Wives of the Skies

The style of the piece is impeccable, and a large part of its charm. Costumes and sets are spot-on. The uniforms Fran and Marcy wear are form-fitting mini-dresses, designed to accentuate their curves. They are both stunning and seemingly naive about the effect they have on Derrick. They might be nubile, sky-clad, nymphs in the forest encountering mouth-breathing oversexed men for the first time… but we know they can’t be, given they have been working in a career rife with sexual harassment.

Lauren paints Derrick in the same jaunty tone as Ewan McGregor’s character, Catcher Block in Down With Love, another film set in the ’60s that took a hard, but fun, look at power in relationships. Both characters are devilishly charming and rakish.

“…a hard, but fun, look at power in relationships.”

Fifty years on, we have a bizarre contradiction that Lauren shines a light on: we see and call out the uncomfortable sexism of the “male gaze” apparent in the film, but at the same time, we fetishize mid-century America and seem to pine for it in some ways. Mad Men was a huge hit, despite the egregious treatment of women on the show. It’s as if we wish we could cosplay the sexual roles of the time but then go back to equitable power balance in real life.

Lauren drives this point home by having her naive (but not really) ladies demonstrate expertise in a rope bondage-style typically only seen in fetish porn. It’s playful, but also instructive. Viewers may take guilty pleasure in the erotic setup. Maybe you should feel bad about that, but it’s so artfully done it’s unavoidable. 

With Wives of the Skies, Lauren has created a thought-provoking, titillating, short film that is well worth repeated viewings to dig through the layers of sex power dynamics, and because it’s fun to watch.