Film Girl Film Festival Goes Virtual

It can hardly be a surprise, but this year it’s either go virtual or go home. Or rather, stay home. Remember when we all thought this would be done in a few weeks? Then a few months? Then the fall? Well, those hopes have long since died, and we’ve accepted that there were two routes we could take for our upcoming fifth year…cancel the festival or have it take place online.

So we’ve chosen to go virtual. We’ll have more details later, but much will remain the same. Festival dates are still Nov. 13-15, and most importantly, we're still committed to bringing women's stories to the screens!

We're also still accepting submissions until August 23! To enter a feature or short for consideration, go to https://filmfreeway.com/FilmGirlFilmFestival.

52 Films By Women: The Old Guard (2020)

Netflix

By Andrea Thompson

Action movies are every bit as much wish fulfillment fantasies as rom-coms. We want to believe that people are capable of these kinds of breathtaking physical stunts, this formidable of a mindset, and that they could not only stand up to the bad guys, but beat them against all odds, just as we want to believe in the great love stories. 

In real life we know our heroes seldom live up to our impossibly high expectations, or they prove to be all too vulnerable, to pressure and bullets alike. And love can fade, or turn to outright contempt with little to no explanation save for the slow, mundanely cruel struggles of everyday life.

Part of the genius of the Netflix film “The Old Guard” is how brilliantly director Gina Prince-Bythewood gives us this fantasy while updating it for our times. There’s not just a damn good reason our action heroes survive everything their adventures have to offer, from hails of bullets, slit throats, and falls from multiple stories, there are major drawbacks to such resilience. If the immortals in “The Old Guard” no longer have any reason to fear death, an eternity of imprisonment offers chills galore.

Our introduction to this world is Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), a Marine who gets her throat cut when she’s on a mission to take out a military target in Afghanistan, only to find herself healed without a scratch. When she’s approached, or rather, kidnapped by the world-weary Andromache, or Andy (Charlize Theron), she receives explanations, but precious few answers. Andy and the rest of her team, who are also immortals, not only don’t know how or why they received their gifts, they’re also on the run from those who wish to exploit their abilities.

What they have done is spend their time assisting those in need, which is a welcome change in a genre which often seems more interested in taking the time to reassure us that the men dying on-screen are evil in order to justify disposing of them with relish. But “The Old Guard” is more interested in telling us about the people Andy and her men are rescuing, rather than delving into the lives of those who victimized them.

Just as remarkable is the team’s diversity, with Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky’s (Luca Marinelli) relationship not only treated as a simple matter of fact, but spelled out with one of cinema’s most beautifully poetic declarations of love before adding another entry to one of its most passionate kisses. Such a simple thing as a great love story between two men shouldn’t feel so monumental, but it remains so, since the genre’s also known for its reverence for not just traditional masculinity, but hypermasculinity, and often has difficulty doing right by female love interests, let alone two male ones.

Netflix

Skill like this also goes a long way towards excusing plot holes, and this is one area where “The Old Guard” is by no means an exception. You’ll not only excuse Nile still having her phone, but perhaps the biggest hole of all, and that is people continuing to trust CEOs. But multiple people make the decision to trust Merrick (Harry Melling), who’s not just any CEO, but the head of a pharmaceutical empire. Why anyone would be shocked that he turns out to be, shall we say, ethically challenged is beyond me. 

Good thing there’s the incredible action scenes to distract. Andy and her cohorts may heal from any injury inflicted on them, but they still feel pain, and they aren’t gifted with any other power such as super strength. Their abilities come from the fact that they’ve had a very long time to hone their combat skills, and their time on the run is less than glamorous. You’d think they’d have made a few investments, but these action heroes don’t have unlimited access to a vast horde of resources; they hide out in trains and long abandoned buildings while they’re figuring out their next moves. 

Gina Prince-Bythewood saves the most satisfying fantasy for the end, where she gives us a taste of something we crave about as much as love: meaning. When the team gets a small sense of what their actions have wrought for humanity over just the last 150 years alone, it’s a realization that perhaps they are a part of a larger story after all, one that consists of humanity continually choosing their better natures. In our current moment, perhaps that’s the most unlikely belief of all, but “The Old Guard” sells it with such conviction that you can’t help but hope for the best, not just for its characters, but for us all.

52 Films By Women: And She Could Be Next (2020)

PBS.org

By Andrea Thompson

Watching the two part documentary series “And She Could Be Next” is an interesting experience, especially given the last film I watched that dealt with the state of our national politics. But where so many films about our election process tend to give in to the cynicism of a system that so often favors the white and wealthy, I’ve found people of color tend to take a different view, one that can’t afford to give in to despair.

