Klute, the 1971 crime thriller starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, raises an immediate issue when you finish the film: why is it called Klute? Sutherland’s character is Detective John Klute, assigned to investigate the disappearance of a colleague in connection to call girl Bree Daniels (Fonda) and critics and viewers for years have wrestled with why the film would be named for Sutherland’s character in the first place. In his review for the film, Roger Ebert writes, “the movie should probably be titled Bree instead of ‘Klute,’ because the Fonda character is at the center.” Director Alan J. Pakula notes that the increased focus on Bree was accidental, with him and Fonda exploring the character more and more, pushing the titular Klute to the side. However, I believe the apparent misnaming of the film actually holds intent, in truly highlighting the film’s ultimate struggle for Bree: that patriarchy dominates her life. When Klute arrives, she’s stuck at a place between ending her time as a call girl and entering the world of acting, but his influence, and the subsequent missing persons case, causes Bree to be at the center of a tug of war game between two patriarchal ideas of womanhood: as object of desire or object of servitude, where men take control of the practices women take pleasure in to profit from them, either monetarily or emotionally.
Bree’s inner psychology paints a fascinating portrait of a woman lost in the world; who knows what she wants but faces an immense struggle to really achieve her goals, without being pulled back into sex work. It’s not that she looks down on or despises sex work; she finds it liberating, so much so that she begins to pursue acting as another outlet to explore the pleasure she gains from performance. And it’s through her journey to find new employment we see that she’s just as objectified in “proper” work. Her voice is completely absent as she’s judged coolly by the executives at a modeling casting call, leaving Bree silent when it’s in this moment more than most that she wants to be heard.
In Bree’s search for acting and modeling work, she keeps coming back to sex work out of necessity, at least on the surface. An encounter with a john highlights that what she desires most is control over others, and a certain power over men. But Bree lives in a confining world where women are either seen or heard — rarely both. Bree’s therapist is a faceless voice, while her fellow acting/modelling hopefuls are silent; the only women with complete control are other sex workers. This seems liberating and powerful — until we meet Bree’s previous pimp Frank Ligourin (Roy Scheider). Suddenly it’s clear that subservience is demanded even with complete control, as he immediately wants to reclaim Bree upon their reunion in order to exploit her labor for his profit. Frank believes she works to serve rather than empower, and in this his identity as pimp acts as a representation of patriarchy’s centering of men to directly exploit women’s passions for their own gain.
When Klute enters Bree’s life, he acts as a savior, protecting her from the violent misogynist who has targeted her with threatening phone calls, and a trail of the dead bodies of sex workers and johns. Klute is soft spoken, often silent, yet his status as a private eye directly forces Bree to align with her oppressor in the eyes of the law. His protection is never fully trusted, even when he risks his life running on rooftops to find the stalker. He still acts as another figure in patriarchy that pulls Bree in a specific direction: away from freedom, and toward subservience.
When Bree is giving a monologue at an audition, Klute’s appearance signals the audition’s end; when Bree and Klute sleep together, her reaction is more of horror than pride, scared that her entire life might be upended by her feelings toward him. A scene in which the two go to a market displays a quiet domesticity; they look as if they’re a married couple engaging in the simple pleasures of buying fruit. It isn’t the life Bree wants, but in that moment the safety and comfort it provides is all too enticing.The life of a call girl is just as enticing to Bree as the life she pictures with Klute, secluded on a farm and stuck in the private sphere as a doting housewife.
At one point, the missing person’s investigation becomes too much, and Bree ventures into a club with Klute following. In a sequence with little dialogue, we see Bree find comfort in the other patrons, people she’s likely worked with. She makes her way to Frank and sits down next to him on a couch, placing her head on his shoulder. Klute looks on at the scene, and it’s here that the tug-of-war of patriarchy is clear: at every turn Bree is pulled by these two men, each representing ideas of femininity that differ in form but not in function. An eventual fistfight in Bree’s apartment between the two men makes this evident, as they fight to possess her. Both have the same root desire to own her as our villain, Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi).
Cable follows Bree into the shop of one of her clients, a man whom she only talks to and never sleeps with. Cable reveals that Bree’s own words about not being ashamed of your desires have acted, in his mind, as permission for him to kill other sex workers. His pleasure comes from violence, from punishment, from their unconsenting pain. Cable is patriarchy at its most extreme: his desire to see women punished insatiable. This is just a more extreme version of the misogyny that tries to confine Bree to submission and a lack of control. It may be nice to see Klute and Bree be domestic together, or to see just how powerful she is when she’s with her clients, but in the end the two roles are the same when Bree is made to answer to others. Men trap Bree either figuratively or literally, making her dependent on their whims, draining her love and passion from her. Being in either role could make Bree happy, but only if she acts as her own boss; a pimp takes the liberating act of sex work and acts as a parasite, stealing profit without providing anything, while the role of husband confines the housewife to the private sphere, making her completely dependent on the man. In the strict binary Bree lives in, the only way to achieve liberation is to reject binaries altogether.
The film’s title being Klute is representative of this entrapment, this centering of men. By the film’s end, Bree leaves her New York apartment behind, as well as the call girl business. Klute may help her pack up and move, but she doesn’t go to live with him. Bree finally frees herself from this life in which no matter how much she focuses on herself she still centers serving men. Bree wants freedom. She wants control, and power, and at every turn men are there to be her bosses. Whether it be her pimp, the director of the play, the ad executives, or Klute himself — she always finds herself working for men. These men exist solely to exploit her labor and own her. Even in therapy, Bree centers men by talking about either her clients or Klute. She never gives herself permission to envision herself separate from patriarchy or even the gender binary. When she leaves her apartment at the film’s end, it’s finally a rejection of patriarchy, of simple answers and binaries. Bree leaves to find a new life separate from her centering of men. She is no longer an object owned or controlled by others, but a free, active woman who centers herself.
