Walk out with a goddess

When Miranda (Anne Louise Lambert) turns and raises her hand to wave goodbye before walking towards her uncertain fate in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), she is unaware that her gentle gesture marks her transition from one reality to another. The languorous atmosphere created by the direction, cinematography and sound design envelopes the characters and audience alike, we are all caught in the spell and willingly drift together towards an open-ended mystery. The actress is not driving the plot at this moment but adding fine details or accents to a beautifully realised orchestration of cinematic notes that tells the unlikely and yet utterly convincing story of the girls’ disappearance.

Cinema goodbyes that only show a character leaving a scene end up on the cutting room floor. These moments need to do more. Goodbyes must reveal character, sub-plot and perhaps most importantly offer time for the audience to respond emotionally to the unfolding story.

Great character actresses of the big or small screen can own such moments and imbue them with intensity, humour, danger or whimsy. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) asserts her control over men when she pulls the door closed and says, “Don’t say another word”. Nadira in Shree 420 (1955) and Daryl Hannah in Roxanne (1987) also defy the obedience men expect of them by showing them the door. Similarly, Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) in Bring It On (2000) drops a barbed “buhbye” when she drops the boyfriend who’s been holding her back. Meryl Streep’s imperious turn as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) projects a steely authority softened by comic undertones. She can follow a one-word dismissal, “Go!” that cuts like a broken glass ceiling, with a deliciously expressive eye-roll that leaves no room for rebuttal but signals to the audience an underlying sense of play that keeps us from seeing the character as rigid or one dimensional. In Bombshell (2019), a workplace drama which explores the overt and internalised sexism within Fox News, Nicole Kidman plays the beleaguered TV presenter Gretchen Carlson with a pitch-perfect mix of ambition, manicured femininity and suppressed rage. Extricating herself from an awkward misunderstanding in the CEO’s office, her softly spoken exit line, “Alright, see you ladies later” may look breezy on the page, but Kidman’s delivery, which pairs a deliberately lightweight tone with loaded glances at the other characters signals her understanding of the power dynamics at play. Beneath the civility, she is letting them know that she knows she is being undermined. In David Lynch’s elegantly unhinged Mulholland Drive (2001), Naomi Watts invests her character of the ingenue actress Betty with much less self-awareness, but a similar degree of complexity. Feeling out of her depth, Betty flees a casting call, claiming she needs to meet a friend. Her face and body language convey her innocence, her rising panic and the fact that she is lying all at once.

On screen exits can also work to add pace and variety to the rhythmic flow of a sequence – hanging up a phone, running across a street, or turning on one’s heel with a mysterious half smile - all offer opportunities for the performer to explore both physicality and facial expressions. In classic comedies of the 1950s, stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Dorothy Malone mastered the difficult art of looking perfectly glamorous while simultaneously slamming doors, dismissing admirers and generally creating big-screen chaos with perfect comic timing. In the more intimate space of contemporary TV drama, actors need to speak worlds with their faces. In Mad Men (2007-2015), Peggy (Elizabeth Moss)’s “Don’t be a stranger” farewell to Don Draper or the way in which Pose’s (2018-2021) Electra Abundance (Dominique Jackson) dismisses her rivals with a click of her fingers are both masterclasses in understatement, allowing the audience to absorb the plot point but also feel the full intensity of the character’s emotional backstory.

When Phoebe Waller-Bridge looks directly at the camera for the last time at the season’s end of Fleabag (2016-2019) she is hyper aware of the timing and impact of this story beat, both as character and as writer/ performer, and yet even so the exact meaning of her expression is hard to pin down. Her wordless goodbye brims with emotion. She is simultaneously acknowledging the end of her affair with the priest, the end of the series, and perhaps most importantly the end of her character’s neurotic need to break the fourth wall. This combination of meta-awareness and narrative conclusion packs a powerful punch. The best goodbyes leave us wanting more.

The women featured in ‘Walk out with a goddess’ are in dialogue, backing each other and backing themselves. When they walk away, they’re transformed. “Goodbye” is a new beginning, slamming a door is taking a stand. Whether defying gender expectations, racial discrimination or the men who tried to control them, these goddesses have all stood up, raised their voices and reclaimed their story.