In “And She Could Be Next,” which aired in two parts this week and follows various women of color running for office, what we see feels like a new coalition in the making, one that is electing women of color to the highest offices for the first time. And they’re actively supported by many young people who say they want to push back against the forces that are dehumanizing them. Many of them see volunteering, and especially voting, as an important component of the change they wish to see, a change to elect someone who could help enact that change. If many think it won’t make a difference, there’s enough pushback and voter suppression throughout “And She Could Be Next” to suggest that those in power disagree.

That pushback also happens to be a strategy of dehumanization that not only the various candidates, but the volunteers who work for them, speak of again and again. From the violent response via text on one campaign, to how canvassers of color are followed around in some neighborhoods they’re assigned, and how many immigrants are constantly questioned about their American identities, which culminates in the militarizing of the border and constant crackdowns on immigrants.

The truly frustrating, yet depressingly predictable thing is how little the women running are allowed to be angry, not just not just about the violent rhetoric they face in campaigns, but about the types of violence they experience in their lives. One of the most blatant examples is Lucy McBath, who discovered that her son’s education and solidly middle class upbringing was unable to shield him from gun violence, but there’s also Rashida Tlaib, who discovered her son felt he should hide that he was Muslim, and rising star Bushra Amiwala, a 19-year-old DePaul student running for Cook County Commissioner, who also discovered how much Islam is feared by many Americans. 

The real star though, is Stacey Abrams, and not just because she’s become known outside of the usual political junkie circles. It’s because what happened to her is appalling. She didn’t just run for governor in Georgia, a state which apparently has the most voter suppression laws in the country, she was up against Brian Kemp, who is so cartoonishly regressive his campaign ads are like SNL sketches of Republican messages. And we get to see how Abrams was robbed, on the ground, and in real time, even though she more than had the votes, the coalition, and all the volunteers at the polling locations to not only had out water and food to voters waiting for hours, but to ensure they had the right information in an election where that information changed at the last minute. 

And She Could Be Next

Abrams also calmly responded to Kemp’s various accusations even as he was responsible for all the obstacles and suppression her campaign was facing, as Kemp was also the chief elections officer, and someone who took pride in making it more difficult to get people to vote, or removing their votes entirely. Just as Abrams refuses to concede to a process that was so overtly rigged against her, “And She Could Be Next” isn’t much interested in giving fuel to the arguments against them, and the documentary is all the better for it. There’s no call to “understand” people trying to build the wall, who demonize a religion, and who advocate violent rhetoric. It merely calls for change, a message that is more needed than it should be.

The two part documentary is streaming for free here.

52 Films By Women: Appropriate Behavior (2014)

Appropriate Behavior

By Andrea Thompson

Can a film not be groundbreaking but still do something new? Take the 2014 film “Appropriate Behavior,” which follows another aimless twentysomething who finds herself completely adrift after a breakup. Such a plot couldn’t be called anything close to original, but the aimless young woman in question just happens to be Shirin, played by Desiree Akhavan, who also writes and directs. 

Shirin isn’t just a bisexual woman who couldn’t even bring herself to tell her parents that she and her ex Maxine (Rebecca Henderson) were dating in the first place, said parents are also Persian immigrants, and while they’re far more liberal and open-minded than on-screen immigrant parents typically are, they also have clear expectations for Shirin. Ones that aren’t up for discussion even after they visit the apartment where their daughter and Maxine are cohabitating and note that it only has one bed.

Bisexual representation isn’t just woefully lacking, it’s also extremely misrepresented, or more often, ignored in favor of characters whose sexuality could be firmly placed in the far less complicated category of gay or straight. But Akhavan, who identifies as bisexual herself, ensures that Shirin’s journey never veers into territory that cold be called stereotypical or exploitative, which is even more impressive given that it also consists of a series of graphic sexual (mis)adventures with both men and women in a Brooklyn now firmly hipster and gentrified.

If you can get past that, “Appropriate Behavior” is a damn delight as Shirin physically and emotionally gropes for some sort of solid ground, following Maxine around in an attempt to reconnect, and teaching a class of five-year-olds how to make films, in spite of the fact that she has no experience whatsoever in filmmaking. You’d think that her unused journalism degree would practically mandate at least an interest, but there clearly are exceptions. Luckily for Shirin, the parents clearly don’t care much about their kids’ education. In an age of helicoptery overparenting, it’s actually kind of sweet.

If “Appropriate Behavior” ever does risk veering into the stereotypical, it’s ironically when exploring Shrin and Maxine’s relationship, which is delved into in a nonlinear fashion. At first it’s hard to see just what drew these two together in the first place, and why Shirin is so eager to reunite with a woman who comes off as another uptight, pretentious hipster who is so humorless that when Shirin tells her about an encounter with a guy that involved a soft dick (when they first meet no less), Maxine makes a snide remark...in the guy’s favor. If that isn’t a violation of the girl code, I don’t know what is.

