Female Film Critics 24/375
Genre flourishes make for an attention-grabbing visual experience, but here are only so many times the audience wants to see Jo awaken from a nightmare to be unsure if the events happened. Where the film is powerful is in its raw depiction of how overwhelming it can be to take care of a new-born and how easily exhaustion can lead to something dark and extremely alienating.
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Near future dystopia/science fiction narratives are not a new concept. Black Mirror created by Charlie Booker capitalised on our collective anxiety about technology and was often prescient about how contemporary society is shaping itself in the Western World. Sophie Barthes’ The Pod Generation is so adjacent to our future that she incorporates technology from now almost seamlessly. Current generation iPads abound as well as phones that are recognisably the ones most people use at the moment. The “nowness” of Barthes’ vision makes it all the more immediate.
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Australia certainly has plenty of is crime stories. The best remember something essential – their setting. Line of Fire stretches reality into an edgy and over-the-top action film which relies on truly suspending all disbelief. In the space of one night (and a very twisted revenge story) Sam (Nadine Garner) drags Jamie (Samantha Toij) to hell. What would stretch credibility in an American film has zero credibility in an Australian one. The film could be viewed as a morality play, but that would be a generous interpretation of what it is, action exploitation.
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Iranian-Australian director Noora Niasari’s potent and essential debut is based on her childhood experiences. As a child Noora was living in a women’s shelter after her Iranian mother had to flee her abusive father. Noora asked her mother to write an autobiography of her experiences dealing with the constant fear of her retributive husband, exile from the Persian community in Australia, and the determination to raise her daughter in as stable an environment as possible. The memoire became Niasari’s basis of Shayda. Shayda received the Audience Award for World Cinema: Dramatic at Sundance Film Festival 2023.
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Scrapper is an exquisite coming-of-age story for both its protagonists. Georgie and Jason learn what it is like to need and love each other in a manner that is naturalistic despite, or perhaps because of, director Charlotte Regan’s forays into the fantastical. Newcomer Lola Campbell is a brilliant presence who manages to make her character, young Georgie, deeply genuine in both her rebellion and aching sadness. Scrapper won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at Sundance Film Festival 2023.
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Alice, Darling is a frank examination of the common but hard to tackle phenomenon of abuse, In Mary Nighy’s debut feature. Anna Kendrick brilliantly portrays a woman who is being drowned by her boyfriend’s coercive control. The film may be imperfect in places, but it is important and gives voice to a group of near silent victims and places emphasis on how essential it is for those who suffer to have a support network.
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What lets My Animal down is Jae Matthews’ script which meanders in too many directions and engages in a kind of fatalism that feeds into queer misery. Despite the strong central performances, technically accomplished direction, and an excellent soundtrack, My Animal doesn’t quite know what its central thesis is. Is it worse that Heather is a lesbian in a small community, or is it worse that she’s an actual mythical monster? If she becomes open about her sexuality does she unleash a beast?
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In 1919 a silent film called alternatively Ravished Armenia or Auction of Souls premiered in America. The film, the story of Aurora Mardiganian whose non-anglicised name is Arshaluys Mardigian – a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. The film was a hit and propelled the teen whose experiences were the basis of the film and also the star of the film, to a small amount of fame. Immediately, however, director Inna Sahakyan informs the viewer that her documentary Aurora’s Sunrise is not about a meteoric rise to stardom, but about a survivor of unimaginable horrors.
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The titular protagonist of Carolina Cavalli’s delightfully absurd yet heartfelt film, Amanda has one of the worst cases of arrested development for a twenty-five-year-old in recent cinema history. The film is an absurdist coming-of-age story that is reminiscent of something Lanthimos or Baumbach might have put together but remains completely Cavalli. Amanda is perpetually fifteen, or even younger at times. She’s brilliant, devious, spikey, absurd, and yet somewhat wonderful. Marching across the streets of Turin in her odd (and rarely changing) costume of boots, an eighties inspired peter pan collar shirt, and a granny vest, Amanda is constantly sticking her middle finger up at almost everything.
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Writer/director Laurel Parmet’s coming-of-age feature The Starling Girl is a clear-eyed vision of repression and control under the patriarchal gaze of an evangelical community in Kentucky. The titular starling girl is Jem Starling, a seventeen-year-old who has only ever known the close-knit religious group and is struggling to reconcile her natural desires with the strictures of the church.
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