Amanda Kramer’s new reverie Give me Pity! is a strange and unsettling affair. At once a parody and an ode to 70s and 80s TV variety shows, the film – on its glitzy surface at least – focuses on Sissy St Claire (played by U.S. actress and daughter of Bette […]
Feminism
Give Me An A (Grimmfest 2023)(Review)
Repulsion (1965) Jeanne Dielman for the beat ‘60s with a supremely knotty director in tow (Review)
Before we begin, I feel as though my review must be prefaced with a trigger warning; Repulsion is not exactly light viewing. As you may know, Repulsion was directed by the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski, a man whose directorial back-catalogue contains some of the most celebrated examples of the […]
Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022) One of the best representations of motherhood committed to film (Review)
In Huesera (2022) we meet Valeria, a woman who has always wanted to be a mother. But when she finally falls pregnant, rather than feeling happy, she feels that something is off. As she progresses through her pregnancy, these feelings intensify and she is haunted by sinister visions and threatened […]
Morgiana (1972) A weird, stimulating, terrible and beautiful dreamscapes of malice (Review)
Morgiana tells the twisted tale of sisters Klára and Viktoria, torn apart by jealousy, greed and malice. When Klára inherits their father’s estate, leaving Viktoria with the wind battered, remote country house, Viktoria seethes. When the man Viktoria loves falls in love with Klára, Viktoria boils. And when Klára continues […]
Wanda (1970) A Glimpse of the Real New Hollywood? (Review)
April 17th sees the release to the Criterion Collection of Wanda, the first and only feature film from Barbara Loden, actor and wife of Elia Kazan. A landmark in US cinema’s independent movement, Wanda is set in the unglamorous sooty surroundings of eastern Pennsylvania’s industrial heartlands and features a central […]
Swallow (2019) the Horror of Control (Review)
A theme of David Cronenberg’s work with horror was the tenet that the human body is far more terrifying than any monster or external violence. His work revolved around the corruption of the human form with all manner of disturbing aberrations. Post-Cronenberg, the concept of body horror has become inanely […]
Adoption (1975) A Personal Film from an Unsung Female Director (Review)
Released to Blu-ray by Second Run this week is Adoption, or Örökbefogadás to give it its native Hungarian title. A 1975 film from director Márta Mészáros, it tells the story of Kata (Katelin Berek), a forty-three-year-old factory worker embroiled in a longing-standing love affair with a married man, Jóska (László […]