Thankfully, Maxine doesn’t deteriorate into a shrew or a symbol of all the wrong choices Shirin has made in her life. She actually becomes human (eventually), and their time together quickly seems less like a waste than well spent, only to curdle in large part due to Shirin’s refusal to be honest with her parents. Or at least, completely open with them, as their denial seems clear enough.

Humanization has always been the gift that keeps on giving, so when Shirin finally starts to get it together, we actively root for her. Yeah, there’s the usual results, such as a friendlier state of coexistence with Maxine, and actually being honest with her family, some of whom are supportive, some not. One achievement though, will remain uniquely her own, as she decides to take the lead from the kids in her class and help them make a short, uplifting film about...zombie farts. Between this and “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” I hope Akhavan continues to make films that are so truly, uniquely, her own.

52 Films By Women: To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)

Universal Pictures

By Andrea Thompson

Critics may not have been ready for “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar,” but a lot of other people sure as hell were. A comedy about three drag queens driving from New York to compete in a drag beauty pageant in L.A., the film received such mixed reviews that Rotten Tomatoes disgraced itself by giving it a rating of 39%. It clearly made an impression on audiences though, since it was the top grossing movie at the box office for two weeks.

The title refers to a signed photo by Julie Newmar that Vida (Patrick Swayze), the most maternal of the trio, steals as a kind of good luck charm on their journey. It seems to have done the trick, seeing as how Newmar makes a cameo as herself in the film. 

It also seems to have worked its magic on the remainder of the film as well, which remains charming, even if the ending veers too far into wish fulfillment. “To Wong Foo” doesn’t just take the concerns of Vida, her friend Noxeema (Wesley Snipes), and Chi-Chi (John Leguizamo), the newcomer they take under their wing, seriously, it reslishes their passionate appreciation of glamorous femininity.

Nor were any of these ladies defined by their oppression, or what so many outside of their tight-knit community and surrogate family thought of them. Aside from a brief glimpse of Vida’s disapproving mother from afar, Noxeema, Vida, and Chi-Chi are wholly themselves, with no need of validation from said family who are typically the focus, even as they constantly rejected those they deemed outsiders, only to tearfully embrace their choices by the end. 

Perhaps critics also expected the film to at least mention the AIDS crisis, which was the leading cause of death for adults aged 25 to 44 at the time, according to The Advocate. While suffering seems to be the industry’s go-to strategy to build compassion for the marginalized, “To Wong Foo” immerses us in the drag community from the beginning. It’s not only aware of the tough guy/heartthrob personas of Swayze and Snipes, it plays on them, both in the original trailers, and from the moment the film kicks off, with an objectified Patrick Swayze stepping out of the shower in all his swoonworthy, abtastic glory, only to objectify him in much different way as he begins to put on his feminine persona.

How this process is portrayed sets the tone. Just four years prior in “The Silence of the Lambs,” a man feminizing himself was depicted as the ultimate horror, but as the central characters delightedly, carefully adorn themselves with makeup, wigs, stockings and all around style, director Beeban Kidron likewise relishes their joy and the care that goes into it. It’s indicative of the movie’s respect, not just for femininity, but women in general.

Critics might have accused “To Wong Foo” of timidity, political correctness, and a lack of originality in terms of plot, and they weren’t completely wrong. There’s a certain suspension of disbelief required, not just for the over-the-top, utopian ending, but that almost none of the residents of Snydersville, the small town Noxeema, Vida, and Chi-Chi become stranded in, recognize them as men in drag. 

No, “To Wong Foo” couldn’t be accused of diving too deep. But it does mostly accomplish what it set out to do, which is be funny as hell. Snipes, Swayze, and Leguizamo are all in top form, and it’s not only the jokes that land perfectly, it’s the banter, which ranges from tough love to outright animosity, and finally, to camaraderie. 

It’s also not as if the movie is unaware of the very real danger these three face on a daily basis. They only become stranded in Snydersville in the first place because a sheriff attempts to assault Vida one night after he pulls them over. She fights him off, but believes she kills him in the process rather than merely knocking him out, causing all of them to flee in terror. That terror is also present from the moment their encounter with him begins, when Sheriff Dollard pulls them over while they’re driving in a remote area at night. As he comes up to them with his hand firmly on his gun we know is going to be unpleasant at the very least. The only question is whether it will also be horrific.

Thank goodness not all small towns are completely hellish, because while Snydersville proves to have the kinds of characters who benefit from the trio’s presence, it has its share of dangers as well. At one point, Chi-Chi gets harassed from a group of male rednecks in an encounter that threatened to become a gang rape, only to be saved by a nice local boy who actually becomes her love interest. 

