Broken Trust Post: Strong Women in a Man’s World
Bonnie and Mike Hartley
(Pen name: Thomas Maurin)
From the beginning we imagined that Broken Trust would be a movie. One of our goals for the thriller and the movie was to create a female protagonist in her 50s who would work successfully “in a man’s world.” We envisioned Julianne Moore playing Fitz.
Fitz is that woman for many reasons. First, she has always excelled at math and did her doctorate at Wharton in forensic accounting. She does high level financial analysis to support the SEC’s investigation into fraud, market manipulation and other illegal activities. While she is not the only woman to work in that area, her fifteen-year track record at the SEC speaks to her strength, commitment and ability to analyze complex financial situations. She is in her 50s and is in some ways just coming into her own power.
As we see in Broken Trust, she consistently takes the lead with Charles and Jamie, both of whom are strong, successful men used to being in charge. While they both want to protect their friend, they respect Fitz’s willingness to take risks and to put herself in the line of fire, as she does in Cayman when she goes to Kenmore’s office to get the final piece of data about when Hans, Valentina and Ramón are meeting with the attorney. She confronts Hans repeatedly at increasing risk to herself, highlighting her ability to act on her strong convictions.
Fitz is not a super hero. She is a flawed individual whose emotional scars interfere at times with her usual rational decision-making. When her personal and professional lives converge, both internal and external conflicts explode. We see that especially in her relationship with her father and with Charles. She finally recognizes that the mistakes she made regarding Chloe were based on false assumptions. That recognition is a major turning point in Broken Trust. Once she knows that Charles didn’t want the annulment, she finally confronts herself and her father, and takes responsibility for her decision to hide her pregnancy from everyone except her brother. It is her willingness to own her mistakes come what may that finally unlocks the personal power she has repressed for decades.
