''Submission'' is a 2017 American drama film written and directed by
Richard Levine, based on the 2000 novel ''Blue Angel'' by
Francine Prose
Francine Prose (born April 1, 1947) is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She is a visiting professor of literature at Bard College, and was formerly president of PEN American Center.
Life and career
Born in Brookl ...
. The film stars
Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci Jr. ( ; born November 11, 1960) is an American actor and filmmaker. Involved in acting from a young age, he made his film debut in John Huston's ''Prizzi's Honor'' (1985), and continued to play a variety of supporting roles in film ...
as a college professor who becomes obsessed with a student (
Addison Timlin). The film had its world premiere at the
Los Angeles Film Festival
The LA Film Festival was an annual film festival that was held in Los Angeles, California, and usually took place in June. It showcased independent, international, feature, documentary and short films, as well as web series, music videos, episod ...
on June 19, 2017.
Plot
After publishing his first novel, which earns him a little fame, Ted Swenson begins his career as a creative writing teacher at Euston College in
Vermont
Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the ...
, hoping to soon leave it after he publishes another hit novel, but gets stuck in that job for about 10 years and becomes a tenured professor. One of his students, Angela Argo, requests him to read the first chapter of her novel, ''Eggs'', which he does and finds the writing style impressive. His colleague Magda tells him about the vulgar poems Angela wrote when she took her class, and tells him that she actually insisted on making it a donation to the college library. Though librarians found the poetry about a phone sex worker rather obscene, they decided to keep it as an act of good faith.
Ted checks out that poetry book which primarily consists of erotic conversations between a phone sex worker named Angela 911 and her clients. Later, he attends a dinner at his colleague's place along with his wife Sherrie, where they all discuss the new campus sexual harassment rule-book and how
political correctness
''Political correctness'' (adjectivally: ''politically correct''; commonly abbreviated ''PC'') is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in socie ...
is affecting their teaching style.
Ted praises Angela's writing and encourages her to write more; she in turn gives him increasingly erotic later chapters of her novel. Ted, reading her novel, which is about a teenage girl sexualizing her science teacher, starts imagining himself as that science teacher, but tries to keep their relationship professional. One day, Angela asks him to give her a ride to
Burlington to get a new laptop. After returning to the school, she invites him into her dorm room to set up her computer. Though reluctant, Ted follows her and soon, she comes onto him and they quickly begin to have sex. However, before they can finish, Ted's weak tooth comes out and they humorously decide to postpone sex for some other time. While leaving her room, Ted meets one of his other students who eyes him suspiciously.
One day during class, Angela blatantly tells another student that her plot and characters are weak. While the students expect Ted to reprimand her, he does nothing and, after everyone leaves, Angela asks Ted to show her novel to his agent. Though surprised, Ted agrees, but the agent shows disinterest in reading a newbie's novel. Later, Ted tries to explain the situation to Angela but she becomes furious, shouting that she only slept with him in hopes of getting to a reputed agent through him. Shocked, Ted says he didn't think their relationship had anything to do with business and Angela angrily leaves.
The next day, Ted gets a call from the university board and learns that Angela has filed a sexual harassment suit against him and produced tape of their previous day's conversation as proof. Everyone, including his wife, blames him and, after his students and some faculty members testify against him, he loses his job, marriage and reputation. However, Angela gets a call from Ted's agent, who now shows interest in her work in light of the controversy. Fifteen months later, Ted is writing his memoirs in a cafeteria. When he sees a woman at his table reading ''Eggs'', he asks her how she likes the book.
Cast
*
Addison Timlin as Angela Argo
*
Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci Jr. ( ; born November 11, 1960) is an American actor and filmmaker. Involved in acting from a young age, he made his film debut in John Huston's ''Prizzi's Honor'' (1985), and continued to play a variety of supporting roles in film ...
as Ted Swenson
*
Kyra Sedgwick as Sherrie Swenson
*
Janeane Garofalo
Janeane Marie Garofalo ( ; born September 28, 1964) is an American comedian, actress, and former co-host on the now-defunct Air America Radio's ''The Majority Report''.
Garofalo began her career as a stand-up comedian and became a cast member on ...
as Magda Moynahan
*
Peter Gallagher
Peter Killian Gallagher (born August 19, 1955) is an American actor. Since 1980, he has played roles in numerous Hollywood films. He is best known for starring as Sandy Cohen in the television drama series '' The O.C.'' from 2003 to 2007, recu ...
as Len Curry
*
Colby Minifie as Ruby Swenson
*
Ritchie Coster
Ritchie Coster (born 1 July 1967) is an English actor. He is best known for playing the roles of Dietrich Banning in ''The Tuxedo'' (2002), the Chechen in ''The Dark Knight'' (2008), Elias Kassar in ''Blackhat'' (2015), Mayor Austin Chessani on ...
as Dean Bentham
*
Alison Bartlett as Angela's Mother
*
David Pittu as Bernard Levy
Reception
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 50%, based on 40 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10.
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
gave the film a score of 52 out of 100 based on 12 critical reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
References
External links
*
* {{rotten-tomatoes, 771474115, Submission
2017 films
2017 drama films
2017 independent films
2010s American films
2010s English-language films
American drama films
American independent films
Films about scandalous teacher–student relationships
Films about writers
Films based on American novels
Films scored by Jeff Russo
Films set in universities and colleges
Films set in Vermont