Have you heard of the Bechdel Test? The concept was created by Alison Bechdel in 1985 in a strip called The Rule in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For. It tests films on three criteria: it must have at least two women (named characters) talk to each other about something other than a man. It is a very low bar to pass but still more than 40% of US films fail it.
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The definition of guilty pleasure is “something that one enjoys despite feeling that it is not generally held in high regard.” I have a trousseau of romcoms that would fit this brief and one of my favourites is this British gem starring Kelly Macdonald and David Tennant.
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As a teen, I loved Grease (1978), Star Wars (1977) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) but at age 11, I discovered cinema and my life was never the same.
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Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron were a magic combination for witty dialogue and interesting characters. Combine that with Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby at the height of their game and you have a film that you can’t help but quote.
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I don’t love everything that Jennifer Garner does but I find her films usually very watchable and there is something about the characters she chooses and the way she comes across in her socials that makes me like her. She is funny.
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Responding to this prompt has taught me that I don’t really like film franchises. Some are diverting but run out of puff after a few films – Bourne Identity, Die Hard, Terminator, Alien, Shrek and so on. Some are great but then are flogged to within an inch of their lives – Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman, Harry Potter.
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I suspect I’ll have some extended family members who really like this film and it gets a score of 8.8 on IMDb so I may be a lone reed. I first saw this at the cinema with my mum and dad for our annual Boxing Day treat and remember feeling trapped in my seat for an interminable 142 minutes. Two years later I experienced the same with 182 tedious, gnaw-off-my-leg-to-escape minutes of The English Patient (1996).
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I nearly chose The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), my obsession as a teenager and for the many midnight screenings I attended, or Grease (1978) or Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) or Once (2007) or The Lure (2015). They are all films I have loved and can, or have, watched multiple times. But there is something about this Howard Hawks classic, based on a play by Anita Loos, that gives me joy whenever I watch it.
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There are so many female directors who I love. If you click on the ‘female directors’ tag on the left of my blog page, you’ll see many examples; some with multiple films, others with only one.
There’s Ana Kokkinos, Claire Denis, Agnès Varda, Sophia Coppola, Mia Hansen-Løve, Cate Shortland, Kelly Reichardt, Rachel Perkins, Doris Dörrie, Maren Ade, Jane Campion, Sally Potter, Maya Newell, Lyn Ramsey and Agnieszka Smoczynska. And Lynn Shelton! I was so saddened to hear that she passed away last week as I loved Sword of Trust (2019), Your Sister’s Sister (2011) and Hump Day (2009).
I had to pick one, though, and I keep coming back to Raw (or Grave) – you can read my review here. It was the first feature of French screenwriter Julia Ducournau and I felt like a changed person after I saw it. It is surreal and demanding, gory and beautiful and ultimately about female desire and power. And vegetarians. If you don’t mind challenging films, I recommend you watch it.
And if the only film by a female director you can think of with this prompt is Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008), then I’ll send you a list of what to watch.
Posted as part of the 30-Day Fillums Challenge, created by me. If you want to see what’s coming up, have a look at my post here and feel free to join in by commenting each day with your own choice.
Coming Next: Day 15: Your favourite musical film
I was obsessed with this film from the age of 16 until I was around 20. I collected articles on it, created artwork when I was supposed to be doing homework, fell in love with its classical and contemporary music score and dreamed about star Mark Lee (and was jealous when my friend Alison saw him play at her university union night in his band).
I could quote swathes of it – “What are your legs? Springs, steel springs. And what are they going to do? Hurl me down the track. How fast can you run? As fast as a leopard. How fast ARE you going to run? As fast as a leopard. Well let’s see you do it then!” Mel Gibson was at his likeable best but his character was perhaps too much of a rogue for my delicate adolescent heart.
It was also an education on war and the first time I had really thought about its impact on ordinary people like myself. The story is not a new one and hit many beats that are familiar now that I have watched more films of its ilk – youth, innocence, mateship, heroism, the brutality of authority as well as the enemy. It succeeds in the same way 1917 (2019) does, by picking out the personal story of two people and showing how arbitrary the line is between surviving and dying.
What film reminds you of being a teenager? It might be one that you loved as a teen or one that embodies the feel of being young.
Posted as part of the 30-Day Fillums Challenge, created by me. If you want to see what’s coming up, have a look at my post here and feel free to join in by commenting each day with your own choice.
Coming Next: Day 14: Your favourite film by a female director
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