Movie Review: Seeing Allred

Seeing Allred ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Roberta Grossman and Sophie Sartain.

 

I firmly believe that a great documentary could – and should – be made about Gloria Allred – the famed feminist lawyer, who has spent her career fighting for Women’s rights, as well as gay rights and civil rights of all kinds. She has many detractors – on all sides – who see her as opportunistic and shrill – in it for herself, her won celebrity and money. A truly great documentary would take on those criticisms head on, allow people with all sorts of views on Allred to come forward and say what they have to say. Unfortunately, it seems like the filmmakers behind Seeing Allred – Roberta Grossman and Sophie Sartain – are more interested in presenting a purely positive portrayal of Allred. It doesn’t allow the criticisms levelled against Allred over the years (most of which is misogynistic, some of it not) to really be explored. The criticism when it does come out is either in the form of old clips and sound bites that don’t run more than a few seconds, or stated by Allred allies (who make up all the interviews in the film that aren’t of Allred herself) just so they can swat them aside the next second. I’d be more interested in seeing a documentary that faced those criticisms head on – and allowed Allred to do the same. After all, as the movie makes clear, Allred is at her best when she is fighting back, and having to make her points to people who don’t necessarily want to hear them – and she doesn’t care what you think of her. I don’t think this documentary captures her at her best.

 

What the documentary does do a decent job of is going over the highlights of Allred’s more than 40 year legal career, and a few select moments from her difficult personal life (two marriages that ended badly, a rape in Mexico, which required her to get an illegal, back alley abortion that almost killed her). The film quickly goes over some of the big – and not so big – cases in her career. She was among the first to sue the Catholic Church for sex abuse – decades before the scandal broke big. Or suing a toy store for having “Boy” and “Girl” Toy aisles. Or representing the Brown family during the O.J. Simpson trial, in order to get their side of the story out. The framing device of the movie – the one it returns to again and again – is a series of press conferences Allred holds with various women who have accused Bill Cosby of drugging and raping them.

 

The film essentially lets Allred tell her own story. Her interviews make up the backbone of the film. As in the various clips of her throughout the film, she comes across as intelligent, confident and strong. Yes, she likes the attention and the money, and knows how to get both – but if she were a man, she’d be celebrated for that, not condemned.

 

In short, I think Seeing Allred is worth seeing for those who know nothing about her, and just want a quick primer on who she is, and why she is famous. I wish the film dug in deeper, challenged Allred, her supporters and her critics with something more. What the filmmakers have essentially done is made a dull film about a woman who is anything but.