While watching "Ferrari," a scene from the 1987 comedy/adventure classic, "The Princess Bride," kept popping into my mind like an intrusive thought. In that scene, a young boy (Fred Savage) is being read a book by his grandfather (Peter Falk). When the boy asks if the book has any sports in it, his grandfather says, "Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes," and then proceeds to read what the boy rightfully concludes is "a kissing book."
In biopics like this one ... [the women] also shoulder the unfortunate burden of being symbols for what the film is about.
Much like this kid was duped into a tale that's very much 50% action and 50%romance, director Michael Mann's winter blockbuster, based on the 1991 biography "Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine," does a bait and switch, promising an epic telling of the ill-fated 1957 Mille Miglia race — which ended in the death of two drivers and ten spectators, many of whom were children — and delivering what is, in actuality, 30% car stuff and 70% what could be called romance, but that descriptor doesn't quite fit here. Unlike Buttercup (Robin Wright) in "The Princess Bride," a woman whose love is shown as the hard-won prize at the conclusion of the male hero's (Cary Elwes) adventurous and often dangerous trials and tribulations, the love of the two women in "Ferrari" – Penélope Cruz as Laura Ferrari and Shailene Woodley as Enzo's mistress Lina Lardi – is framed as a distraction at best and a career-ending obstacle at worst, just like in most other man-centered biopics where we're prodded to presume that the man whose story is being told was just too much of a genius, too all-caps important to ever have his full needs met by just one woman.
Less than halfway through my first watch of "Ferrari" (and my second watch didn't make me feel any different) my "wait, this is a kissing movie" alarm went off. Which led me to question why a movie that would have been better suited by focusing on what people are actually buying tickets to see — Adam Driver in close proximity to vroom vrooms and beep beeps — rammed in such a thick "love story" thread. But then it quickly dawned on me. What better way to portray women as being completely nuts than to roll out descriptive examples of the many ways in which their mere presence was an inconvenience to a man – just by making the foolish mistake of loving him and hoping for a love of equal value to be returned?
Shailene Woodley as Lina Lardi_in "Ferrari" (Photo credit Lorenzo Sisti/Neon)
In biopics like this one, as well as others of similar caliber — "Oppenheimer," "The Wolf of Wall Street," the list goes on and on — the women are too often tasked with an additional role outside of love interest. They also shoulder the unfortunate burden of being symbols for what the film is about — bombs, threatening to explode a man's entire life; currency, to be stacked and exchanged for something else; and cars, shiny, curvy and often hard to maneuver. Something that can either bring a man fame, or crash and send him into ruin. In "Ferrari," Enzo has two of these metaphorical cars. One he keeps in the garage (his mistress), and one that he drives hard and fast until the wheels come off and it's no longer of use to him (his wife.)
How would we ever know that a man was destined for something great if he didn't cheat on his wife and treat his mistresses like toys?
In one scene early in the film, Enzo is shown in front of the grave of his first son, Alfredo Ferrari, who died at 24 due to complications from muscular dystrophy, and he speaks to him saying, “There was once I time I loved your mother. Beyond reason. But she was a different creature then.” This sets the tone for what we're shown of his wife Laura, a woman who we're first introduced to as a haggard, tossed-aside ghost in her own home. Lurking about seeking evidence as to where her husband spent the night, as his bed is still the same as it was the day before. When the phone rings and someone asks for him, she lies and says he’s in the shower. When he finally gets home, she reminds him of their agreement – that she doesn’t care who he screws, or how many, so long as he’s home by the time the maid comes in to deliver his morning coffee. Our intended first impression of the woman who helped build the Ferrari company is that of a harpy. A nag. And not someone grieving the loss of her son, with no one by her side.
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"Maestro," the newly released biopic that tells the story of composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre, starring Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan, is an example of an effective opposition to this trend. In this one, Bernstein's wife is depicted as a whole woman, all her own, whose love and support benefitted and enriched her husband through all aspects of his career. Mulligan, who plays such a wife, even gets to be on the poster for the film. Imagine that?? On the flip side, although Cruz and Woodley have almost as much screen time as Driver does in "Ferrari," and join him for the vast majority of media events surrounding the film, they are absent from the poster, which shows only Driver as Enzo, lurking moodily in front of one of his cars: his true love above all else. Maybe we're to assume that they're in the trunk? Next to the spare tire and greasy bag of factory line tools?
For whatever reason, in biopics like "Ferrari," a man's ambitious nature is shown to us via scenes in which he's passionately and unapologetically treating women like trash. I mean, how would we ever know that a man was destined for something great if he didn't cheat on his wife and treat his mistresses like toys? Putting them up on the shelf when he's done, to wait patiently for him to return and dust them off. If Enzo Ferrari was so great that he deserved a pass for acting this way, we aren't shown it. The movie trips over itself so much in focusing on his mistreatment of women that it fails to deliver on the part where we're supposed to see what led him to behave that way, racing the line of cars that the son he had with his mistress, Piero Lardi Ferrari, is currently the vice chairman of, gaining the Ferrari name after Enzo's wife Laura died, and ownership of the company after Enzo died.
In Deadline's review of the film, written after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the critic touches upon "a moment in which Cruz gets, finally, to do some acting, having played a crazy, sour-faced b***h for two hours." Meaning this to be complimentary in his reference of the scene in question, in which Cruz as Laura Ferrari cashes a post-dated check for $500,000, her payment for handing over her share of the company so that her husband can regain full control while organizing a business deal with Henry Ford. But it's an interesting choice of words when describing a woman who helped make Ferrari what it is and only ever lived to regret it. Her cashing of that check early, going against her husband's request to wait until the Mille Miglia race was won and/or the deal with Ford went through was not only a blow to the company, but to her husband's ego. But it's clear why she did it. This much we do get to see.
Having lost her husband's love and no longer the recipient of his affections of convenience, she had one big shot to hit him where it hurt, so she did. That's not being a sour-faced b***h, that's learning by example. Just like the review mentioned above is an example of the damage that biopics like this can do.
"Ferrari" is a movie that tells the story of three real lives lived: A man, his wife and his mistress. What we'll remember from it, years down the line, is what we're supposed to, that an important man made cars that are still driven to this day, and that the women in his life got in the way of that. But that's not the real story. The real story is that these women were just as much a part of making Ferrari a thing as the man whose name is on the logo. Were they to be given biopics of their own, I'm sure that would be made clearer. But, as time has shown, that seems unlikely.
"Ferrari" is currently in theaters. "Maestro" is streaming on Netflix.
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