Faux Mink, Real Hunters
Welcome to my new subscribers! And hello to my old friends. This is the seventh edition of Thelma & Alice, a monthly newsletter to help you find and watch movies made by women. This newsletter is an offshoot of my blog, Thelma & Alice, which I started a few years with the New Year’s Resolution to see more movies directed by women. My goal was to make sure that at least half the movies I watched in 2018 had either a female writer or director. It was a goal made out of a desire to support female filmmakers in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, but over the years it’s something I’ve continued to do because it has opened up my cinematic universe and led me to a lot of movies I never would have watched. I hope this newsletter will do the same for you—and if you like it, please consider sharing it with a friend.
This month, it’s been very hot in the evenings, and I’ve been going to the pool rather than streaming movies, so I dug into my archives for several of these recommendations. I was tempted to recommend the classic summer movies E.T. and Dirty Dancing, because they are both written by women, but I know you’ve already seen those. It would be like recommending ice cream -- or going to the pool in the evenings. When you’re ready to come indoors, please enjoy these picks . . .
An Eccentric New Eco-Thriller
Spoor (2021)
Directed by Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamik
Written by Agnieszka Holland and Olga Tokarczuk
Streaming on Criterion and Kanopy, VOD rental $4.99
Spoor is a Polish crime film with ecological themes in the vein of Woman at War and First Reformed. Directed by Agnieszka Holland, it premiered to great acclaim in Europe in 2017, but didn’t make it to the U.S. until earlier this year. It centers on Jamina Duszejiko, a one-woman crusader against the cruelties of poaching and hunting, which she witnesses on the land surrounding her country home. When her beloved dogs go missing, she suspects they have fallen victim to poachers, too, and wages war against local hunters, reporting their illegal activities to the police. Meanwhile, a number of hunters begin to turn up dead. Duszejiko’s far-out theory is that they are revenge killings by the animals themselves. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
An Indie Comedy from the Late, Great Lynn Shelton
Sword of Trust (2019)
Directed by Lynn Shelton
Written by Lynn Shelton and Michael Patrick O’Brien
Streaming on Netflix
This goofy road trip story is director Lynn Shelton’s last movie and stars her boyfriend, Marc Maron, who you may know from his stand-up comedy or from his podcast, WTF. If you listen to Maron's podcast, you know that his sobriety is a big part of his identity and he brings that personal experience to this part, but in a low-key, lived-in way that gives this movie, which is a bit of a shaggy-dog tale, a certain weight and melancholy. I don’t want to spoil the plot, which revolves around a Civil War-era sword and a right-wing conspiracy theory, but it’s good at showing the way people can choose to live in a reality constructed by the internet. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
Sex and the City in Tel Aviv
In Between (2018)
Written and Directed by Maysaloun Hamoud
Streaming on Kanopy, VOD rental $2.99
I immediately felt as if I knew the three Palestinian women at the center of this movie: Salma, Nour, and Laila. You meet Salma and Laila first, out dancing with their roommate who is about to be married. They are awakened the next morning by Nour, a cousin of their bride-to-be roommate who, unbeknownst to Salma and Laila, has been promised the extra room in their Tel Aviv apartment. A devout Muslim, Nour is the opposite of Salma and Laila. She’s in the midst of planning a traditional wedding, but she has come to Tel Aviv because she wants to finish her computer science degree first. It’s an odd couple situation that quickly blossoms into a deep friendship as they realize that they are each unconventional in their own way, and struggling to find a place within a traditional, patriarchal society. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
Netflix Hidden Treasure
Shirkers (2018)
Directed by Sandi Tan
Streaming on Netflix
I fell hard for this documentary when it came out back in 2018, and reviewed it for The Common. It’s about filmmaker Sandi Tan’s first movie, which she made in 1992 when she was just a teenager in Singapore. With the encouragement of a mentor and the help of her friends and family, she shot and directed a remarkably original feature film that had a strong aesthetic vision reminiscent of Wes Anderson -- but she made it years before Anderson was on the scene. With the help of her mentor, Tan planned to enter the film in festivals, but instead of submitting the film, her mentor stole the raw footage and broke off contact. Decades later the film was returned to Tan, leaving her to piece together what happened. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER
Don’t Forget Mink Comes in Bright Green
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2012)
Directors: Lisa Immordino Vreeland and Bent-Yorgen Perlmutt
Streaming on Amazon Prime
I watched this documentary a couple of weeks ago when I needed a dose of glamour, only to discover that this Diana Vreeland practically invented it. She was the ugly duckling of her family, which only made her more attentive to beauty. Vreeland became famous as the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, and later Vogue, where she pretty much created the idea of the exacting and abstruse fashion editor. She spent every morning in her pajamas writing memos that said things like, “the tote bag is the thing,” and “don’t forget mink comes in bright green, bright yellow, etc.” IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER