Equity

Hollywood is slowly realizing the potential in making movies that appeal to women — films with diverse female characters and experiences, some even written and directed by women — and while the industry is still by and large male-dominated, progress is made at a glacial pace.

The Wall Street-esque Equity, about another industry ruled by dick-sizing bravado, is the latest example of Hollywood treading familiar cinematic territory, in the dog-eat-dog world of American finance, set comfortably within the genre of thriller. But this time attention is focused on high-powered women. In Equity, it’s a bitch-eat-bitch world, one that’s rooted in reality, acknowledging the penile hivemind that keeps the glass ceiling firmly in place.

Equity follows Naomi (Anna Gunn), a top level banking executive impatient to take over her company, as she takes Cachet, her latest client, public. Naomi’s stumble with a previous client, who didn’t find her sufficiently “likable,” is a mark on her otherwise perfect track record, yet peers and superiors are starting to question her abilities.

The film creates a suspenseful world in which Naomi’s mounting pressure to ensure Cachet’s success — and doing due diligence to prevent a security vulnerability from scaring off investors — is interlayered by a series of backroom betrayals that could mess up the IPO.

From small to significant roles, these sneaky schemes involve her inferior, finance VIP Erin (Sarah Megan Thomas), and Naomi’s casual boyfriend Michael (James Purefoy), a hedge-fund investor whose weaselly courtship of Naomi betrays his ulterior motive.

The film demonstrates how easy it is for insider intel to be passed around, without anyone even having to sleep with another — this is a female-driven drama, but it’s also written by a woman, so it doesn’t stoop to such predictable lows. And that introduces our third major female lead, Samantha (Alysia Reiner), who’s sniffing around Naomi’s firm for white-collar crime.

Equity shows how lonely it is to be at the top, especially if you’re a woman. When Naomi gets on the work elevator, she’s surrounded by identically suited bankers, all men. Elsewhere the camera lingers on the single pet fish Naomi keeps in her desolate, luxurious apartment. That loneliness extends to the way women treat each other, though it’s a much more nuanced portrayal of how selfish desire determines social dynamics.

In one scene, Naomi condescendingly informs Erin how to flirt with Cachet’s misogynistic CEO without causing drama. In another scene, Naomi protects Erin from being laid off — she knows without her protection Erin would be unfairly let go, because she’s a woman. Naomi’s assertiveness is viewed as aggressive and unsavoury instead of confident by the male knuckleheads who surround her at work. But thanks to the film’s illuminating interiorization of her life, we find in Naomi’s struggle a sympathetic character arc, brought vividly to life by Gunn’s intuitive eyes and admirable, no-nonsense sense of determination.

Equity balances its nuanced female characters with clueless male hacks whose professional accomplishments are due to Kanye West-levels of braggadocio instead of real skill or intelligence. But one of the best moments of cocky confidence arrives in a hilarious scene featuring a high-strung Naomi yelling at a male underling for bringing her a chocolate chip cookie that has virtually no chocolate chips. It’s the kind of power move often seen as “funny” when performed by a man, but “hysterical,” that woefully gendered word, when done by a woman.

Equity normalizes such typically “male” behaviours by having its women characters pull the punches as adeptly and easily as the men; you’d think it were a gimmick, if it weren’t all so masterfully written.

While the more dramatic elements of the narrative aren’t 100 per cent perfect in their thriller logic, Equity makes up for it with a multitude of intense, powerful moments in which, to steal a line from Beyoncé, girls run the world.