal of her condition and especially the circumstances result in angst and animosity between the pair. The scene is one of the film’s most kinetic ones, featuring the pair walking at pace as the true nature of her condition emerges. Taking what could be a drab, expositional scene in which the important details are revealed and turning it into a dynamic, swirling chase is yet another moment of beauty in the film, perfectly echoing Evan’s crisis as he struggles to comprehend it. The revelation seems to push him to want to leave, until a quick phone call home cements his decision. Seemingly realising he has very little else to head back home for, he returns to Louise for however long they have together. When Louise takes Evan’s head in her hands in a moment to comfort him earlier in the film, he asks ‘how do girls know how to do that’. By the film’s conclusion, that instinct appears to have transferred to Evan, allowing Louise’s head to rest in his lap, even with the awareness that she may transform and kill him, a confirmation that regardless of gender, we are all ‘undiscovered science, a bunch of confusing biochemistry and crazy hormones’, able to learn and adapt with one another. 

References

Jetha, C. and Ryan, C., 2012. Sex at Dawn. HarperCollins.

Pascoe, S., 2017. Animal. Faber & Faber.

Diogo, Rui. (2019). Sex at Dusk, Sex at Dawn, Selfish Genes: How Old-Dated Evolutionary Ideas Are Used to Defend Fallacious Misogynistic Views on Sex Evolution. 350-367.

Monsters, a., 2021. Monsters, Menstruation, and Cosmic Love in 'Spring' | Certified Forgotten. [online] Certified Forgotten. Available at: <https://certifiedforgotten.com/spring-movie/> 

BBC News. 2021. How many violent attacks and sexual assaults on women are there?. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-56365412> 

Nytimes.com. 2021. What do women want? (Published 2009). [online] Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/health/23iht-25desiret.19636765.html> 

RELATED ARTICLES

---

---

EXPLORE

---

MORE ARTICLES

---

---