I enjoyed writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits well enough at first. Yet as my chronological distance from the project increases, so too do my annoyances with its gender power dynamics. The film follows six very specific Brooklynites whose lives are vaguely intertwined and then thrown into further disarray when a young, beautiful Australian disrupts…
The story of A Woman’s Life (original title “Une vie”) centers around Jeanne Le Perthuis des Vauds (Judith Chemla, “In the Name of My Daughter”). Like most women of her time and place (19th-century France), she exists only to suitably and fruitfully marry. She spends her days reading or playing backgammon with her parents, engaging…
In Monogamish, director Tao Ruspoli (“Being in the World”) explores the benefits and constraints of the union of marriage while grappling with his own public divorce. The film — part documentary, part self-help journey — opens with Ruspoli penning a letter to relationship and sex columnist Dan Savage. The camera captures Ruspoli as he hand…
It’s probably safe to say, those who remember the explosive tennis court confrontation between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs were either exhilarated or exhausted by the gender-clashing sporting event dubbed the “battle of the sexes.” The mega-match, after all, forced the nation to take sides in defense of their gender pride. But what was…
When spotlighting the dysfunctional familial factors in a period piece film set against the background of retro-urban rambunctiousness, it is a creative challenge to balance the ingredients involved: Underlying marital strife, sibling rivalry, adultery, emotional stagnation and fragile relations. In co-writer/director Gillian Robespierre’s nostalgic mid-nineties comedy, Landline, we are whisked back to a “vintage” time…
Weiner, a documentary about the 2013 New York City mayoral campaign of Anthony Weiner, is very funny and very painful. It’s also one of the most engaging and insightful political movies I’ve seen. Co-directors Elyse Steinberg and former Weiner chief of staff Josh Kriegman were given extraordinary access to Anthony Weiner as he attempted to…
Many of William Shakespeare’s heroines are proud and witty women who are reluctant to be wooed; for example, Rosaline of Love’s Labor’s Lost, and Rosalind of As You Like It. One of the most high-spirited characters in Shakespeare is Beatrice, the niece of Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing, a sharp-tongued woman who more than…
