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Many of the year’s most interesting independent films took as their subject the experience of women. Not the usual stuff of romcoms, but the messy, confusing, chaotic reality of life in a female body. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was great to watch.
Sex, desire, rage, grief, love — all figured large in smaller films. At the top of this heaving heap of womanly indies were films like Saint Frances, Yes, God, Yes and The Queen’s Gambit (technically a limited series, I know, but still one of the most fascinating character explorations that I’ve seen recently).
And still more! A Promising Young Woman, Nomadland and The Forty-Year-Old Version — all written and directed by women as well.
What did these different films have in common? Flawed and occasionally infuriating females at the centre of complex stories. Some were more fun than others. I would gladly trade a damp squidge of movie like Ammonite for something with a bit more verve and humour, like Yes, God, Yes.
Set in the early days of the internet, Yes, God, Yes is more than a nostalgia piece. Good old sexual hypocrisy never gets old. Natalia Dyer plays Alice, a clueless teenager enduring the cloistered stickiness of a Catholic education. It’s a lot of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and frantic stroking of rosary beads.
Like most of her fellow students, Alice has a secret. Too many repeat viewings of the sex scene in the movie Titanic have lit a fire in the wee girl that won’t be so easily doused.
Accused of being “a pervy psycho” by friends and slut shamed for tossing the salad of a fellow classmate — a term that she doesn’t even understand much less know how to do — Alice decides to take things in hand, as it were. A church retreat run by the cool kids at her school seems just the thing to resurrect her social standing. Ahh, the best laid plans of horny teens...
At camp, a glimpse of the furry forearms of a senior named Chris sends things careening off the rails. Beware those hairy-armed hunks; they will always get you into trouble. After getting caught with an illicit cell phone, Alice is assigned the job of janitor as punishment. God and the internet work in mysterious ways, and when Alice accidentally witnesses the camp’s religious leader up to some very unholy business, a form of divine justice ensues.
Sex, relationships, and the confusion therein are also at the heart of Saint Frances. A mid-thirties woman named Bridget is floating through life, with little ambition beyond the occasional bout of casual sex. When she gets a job as a nanny for a fierce-willed kid named Frances, something shifts.
It isn’t just actual responsibility, but genuine caring for another human being that brings on something of a transformation. Although there’s some tweeness in the narrative that skims the edge of smugness, the film is self-aware enough to pull back from the brink.
Other films are more unsparing and flintier in their approach. Miss Juneteeth tells a story of poverty, struggle and ultimately independence, through the experiences of a mother, daughter and a beauty pageant.
While the new Wonder Women action film WW84 purportedly offered a feminist take on the superhero genre, it wasn’t a patch on the challenges that ordinary women contend with.
Faced between the choice of watching Wonder Woman zip through the air, bustier a’blazing, and a story about an average woman balancing work, family and everyday ambitions, give me the heroic stuff of paying rent, taking care of kids and occasionally having a glass of wine and a bath at the end of the day.
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