What I liked about the rape depiction in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I've finally received my pre-ordered DVD of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which I've been desperate to see since I missed it at the cinemas.

It sounds perverse, but I was so excited to see a film about rape, especially from an older female's perspective, nominated for so many awards and generally raising awareness of a difficult subject. It definitely fits my strange little wheelhouse of niche interests (Peanuts; people who identify as Ravenclaw; sexual violence in the media; cats).

In a nutshell the film is about Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a fearsome tiger of a woman left devastated by the rape and murder of her teenage daughter Angela. Seven months after the crime, no one has been arrested and, tired of waiting for justice, Mildred rents three billboards. On them she writes: 'Raped while dying/ And still no arrests? / How come, Chief Willoughby?' The idea of course being to rattle the local police into action. The film focuses on her interactions with both the police, and locals who have varied views on her behaviour, especially in the light of the news that Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) is dying of cancer.

I know that Three Billboards was subject to lots of criticism, particularly in terms of its treatment of people of colour and the disabled, and I don't want to undermine that perspective in any way. But there is an element of it which I think was spot on (and unusually so) - its tactful coverage of sexual violence.

While you may love or hate the product as a whole you can't deny it's unusual to see a film about rape which doesn't sensationalise the act itself. There wasn't a graphic scene of Angela screaming or being dragged into a bush; there were no artistic shots of blood-splashed muddy feet; not even a poignant stiletto left by the side of the road. Rape wasn't presented as weirdly sexy, or something centred around gorgeous young women (although we saw from a flashback that the victim was both).

Now compare this to the two-minute rape scene in Girl With A Dragon Tattoo, or the hard to erase mental image of the beautiful red-headed mum and daughter left - having been raped and murdered - draped alluringly over a sofa in Nocturnal Animals. Or, you know, a MILLION other examples of gorgeous, brutalised women being panned over by drooling cameras.

In fact, except for the extremely harrowing 'raped while dying' which her mother has taped to one of the three billboards, there's very little description to fixate on. Chatting to my husband about this  afterwards,  he pointed out that while the film as a whole doesn't sensationalise rape, Francis McDormand's character seeks to make her daughter's rape and murder sensational, through her words on the billboard.

While this is true, I think making a horrific event publicly dramatic in order to gain justice is very different to just hyping up a story to sell papers, or push an agenda of some sort. Had the rapist/murderer been caught and tried, I don't think her character would want to publicise the crime - more likely she'd turn her furious energy to remembering her daughter in a more positive way.

Two other stereotypes that were happily lacking:

• Obsession over the perpetrator and his own backstory [spoiler alert]  - we never even 'meet' the murderer so, much like the crime itself, he's a rather nebulous detail to the whole plot. We don't follow his point of view as he hunts down innocent women, nor see him interact with the domestic females of his own life. Nothing. He's not important. Or - even worse - sexy (see: Jamie Dornan murdering women in The Fall, presented as a cat-and-mouse type thriller with a gorgeous, twinkle-eyed serial killer).
• There was a surprising scarcity of victim blaming - no comment on what she was wearing at the time, or allusions to whether or not she was a virgin at the time. Both of course, hideous but common rape myths. Police excuses around not having caught the criminal didn't linger on whether the girl had somehow brought it on herself by her behaviour.

There's a long and difficult history of rape scenes written and directed by men - see this great article by Lena Wilson - but I think that Martin McDonagh did a really good job of making a story about the impact of rape on a family and community, rather than a ghoulish portrayal of the act itself. It's not something that's been done much before, and I hope that the Oscar win for Frances encourages more filmmakers to up their game.