2023 Films by Women Film Directors

[osprey_archer]

For a while I was writing reviews of all the movies I’d seen by women film directors, but at the beginning of 2023 I fell out of the habit, and since I’m now quite a bit in arrears, I’ve decided to clear the decks with a bunch of micro-reviews.

Dava Whisenant’s Bathtubs Over Broadway is a documentary about corporate musicals - that is, musicals commissioned by corporations to show to their sales teams at the big annual meeting, most common from the 1950s to 1970s. Fascinating. Highly highly recommend if you’re at all interested in musicals as an art form or in the business of making a living as an artist, as these corporate musicals kept a lot of singers and dancers afloat in between Broadway productions!

I recall that Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 got panned when it came out, but perhaps since I went in with low expectations, I thought it was fine. It’s not as good as the first Wonder Woman, but it’s a solid popcorn flick, and Gal Gadot is a wonderful presence as ever.

Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love is another documentary (I’ve been on a bit of a documentary kick) about two rogue French volcanologists, a married couple who built their entire life around spending as much time on and around volcanoes as possible, following their passions until it ended about how you’d expect a life built around volcanoes to end. The film uses a lot of their gorgeous volcano footage, which is so wonderful and strange to watch.

Emma Holly Jones’ Mr. Malcolm’s List, another one that I thought was fine. I enjoyed the sumptuous settings and costumes but I thought the story dragged a bit.

A story that did not drag at all: Schmigadoon!. Only season 2 has a female film director, Alice Mathias, but of course I watched both seasons. I perhaps liked season 1 a little more, because like Melissa I prefer the cheerful Music Man style musicals to the darker Chicago style, but they’re both fantastic, so much fun and so visually striking. I haven’t seen a show go so all out to build an ~aesthetic since Pushing Daisies, and I love it. Very funny, great songs, highly recommended.

Elaine May’s Ishtar famously flopped when it came out - there was in fact a Far Side cartoon depicting a video store in Hell that loaned out nothing but Ishtar - only to receive a later critical reassessment, so of course I would like to say that I loved it. Unfortunately, I felt it kind of dragged, although its depiction of American masculinity is interesting and I can see why critics went for it later on. Plus it stars the luminously beautiful Isabelle Adjani: a definite bonus.

The Kan-Kan was apparently doing an Elaine May retrospective, because they also showed A New Leaf, which I missed! Devastated. Probably I would have felt it dragged too (as I also felt this about the other May film that I’ve seen, Mikey and Nicky), but nonetheless… the one that got away.

Haifaa al-Mansour’s Mary Shelley is another one that’s been on the list for a while! I love al-Mansour’s Wadjda and I love Elle Fanning, who plays Mary, so it’s shocking really how long I let this languish. Well worth seeing if you’re into dirtbag romantic poets. Percy Shelley is styled like Edward Cullen from Twilight, for reasons of emotional vampirism, while also being just thrilling and sexy enough that you can see why Mary falls so hard for him. Mary’s friendship with her stepsister Claire Clairmont is also a standout: they are sometimes seemingly rivals for Percy’s affection, but whenever one of them is in trouble, their own affection for each other comes to the fore.

Up the Women is a delightful BBC comedy series, two seasons amounting to a mere nine total episodes, in which the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle Politely Requests Women’s Suffrage. One of those wonderful British comedy series where the writers create a cast of eccentrics and then simply allow them to play off each other, to create comic effect. The members of the BICCPRWS vary widely in their attitude toward suffrage, ranging from the anti-suffrage Helen (who rules her husband with an iron fist) to Helen’s trampled but militant daughter Emily, a renegade E. M. Forster heroine who at one point writes KILL THE KING on a banner for a suffrage march.

Finally, Suzanne Raes’ Close to Vermeer, a documentary about putting together a Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Loved the chance to see the paintings “in person,” as it were - of course a film is still a reproduction, but unlike a still reproduction, you can at least tell the size of the piece, something about the experience of being in its presence. An illuminating discussion about Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura, with new insight into how he might have gotten access to what was then a high-tech instrument: he lived next door to some Jesuits who are known to have had one.

There was also a very mannered disagreement between some American curators who think that Girl with a Flute is not a true Vermeer, from which conclusion the Dutch curators politely demure… until the story erupts in the international press, when one of the Dutch curators comments (I am paraphrasing), “The American National Gallery may not be lending Girl with a Flute as a Vermeer, but the Rijksmuseum will display it as one. All doubts will evaporate over the Atlantic.” SHOTS FIRED. No controversy like art world controversy.

And now I’m all caught up! Will I be able to stay on top of my reviews from now on? We shall see…

Comments

[kore]

Ooh, I love Mary and Claire as sisters (with all the good and bad that entails), not battling harpies. Hmm.

I remember what really surprised me about the Vermeers when I finally saw them not up in a close-up photo is how small they are, and how bright. Just like how the Rothkos are really huge, and the art book photos tend to flatten out all the layers.

[osprey_archer]

There are definitely some moments of tension because it's not clear whether Percy, Emotional Vampire, is perhaps pursuing Claire on the side - there's a great moment where Claire is bragging about her conquest of Byron and Mary is like "I know how much poets like you" and they just look at each other. And then apparently they make an unspoken agreement never to speak about the thing again, because Claire just goes on all "Byron has invited us to Switzerland!" (Byron has not invited them anywhere. Byron mentioned he was going somewhere and Claire invited them all.)

Yes, I'm sure the effect is even clearer in person, but seeing the Vermeers on the museum walls next to the curators did drive home how small they are! Seeing paintings in person is a bit like seeing an animal that you've only seen in pictures before: sometimes you've completely mis-imagined the scale.

