100 great movies by female direc­tors – part 7

It is a remark­able, rare thing when a film estab­lish­es itself as an actu­al trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence. Ful­ly immer­sive, beau­ti­ful­ly uplift­ing and ardent­ly artis­tic, Niki Caro’s Whale Rid­er doc­u­ments the spir­i­tu­al jour­ney of a young Maori girl, Paikea. She is the descen­dant of the tribe’s myth­i­cal god and grand­daugh­ter to their Chief, and is told she must ful­fil her des­tiny and val­i­date her posi­tion as the right­ful suc­ces­sor and key to the future of her com­mu­ni­ty. In her quest, she tena­cious­ly and defi­ant­ly chal­lenges social con­ven­tions, gen­der bound­aries and archa­ic tra­di­tion, regain­ing her sense of self and find­ing her voice as a woman. Under­neath the dis­ap­prov­ing gaze of her Grand­fa­ther, Pai pre­vails, her unde­terred integri­ty and impec­ca­ble emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty re-unit­ing those around her, and ulti­mate­ly solid­i­fy­ing her sta­tus as leader in this poignant, mod­est­ly polit­i­cal fable. Tahlia McK­in­non

Human beings are hard-wired to psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly over­look the fact that, anatom­i­cal­ly speak­ing, we’re all just a lum­ber­ing mound flesh and bones. Mari­na de Van’s In My Skin presents the high-rolling, ratio­nal, beau­ti­ful woman, Esther (played by de Van), at the point where the appalling real­i­ty of the body as noth­ing more than a mass of slow­ly rot­ting organ­ic mat­ter hits home. A gash to the leg while wan­der­ing in a friend’s back gar­den dur­ing a late night cock­tail soirée trig­gers a casu­al course of self-abuse and muti­la­tion. But de Van nev­er attempts to diag­nose Esther’s prob­lem. Indeed, you could argue that she doesn’t see it as a prob­lem at all. Friends and lovers notice her errat­ic behav­iour, but such is the supreme del­i­ca­cy of the cen­tral char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion, you’re made to feel that every­thing hap­pen­ing isn’t at all trans­gres­sive, but explorato­ry, edu­ca­tion­al and even vague­ly erot­ic. Though very potent sequences of slic­ing, gnaw­ing and inter­nal­ly inves­ti­gat­ing are pep­pered through­out, this is a work which ques­tions whether we should be com­fort­able and con­fi­dent with­in our own bod­ies. It’s bril­liance derives from the fact that de Van refus­es to say what she thinks. DJ

It’s based on a nov­el by Alan Warn­er, but blooms cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly as a visu­al and aur­al dream­scape dri­ven by female tal­ent. Lynne Ram­say had the wis­dom to direct Saman­tha Mor­ton as an essen­tial­ly silent film star in this tale of a super­mar­ket clerk who reacts to her boyfriend’s sui­cide by not telling any­one, send­ing his unpub­lished nov­el to pub­lish­ers under her own name and escap­ing to an Andalu­sian hol­i­day. As Ram­say holds back, refus­ing to tell us how Morvern feels or have her talk much at all, the audi­ence leans in, grasp­ing to fig­ure it out. The frag­ile shock of Morton’s strik­ing, moon-shaped face and wide pupils cre­ate a blank reflec­tor that reveal the world around her, while Morvern’s sto­ry unfolds as a defi­ant fem­i­nist resis­tance in the way she gets on with her life on her own terms. A beguil­ing, bril­liant movie. Ian Mant­gani

