Bechdel Test Movie List

The main character, Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) has a brief exchange with her housemate Caroline (Analeigh Tipton) about Caroline's poor health and need to change her lifestyle. Lucy also has a longer and more significant phone conversation with her mother about the things happening to Lucy, though that one's slightly iffier, since the mom isn't physically present, doesn't have a name except "Lucy's mom," and does bring up Lucy's father at least once in passing. The first conversation should be a clean pass of the test, though.

Other than that, this is a film primarily about a female heroine being victimized and fighting back against a series of male enemies, surpassing a series of male professors, and using a series of male cops. It isn't very strong on the Bechdel scale, but it has a very impressive heroine at the center of the entire story.

I have to disagree a bit with NessieNos.

Lucy's conversation with Caroline does start off with Caroline bringing up both her relationship and Lucy's recently ended relationship, so I'd consider that a bit iffier than her conversation with her mother. Both of them do have brief amounts of time where they do not discuss men.
The handful of other female characters ~(3-4) are unnamed and do not speak, simply exist in the background, while there are probably around 70 men with speaking parts, and hundreds others shown in the film. It was staggering.

I also don't think that Lucy is an "impressive heroine" at all. The film certainly tries to depict her as that, but at the same time none of her ability (or really her will) to do anything against the bad guys was her own. She got saved, essentially by magic (it was not science), got revenge, and that was it.

She wasn't a survivor, a fighter, and by the end she wasn't someone who cared about those around her. She was nothing.

Have to agree with Nathantalks on this one. Although the film scraped by on the skin of its teeth to pass the test, I was hugely disappointed in Lucy as a heroine. Although she commits all these amazing acts and obtains all this power, it's only after her interaction with a synthetic drug. Prior to this, she is depicted as a useless female who parties in short skirts. This film easily could have substituted a male lead, they probably only chose a female because it seems sexier. They really could have achieved more with this one. I was disappointed.

Lucy and Caroline have two separate conversations. The first, when Lucy comes home, immediately devolves into Caroline talking about their relationships with dudes, and it fails the test. The second conversation, the one that passes the test, occurs the next morning when Lucy is leaving, and is just about Caroline's health and habits, and about where Lucy's going.

You are right. Lucy is the lead because of her body, but not in the way that you are thinking of.

Let's remember what the drug actually is. It's a synthetic version of a hormone that women release during pregnancy and that "bumps" the baby into life.
When the Bad guy overdoses the male goon with it at the beginning of the movie, the guy dies, he is not able to handle even a little dose.

Lucy handles the whole package and integrates it, uses it an accepts it.
Her body accepts it because she is a woman, and therefore she has the generic disposition to be able to handle (and even produce) that hormone.
Her mind accepts it because she is more capable since the beginning, more open and resistant and psychologically flexible.
So no, it could not have been a man in that role. That role was written for a woman and only a woman could have handled it.

As for the rest; yes, she barely passes the test but still does when she talks in the morning about her roommate's health and when with her mother.

And even though she is not technically human and they don't talk, there is a lot of meaning in her contact with Lucy, the first known step of human evolution. Another reason it had to be a woman, she HAD to be named Lucy. That's the jest, the fist and the last, the lowest and he highest steps of evolution.

I agree that there could have been more women in the film as speaking extras though.

In RE to Ryna's comment: The man in the beginning does not die of a overdose of the drug, he is shot in the head.