Bechdel Test Movie List

Witches, a princess, and a fallen star/young woman interact with each other.

Yay! I love this movie!

While the movie technically passes the test, I think it fails in the bigger picture. A woman is kidnapped and held against her will, but it's ok because the man who abducts her is a good guy? What a terrible message.

@Anonymous: I admit, that's a fair assessment. I hadn't looked at it that way.

This test is passed so rarely, and it's so easy to pass. It's rather disturbing.
Anyways, negative brownie points for the following:
-Mother has few redeeming qualities.
-the star (una, I think ?) doesn't have any awesome fight scenes, and doesn't really save the day at all. I mean, she hugs Tristan and somehow giving up herself to him for love makes her so glowy she kills the last witch. So her strength only comes from having a man.
-She falls in love with him after a week. They hate each other so much, and then, he's a mouse, and suddenly they're in love?

Anon's negative assessment is a mixed bag:

How does the mother, Lady Una, have few redeeming qualities? She doesn't have any negative qualities either. She falls in love, sends her baby away because she is a prisoner and isn't allowed to keep him, finds her son, saves Yvaine from crossing into Wall, then helps her son and Yvaine against the Lilim and reveals Tristan's heritage, and that's about it. She's basically a neutral side character. Nothing she does is all that positive or negative.

Yvaine, the Star, doesn't have a fight scenes. So what? I agree that her reliance on being in love to be useful is problematic, but fight scenes alone would make her a positive feminist character? Lamia has "awesome fight scenes", but that doesn't necessarily make her a positive feminist character.

Her glow is stated in the film to have to do with her emotions. Yes, her glow is brightest when she has fallen in love with Tristan, but her glow is also strong when she's rested and cared for in the Inn. It dims when she is distressed, sad, or heartbroken. And the previous fallen star is shown to have a bright glow after being well taken care of by the Lilim. That it's so powerful when Yvaine's in love is cliche trope, I agree, but her glow doesn't come just from being in love. The film shows that a star's shine can come from anything that makes a star happy.

- The film also shows that Yvaine initially hates Tristan, but that the two become close over the course of their journey. The two of them are upset with one another up until they are picked up by Captain Shakespeare's ship. The montage scenes while they're on the ship shows that Yvaine is happy and that she and Tristan become friendly and and grow closer from that point forward. So it's not a case of them hating each other and then suddenly falling in love when Tristan gets changed into a mouse.

@anonymous: You're fundamentally missing the point: a film does not fail the Bechdel test if its message isn't feminist enough.

It's a clearly-defined test with explicit criteria. It's not a magical Faminist Test, as my Freshman Women's Studies friends classify it. It's a minimum bar. Read the rules. The ultimate repercussions don't matter a film about two female slaves with names who talk about how horrible it is to be slaves passes, even if the ultimate message is that sex slavery and oppressing women is a-ok.

That's the point: we can give women equal screen time, even if we're ridiculously misogynistic. The bar is **so low**, and still we disappoint.