Sofia Cop­po­la is the queen of improb­a­bly good-look­ing cin­e­mat­ic ennui. Whether it’s sun­light bounc­ing off the blonde hair of doomed sis­ters or a rich actor float­ing alone in the pool of the Château Mar­mont, her char­ac­ters are beau­ti­ful­ly com­posed in their lone­li­ness. Who could for­get Scar­lett Johansson’s vul­ner­a­ble intro­duc­tion in sheer peach panties? Her char­ac­ter, Char­lotte, is soft and small as she stares out of the win­dow of a high-rise Japan­ese hotel. All of Coppola’s films linger on through pro­found visu­al vignettes, but this, her Oscar win­ner, has gone fur­ther, becom­ing short­hand for the feel­ing of dis­lo­ca­tion from exot­ic expe­ri­ences. Of course the per­son that Char­lotte finds for com­pan­ion­ship is Bill Mur­ray. As Bob – an actor repeat­ed­ly forced to per­form the same smooth line about whiskey – he gives a les­son in how ridicu­lous­ness feels and looks. Ridicu­lous­ness is the over­rid­ing feel­ing in Lost in Trans­la­tion, with punch­lines arriv­ing as alien­ation and absur­di­ty reach a simul­ta­ne­ous pin­na­cle. The only thing that makes sense in these sit­u­a­tions is hav­ing anoth­er human to hear your whis­pers. Sophie Monks Kaufman

This nasty alle­go­ry on the human spoils of the sex trade is pre­sent­ed as an ambi­ent, Lewis Car­roll-like fan­ta­sia that’s all wrapped in eeri­ly pris­tine lace and rib­bons. A six year old arrives in a strange, seclud­ed board­ing school. She is unpacked from a cof­fin by a gag­gle of pre-teens, all in white dress­es and with rib­bons in their hair, the colour delin­eat­ing their age and sta­tus. Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s idio­syn­crat­ic film observes these girls as they car­ry out menial tasks, take dance prac­tice, frol­ic in an out­door pool, but most­ly they’re left to won­der as to the nature of the secret mis­sions their peers are sent on. Some may see Inno­cence as an obnox­ious and over­ly blunt film about a ​“whore” instinct that’s forcibly sup­plant­ed in girls from a young age, while oth­ers may see it as an veiled and mys­te­ri­ous explo­ration of inter-gen­er­a­tional con­flict and pet­ty jeal­ousies that nat­u­ral­ly occurs between women. Few would argue that it looks and sounds the busi­ness. David Jenk­ins

The defin­ing image of Miran­da July’s auda­cious debut Me and You and Every­one We Know isn’t July scrawl­ing ​‘FUCK’ on her wind­screen or John Hawkes set­ting his hand ablaze but a piece of impromp­tu ASCII art cre­at­ed by a six year old. Four brack­ets and two greater-than signs illus­trate his sim­ple desire: ​“I’ll poop into her but­t­hole and then she’ll poop it back into my but­t­hole, and then we’ll just keep doing it back and forth with the same poop.” By attempt­ing to approx­i­mate how a phys­i­cal process can embody an emo­tion­al bond, he sums up the strug­gle to con­nect open­ly that is the theme not just of the film but most of July’s mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary work. Even when they can’t artic­u­late it, all of her char­ac­ters – like me, like you, like every­one we know – are ulti­mate­ly just look­ing for some­one to poop back and forth into their but­t­hole, for­ev­er ))><(( Jason Ward

What the hell hap­pened to Sand­hya Suri? It’s been a decade since her – at time of writ­ing – only fea­ture film was released into cin­e­mas. It wasn’t a film which com­men­ta­tors held up as being small gem, nor was Suri lav­ished when it came to cel­e­bra­to­ry col­umn inch­es. Though its run at London’s ICA cin­e­ma just stretched on and on and on, word of mouth help­ing to build it up into an alter­na­tive cause célèbre. The con­cept is dead­ly sim­ple: a man who emi­grates from India to the UK dur­ing the 1960s decides to pur­chase a Super8 video cam­era and sound recorder so he can doc­u­ment his life and send the tapes back to his fam­i­ly. The footage has been culled and edit­ed by Suri into a cine-mem­oir of the immi­grant expe­ri­ence in the UK at a volatile time in the country’s social pro­gres­sion, but it’s also an essay on com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy and the val­ue of images at a time when they remained the pre­serve of a lucky few. David Jenk­ins

