But “Equity” goes a step further by allowing women to call the shots behind the camera as well. One glance at the credits reveals that this drama, about a veteran investment banker (played by Anna Gunn of “Breaking Bad”) who wages a fight to maintain her high-level professional status, boasts an admirable commitment to recruiting members of the consistently under-employed cinematic sisterhood. Meera Menon (Tribeca award winner for “Farah Goes Bang”) directed and Amy Fox (“Heights”) wrote the screenplay, based on a story by Sarah Megan Thomas. And two of the film’s stars—Alysia Reiner (fiendish assistant warden Fig on “Orange Is the New Black”) and Thomas—are producers as well as the co-founders of Broad Street Pictures, a company dedicated to telling stories from a female perspective, starting with “Equity.”
Being a woman who deeply cares about how we are portrayed in popular culture, I naturally have a rooting interest in “Equity.” And, initially, the film does many things right. Gunn’s Naomi, for one, is an eminently watchable if atypical heroine. She’s a sleekly attractive 40-something, with a figure that befits her age and the determined eyes of a tigress as she takes out her workplace frustrations on a punching bag at the gym.
Screenwriter Amy Fox wisely gives Naomi a Gordon Gekko-like defining speech early on when she speaks at a career-mentoring event for women. When a moderator asks, “What gets you up in the morning?” she candidly responds: “I like money—like knowing I have it.” She acknowledges her family’s cash flow problems while growing up and the fact that she helped her younger brothers pay for college. But she also adds, unapologetically, “It is OK to do it for ourselves—for how it makes us feel. Secure, yeah. Powerful, absolutely.” Her final suggestion: “Don’t let money be a dirty word.”
Yes, women can be just as ambitious, ruthless and desirous of wealth and control as their male cohorts. Maybe even more so. Still, the playing field isn’t quite level, considering that Naomi is passed over for a promotion after being blamed for an initial public offering going awry and is told by her boss that she "rubs people the wrong way" (a criticism that probably would never be lobbed at a man in her position). Instead of giving up, the specialist in Silicon Valley start-ups proceeds to double-down on efforts to seal the deal on handling the IPO for a hot tech commodity named Cachet.
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