Jodie Foster vented her frustrations on the plot device during Variety and Kering s Women in Motion talk at the Cannes Film Festival

Jodie Foster has an issue with male filmmakers relying on rape as a motivational backstory for their female characters.

The Money Monster director brought up her frustration with the storytelling trope during Variety and Kering s Women in Motion talk at the Cannes Film Festival.

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“I wonder why she was a box of tears?” Foster asked, speaking as a hypothetical male writer. “Oh, she was raped.”

Or if a female character is having trouble with her boss, Foster said writers will often reason, “Well, it was because she was raped and you re going to find that out in the end.

She added, “It was ridiculous, it was every single movie I saw. If you really got to what was the overriding motivation that that woman that you found out at the end, it was always rape because for some reason men saw that as this incredibly dramatic thing. ‘Well that s easy! I can just pluck that one out of the sky and apply it to her.’

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Foster said she believes the storyline persists because men have failed to create a “complex merging” with female characters. “They were unable to put themselves in her shoes and her body and say, She was competitive with her mother They were unable to make that transition.

Foster, who won an Oscar in 1989 for playing a rape victim in The Accused, has long been an advocate for gender equality in film. During a Tribeca Film Festival panel last month, Foster said a lack of female filmmakers in the industry amounted to neglect.