Imag­ing a new ver­sion of Romeo and Juli­et, where Romeo was actu­al­ly con­duct­ing an illic­it affair with a bar wait­ress the entire time he was pro­fess­ing his undy­ing love to Juli­et. Wel­come to Vales­ka Grisebach’s Long­ing, a film which ren­ders all notions of het­ro­sex­u­al romance as being sen­ti­men­tal, val­ourous and nec­es­sary by refram­ing it as a tac­tic that peo­ple can use to shore up their own dis­hon­esty. It care­ful­ly bal­ances the empa­thet­ic and the aca­d­e­m­ic, nev­er judg­ing char­ac­ters for act­ing on urges which they might not under­stand while always mind­ful of the story’s roots in clas­si­cal tragedy. Markus is a dozy lock­smith in an excite­ment-neu­tral Ger­man berg who spends his week­ends train­ing with the aux­il­iary fire depart­ment. A cosy, if hard­ly idyl­lic life with his wife, Ella, is thrown into dis­cord when, on a whim, he insti­gates an affair while on one of his boozy week­end away-days. The audi­ence are left to guess exact­ly what is dri­ving Markus to make these deci­sions which seem so counter-intu­itive to the preser­va­tion of hap­pi­ness, for him and those around him (includ­ing a cute pet rab­bit). In the almost com­ic drab­ness of the set­tings and the inex­pres­sive­ness of the char­ac­ters, Grise­bach appears to be sug­gest­ing that love can only be nur­tured via hap­pi­ness from anoth­er source – that sim­ple human com­pan­ion­ship is not enough. A clever final sequence helps to decon­struct every­thing we’ve seen, but also leaves us to ques­tion whether all that we’ve seen was quite so eas­i­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble. DJ

When it comes to the tra­jec­to­ry of a direct­ing career, few film­mak­ers have ever fol­lowed a path as jar­ring and unpre­dictable as that of Lone Scher­fig, who went from work­ing with­in the con­straints of Dogme 95 to direct­ing a Nick Horn­by script in just the span of a few years. It’s hard to imag­ine that Lars von Tri­er would approve, but who the shit real­ly cares what that guy thinks when Scherfig’s con­ces­sion to a warmer world of sto­ry­telling result­ed in a film as true and full-bod­ied as An Edu­ca­tion? The sto­ry of 16-year-old Jen­ny (Carey Mul­li­gan, in the star-mak­ing per­for­mance that earned her the cov­et­ed Hol­ly­wood Film Fes­ti­val award for Best Hol­ly­wood Break­through Per­for­mance for a Female!), who’s seduced by a dirty old Sars­gaard only to learn that he’s a con artist with designs on her vir­gin­i­ty, Scherfig’s break­through film is a nos­tal­gic and emo­tion­al­ly sump­tu­ous look at the skin we have to shed in order to grow up. She’s the rare film­mak­er who knew how to depict a sense of loss in such a way that it dou­bles as a pal­pa­ble moment of lib­er­a­tion, and An Edu­ca­tion is a mas­ter­class in how she does it. David Ehrlich

If it weren’t too much of a psy­cho­log­i­cal strain to com­pre­hend, we might sug­gest that direc­tor Jes­si­ca Haus­ner can be summed up as Michael Haneke with a sense of humour. Of her Aus­tri­an coun­try­man she shares a strin­gent for­mal rigour as well as a predilec­tion towards telling sto­ries which lament the fol­ly of exis­tence. Yet, where Haneke aims to wrap the view­er over the knuck­les with his swish­ing cane, Haus­ner embraces the absurd, lock­ing horns with that sense of abject futil­i­ty and then laugh­ing in its face. With the help of wide-eyed French actress Sylvie Tes­tud, this 2009 film exam­ines the busi­ness and bureau­cra­cy of the church, espe­cial­ly at a time dur­ing which it might have helped to invoke a mod­ern mir­a­cle. Testud’s para­plegic Chris­tine arrives at the pop­u­lar Chris­t­ian pil­grim­age site of Lour­des in France with the hope that God might inter­vene to help her rise up from her seat. Haus­ner (play­ing God) duly responds to her call, but the fur­ther riposte from the Lour­des mir­a­cle con­fir­ma­tion coun­cil is what makes this movie so dar­ing, and so mov­ing. DJ

Read more 100 great movies by female direc­tors: 1 – 10 | 11 – 20 | 21 – 30 | 31 – 40 | 41 – 50 | 51 – 60 | 71 – 80 | 81 – 90 | 91 – 100