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Showing posts from February, 2020

248. French director Céline Sciamma’s fourth feature film “Portrait de la jeune fille en feu” (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) (2019) based on her original screenplay: An awesome film built on impeccable direction, intelligent screenplay, magnetic performances, cinematography and choice of music

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C éline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire may be described by some as a feminist film that tells a tale of four women characters in 18 th century France devoid of any significant male characters, and made by a female director and a female cinematographer.   At the end of this remarkable film, you tend to discount the female element. You are stunned by the sophisticated quality of cinema the film offers that makes you discount the overwhelming female gender quotient.   The following two citations of awards bestowed on Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire amply describe the worth of the film. "The Gold Hugo for Best Film goes to Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Céline Sciamma. The film portrays not only the exuberance of falling in love and the all-consuming nature that is love, but also the beauty of women's solidarity and the attempt to fit in a world that rarely seems to be made for them. The strength of the filmmaking combined with amazing acting, photography, and music ...

247. Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s second feature film “Dylda” (Beanpole) (2019): A Russian Nobel Prize winning work of literature inspires a complex film on the varied tribulations of an unmarried woman

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T hree very interesting and complex films on women with screenplays written by the film’s own directors are those made by male directors. One of those three would be Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole .   Balagov has admitted that his main source of inspiration was Nobel Prize for Literature winner Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexeivich’s 1983 book War doesn’t have a woman’s face . The other two films of similar artistic strengths and flavour about unmarried women are the American films: Joseph L. Manckiewicz’ The Barefoot Contessa (1954) with Ava Gardner (in arguably her best role) and Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman (1978) with Jill Clayburgh (in one of her best roles). Balagov, unlike the two US director-cum-screenplay writers, co-scripted his film with another male scriptwriter, Aleksandr Terekhov. Both Balagov and Mazursky present a quixotic emancipation for their lead characters, while in Manckiewicz’ case the liberation, unfortunately, leads to tragedy. Iya (Victoria Miroshnichenko) ...