I'll do whatever you tell me to do.
Weekly Directed By Women Viewing Guide
This week I am recommending four new releases, a couple of Christmas-set shorts, and a short Palestinian documentary about goats.
Following up on her riotous black comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies, Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn has teamed up with the great Nicole Kidman, who won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival this year, for an erotic drama about the lengths we go for satisfaction. In Babygirl, Kidman plays a high powered CEO named Romy Mathis whose marriage to her sensitive and supportive theatre director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) has one hitch: Romy has never been satisfied sexually. Dedicated to the family she’s built with him and their daughter Isabel (Esther McGregor), Romy keeps calm (and keeps porn handy in order to finish) and carries on. That is until a few weeks before Christmas when her whole world comes crashing down after she meets a beguiling intern named Samuel (Harris Dickinson) who challenges her in the most delicious and unexpected of ways. The two embark on a scintillating dom-sub relationship that finally fills the gaps in Romy’s sexual life. But what does this mean for her family? This has been marketed as an erotic thriller, but it’s not one in the traditional sense. There are some thrills in terms of what this relationship will mean for her family and at work, especially when the power play between Romy and Samuel does eventually find its way outside the bedroom. But really the film is less about finding thrills, and more about listening to your own desires and finding a way to communicate them with your life partner. Although the sex scenes are great (and the soundtrack is full of bangers like INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart”), the film’s best scenes come in unexpected moments of connection, one between Romy and her daughter Isabel, another between Romy, Samuel, and Jacob. In terms of its themes about connection and communication, I actually think this film would make a great double feature with one of my favorites of the year: Marija Kavtaradzė’s underseen Sundance gem Slow. Babygirl is in theaters starting December 25th including the BAM in Brooklyn, multiple Laemmle locations in Los Angeles, the Davis Theater in Chicago, and multiple Alamo Drafthouses around the country. Next week you should be able to find more tickets and showtimes here.
Also opening on Christmas Day is Maura Delpero’s WWII-set drama Vermiglio, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice, the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, and is Italy’s submission for International Feature at the Oscars this year, their first selection directed by a woman in 20 years1. The sweeping drama centers on the large family of a stern schoolteacher living in the titular remote Alpine town and how their lives become irrevocably altered after a Sicilian soldier named Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico) hides out there after he deserts the army along with another young man from the village and later falls in love with the schoolteacher’s eldest daughter Lucia (Martina Scrinzi). I spoke to Delpero about her sprawling film, the ways it speaks to the slow freedom generations of women experienced in post-war Italy, and more for my January column at RogerEbert.com, which will publish after the film expands in next month. If you are in New York City, you can catch Vermiglio at the IFC Center starting on Christmas Day. It expands to the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles and the Gene Siskel Film Center here in Chicago on January 3rd.
Opening next Friday, December 27th, is Sandhya Suri’s feminist police procedural Santosh is the U.K.’s submission to the International Oscars this year. The film stars Shahana Goswami as the titular Santosh, a 28-year-old widow who becomes a police officer after her husband dies in the line of duty. As she begins to investigate the case of a young girl's murder, Santosh slowly learns that perhaps both society and the system are corrupt beyond repair. The film opens next Friday at the IFC Center in New York City and will expand to the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on January 10th and the Metrograph in New York City on January 19th.
Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison is making her directorial debut with The Fire Inside, from a script by Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins. The film tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (Ryan Destiny), a teenager from Flint, Michigan who went on to become a two-time Olympic boxing champion and fought the system for gender equity in terms of compensation for female athletes in her chosen sport. I saw the film at its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year. Here’s what I wrote then:
A lesser film might have stopped when Claressa won her Olympic gold, but that is only half the story. Claressa, like many female athletes, must face levels of misogyny around how women should present themselves out of the ring as well as in it. Or, as the PR rep for U.S.A. Boxing puts it, “It’s not fair, but for women, it’s not just about how skilled you are.” Claressa competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, winning gold in both years. Yet, just this summer, eventual gold medalist Imane Khelif was subjected to similar, and in some cases even worse, forms of misogyny about her looks in and out of the ring. As the saying says, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The film opens on Christmas Day. You can find tickets and showtimes here.
Born in Montréal in 1938, Francine Desbiens studied at the Institut des arts appliqués de Montréal, graduating in 1964. Working as a director, animator, producer, and even as a professor, she has made over twenty animated films, most of which examine various faces of family life. Several of her films are available to screen for free thanks to the National Film Board of Canada, including her 1985 Christmas-set film Variations on Ah! vous dirai-je, maman. Desbiens focuses on a single setting — a family room — over the course of a century as a way to explore the ebbs and flows of time. The film begins in a traditional Victorian Christmas with all its ornate charm, before slowly transforming into a room with more stripped-back modern sensibilities. You can stream the short film here.
Earlier this year at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival I saw Klára Tasovská’s amazing documentary I’m Not Everything I Want to Be about the trailblazing feminist Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, so I was excited to see one of her short film streaming on DAFilms. Filmed during her time as a student at FAMU (the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague), Tasovská’s short film Tree follows the journey of a pine tree as it is cut down in a Czech forest to it being erected as a Christmas spectacle in Prague’s Old Town Square to it being removed after Christmas like a piece of rubbish, to its last journey out of town where it is turned into the pavement over the sand at a beachfront cafe. My favorite part of the film comes in the middle as the tree is being erected in Old Town Square, a woman stops to watch the procedure and share her disapproval of the tradition. She then recalls to Tasovská’ a book she read as a schoolgirl called The Pine (Borovice) by Czech writer Jan Vrba about the life of a pine tree as a “living creature.” The woman cannot recall if the pine is cut down or not at the end of the book, but she remembers so much life that happens around it. It’s a bittersweet moment in the middle of the film that gives the whole structure more poignancy. It’s inclusion speaks to power of Tasovská as a great listener and storyteller, as all documentarians should be. You can watch the film on DAFilms.
🎄🎄🎄 Also, if you want some more Christmas cheer while you wait for Santa to steal cookies and leave some coal in your stockings, I made this list of Christmas Movies Directed by Women. It’s not comprehensive because there are a ton of Hallmark movies directed by women. Someday I will flesh it all out, but for now there are 46 gems (and a few stinkers for good measure) that you should seek out 🎄🎄🎄
Lastly, this week’s pick from the Palestine Film Index is Dara Khader’s extremely short documentary From My Goats. Khader films a day in the life of her goats, from her waking up and feeding them in the morning to milking them to taking the milk out to fields to feed others. It’s just a beautiful little tribute to some gorgeous little goats and well worth three minutes of your time. You can watch the film here on YouTube.
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That film was Cristina Comencini’s Don’t Tell, which was ultimately nominated for the award, although it did not win. But also it’s wild because Alice Rohrwacher’s films have been RIGHT THERE.