Female Film Critics 24/375
If you like to binge-watch an entire enthralling series, find “Hostage” on Netflix. It’s a fast-paced political thriller, albeit with some melodramatic interludes, since the two central women – duly elected Heads of State – are constantly maligned and undermined because of inherent misogyny and what is perceived as their vulnerability.
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Immigration and refugees are a serious, hot button subject but in her latest project, Meet the Barbarians (Les Barbares), Julie Delpy trains her lens on the subject with warmth, humour, and grace. Paimpont is a small village in Brittany with old world charm and unique cultural identity separating it from the rest of France. The town council is absolutely delighted to welcome a family of Ukrainian refugees to their village, eager to provide hospitality, comfort, and a home they so desperately need. But Ukrainian refugees are in such high demand in France, Paimpont finds itself playing host to a Syrian family of refugees instead.
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Of the 278 films playing at TIFF in 2024, according to our calculations, approximately 25% are directed or co-directed by women – a number down from the festival’s all-time high of 45% women-directed films in the pandemic-era 2020 online-only festival. Women-helmed films comprised 36% of the festival lineup in 2019 and 2023. Though TIFF may have to make leaps and bounds to reach gender parity, there are still a number of women-helmed films directed by cinematic stalwarts, up-and-comers, and award winners scheduled to hit the screen at the 2024 festival. With more than 65 films, series, and shorts directed by women, there are many opportunities to take in female-helmed films this festival, which runs September 5th through 15th.
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Alice Troughton’s The Lesson is an enthralling, captivating tale of ethics both personal and professional that sucks us in from its enigmatic opening and remains unrelenting in its suspense throughout. With its recent world premiere at Tribeca, its immaculate casting and watertight screenplay by playwright Alex MacKeith make The Lesson one of those rare viewing experiences where – when we are so clearly in the hands of people at the top of their game – we’re able to surrender completely to the experience, with the fully intuitive feeling of trust that nothing here will be predictable or pedestrian.
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Julie Delpy doesn’t like like to be thought of as a movie star, but the problem is she is so electrifying as an actress that we have to think that way. It began with her first role at 14 in Godard’s The Detective. Then there was the Three Colors trilogy and the enduringly popular trilogy Before Sunrise and Before Sunset and Before Midnight. She actually co-wrote the last one. Julie is, as we are reminded in her latest feature, Zoe, a talented writer and director.
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Julie Delpy’s intriguing My Zoe is an intimate and ambitious take on motherhood that mixes heart wrenching divorce drama, science fiction and thorny moral questions regarding reproduction. Delpy, who wrote, directed and stars in the film has, in her sophisticated seventh feature, taken on a complex, ultra modern subject. This is the kind of movie with a plot twist so crucial that one can’t divulge it.
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Ever since I first saw Julie Delpy in Before Sunrise, the first film in Richard Linklater’s top-notch romantic trllogy, I’ve always found her to be casually mesmerizing and naked with her feelings in a way that only a handful of actresses could ever achieve. That is also true with her latest project, “My Zoe,” where she proves to be a triple threat as the female lead, director and writer.
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There are two films in Julie Delpy’s ambitious, sharply-made but unbalanced My Zoe. There’s the scabrous relationship melodrama, about bitter exes sharing custody of a beloved child, which contains the story’s most potent emotions. And there’s the sci-fi-inflected ethical-dilemma grief movie, which houses its most provocative ideas. Both have much to recommend them, not least Delpy’s lithe filmmaking.
Read moreToronto International Film Festival was overrun with big movies about and by Bostonians. While headlines were grabbed by predictable awards-season
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