[kore]

nd Mary is like "I know how much poets like you" and they just look at each other. And then apparently they make an unspoken agreement never to speak about the thing again

....I MUST SEE THIS

[osprey_archer]

It's such a real moment. "Here's this thing that would almost certainly implode our relationship that is very important to both of us so we are never going to reference it directly ever."

[taelle]

Re art controversies and attribution, I've heard that when the National Gallery wanted the Hermitage's Madonna Litta for an exhibition, the Hermitage said 'if you don't attribute it to Leonardo, it's not coming'. And National Gallery exhibited it as Leonardo's despite widespread belief that it's by a student of Leonardo's.

[osprey_archer]

Ahahaha that would be a tough moment... "Do we want this painting enough to attribute it to someone we kind of think didn't actually paint it? Alternatively, do we want to undermine our relationship with this other museum that has all these OTHER cool paintings we might someday want by taking a firm stand about this particular painting?"

[troisoiseaux]

Well worth seeing if you’re into dirtbag romantic poets.

Which reminds me, have you been able to find a copy of Daisy Hay's Young Romantics?

Percy Shelley is styled like Edward Cullen from Twilight, for reasons of emotional vampirism

LOL.

[osprey_archer]

I have gotten distracted by other things! Someday perhaps... it would make a good companion piece to Mary Shelley.

[kore]

OMG the advertising for that show was hilarious -- I did like a bunch of what I saw, though, including Elizabeth Siddall.

[troisoiseaux]

OMG the advertising for that show was hilarious

???

[kore]

Okay, I fucking mixed that up with DESPERATE Romantics, I have to go die of embarrassment now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desperate_Romantics

BUT, this was the trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4BraAD71cE

Many of my friends (and many TV critics) loathed this, but it's one of those OTT things that tips it over into 'LOL YES' for me.

Aidan Turner fans put it up on Youtube! I'm sure he's grateful. Including the extras of him SOULFULLY reading Rossetti.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jO7YP--9rY



//expires quietly of mortification

[troisoiseaux]

Okay, I fucking mixed that up with DESPERATE Romantics

No worries! I hadn't heard of this show before— it looks delightfully OTT. (Aidan Turner! Samuel Barnett!!)

[osprey_archer]

WHAT, those TV critics were simply FLATLY INCORRECT, any show about the pre-Raphaelites that was one iota less OTT would simply be UNTRUE TO THE SPIRIT OF PRE-RAPHAELITISM. What did they want, tastefulness and restraint? From Dante Gabriel Rosetti?

[sovay]

The Kan-Kan was apparently doing an Elaine May retrospective, because they also showed A New Leaf, which I missed! Devastated.

I realize this doesn't help, but I love A New Leaf. It was one of my grandmother's favorite movies. I hope you get another shot at it.

[osprey_archer]

SOMEDAY I say, weeping. Someday I will see it!

[kore]

Oh yeah, I forgot to say, my parents were giant Nichols and May fans and they LOVED Ishtar. They may have been the only people in America who bought the video when it came out. I have seen it under duress at least three times. They did however also have an LP of An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, but I don't know what happened to it.

[osprey_archer]

Ahaha and how did you feel about Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, singer-songwriters whose belief in themselves is equaled only by their lack of talent? I did love the meet-cute where they're in the restaurant and they stay there so late working on songs that their girlfriends eventually walk out on them.

[kore]

"This is some of our best work!" It was kind of like those Crosby-and-Hope road pictures, but etched in acid.

[silverusagi]

Ah, I've seen Up the Women! I remember enjoying it.

And I didn't hate Wonder Woman 1984 nearly as much as the rest of the internet did.

[osprey_archer]

Nothing displays the humanity's more sheep-like qualities than when the internet decides it hates a movie. (Or anything else, for that matter.) Few people are brave enough to admit to having a contrary opinion!

[asakiyume]

Up the Women sounds fun! And your write-up of Mary Shelly makes me want to at least look at a trailer... I'll go do that next. (I loved Wadjda too.) And I definitely want to try to catch Fire of Love!

"All doubts will evaporate over the Atlantic" is a *great* line!

[osprey_archer]

Fire of Love totally made me think of you and Pen Pal!

[anna_wing]

I enjoyed Wonder Woman 1984, especially since the resolution didn't come from a huge battle, and the undoing of the monkey's-paw wishes at the end didn't undo all the trouble and mess and deaths that they had caused.

I was rather disappointed in Barbara Minerva though; since I'd never followed the comics, I thought her name was a hint that she was a deity in disguise, which would have been much more interesting than the daft actuality ("I want to be an apex predator"? What?).

And it was lovely to see Lynda Carter.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I felt that the Barbara Minerva storyline was a bit of a mess. Did we really need two Big Bads in the movie? The wish machine would have been enough.

[anna_wing]

Yes, it was basically the Monkey's Paw, which is really as Big a Bad as anyone needs...now if she actually had been Athena, whether as an ally (in favour of Wisdom, and therefore not of stupid wishes) or opponent (in favour of Wisdom, and therefore quite prepared to turn Max Lord into non-wish-granting mulch) that would have had potential.

[thawrecka]

I really enjoyed WW84 when it came out! Ishtar I remember loving at the time of its TV release, but who knows what I'd think if I saw it now.

[osprey_archer]

I was surprised that the internet turned so sharply against WW84! I don't think it was as good as the first one, but it was by no means bad. An enjoyable romp.