One of them also gets his comeuppance from Noxeema in a scene that’s become both iconic and queer canon, and deeply reflective in how the women of Snydersville become stronger and more confident thanks to the three, who literally brighten up a place which initially appears as drab and almost colorless, only to become awash in a sea of red as Noxeema, Vida, and Chi-Chi decide to participate in the town Strawberry Social. By the time the despicable Sheriff Dollard tracks them down, the stage is literally set for a fabulous Western standoff that involves literally running the toxic men in their midst out of town. 

Interestingly though, one of the most difficult tasks wasn’t finding the movie’s leads, it was finding a director. Swayze, Snipes, and Leguizamo eagerly signed on, but practically every male director passed, with Beeban Kidron getting the gig, it seems, more out of desperation than any appreciation for her very considerable skills. 

The ending is also more bittersweet than intended, what with Dollard’s rant about how the Constitution doesn’t apply to such “deviants,” amidst the resurgence of an alt right determined to roll back every hard fought gain progressives have made, including recent court rulings. But at least he gets the clap back he deserves, and “To Wong Foo” also remains an unapologetic celebration of its leads and queer culture, (with cameos from icons that include Ru Paul) paving the way for much more to come.

52 Films By Women: Winter's Bone (2010)

IMDB

By Andrea Thompson

Life-changing is a cliché I hesitate to use, but that was certainly my experience when I saw “Winter's Bone” in theaters in 2010. I remember being in awe, not just of the film's magnificent characters, none of whom came off as stereotypical, but the actors who brought them to life with a tenderness that was in stark contrast to the harsh Ozark setting that director Debra Granik depicted with such quiet, unflinching intensity.

And of course, it gave us the one actress who came to rule them all, Jennifer Lawrence. It was how I and so many others were introduced to her, and there's a reason her performance as 17-year-old Ree was universally praised. I left the theater enraptured, and soon returned three more times to relive Ree's grueling ordeal to keep her family home and land. Lawrence was clearly a young woman who was going places, and I couldn't get enough.

I didn't know it at the time, but this was also the beginning of a lifelong love affair with Debra Granik. At least it hasn't faded yet, with her subsequent films “Stray Dog” and “Leave No Trace” becoming favorites of mine, even if they didn't have quite the same impact as “Winter's Bone.” Apparently I'm not alone in that, since practically everyone who reviewed “Leave No Trace” couldn't help but compare teenage lead Thomasin McKenzie to Lawrence, even though their characters take wildly divergent paths in coming into their own.

As someone who also grew up in a rural environment who would regularly hear about meth houses exploding, Ree's journey resonated with me. It's why I return to “Winter's Bone” again and again, but have yet to watch a single episode of “Breaking Bad.” Granik gave us a vision of meth underworld filled with people who destitute, who were both victims and villains, sans moralization or glorification. Maybe it was just relief that someone, somewhere, knew, and responded with compassion.

It was also a deeply feminist world enmeshed right in the midst of a brutal patriarchy that supposedly prized family but disposed of it with casual, brutal efficiency. The teenage Ree is her family's caregiver, not just for her younger brother and sister, but her mother, who has mentally deteriorated due to the daily stress she was ill-equipped to cope with. When Ree is informed that her missing father put up the house and land for his bond, she is the only one capable of searching for him in order to prevent them all from becoming homeless as well as destitute.

Screenshot

Ree's uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes, who in many ways embodies the traditional tortured noir hero) may eventually become her staunch ally, but it is the other women with whom Ree has more complex relationships, whether it's as a source of sanity, as is the case with her friend Gail (Lauren Sweetser), tenuous allies, or at times, her victimizers and reluctant saviors, such as the Milton women who aid their male relatives in ensuring their meth activities remain an open secret in their community.

Ree is also allowed to have her limits, and be emotionally vulnerable as well as physically. She's almost unbelievably strong, but even she has her limits in a place and time where any triumph means holding onto a status quo that threatens to violently rip apart at any moment. The last shot of the film, where Ree knows her happy ending isn't escape but right back where she started, is the ultimate bittersweet moment.

52 Films By Women: Shirley (2020)

By Andrea Thompson

Do we really want to know how the sausage is made? Of course we do. If it were made humanely, it wouldn't be nearly as fun. Take the creative process for instance. How much more do we enjoy watching from afar as our favorite artists gloriously destroy in the name of our most beloved works of art? Conflict is, after all, the beating heart of so many of our favorite stories, and if our artistic heroes turn out to be jackasses, so much the better. Provided we ourselves can keep a safe distance.

The question in the film “Shirley” is what happens if this terrible artist happens to be a woman. In this case, she's horror writer Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss), who is as formidable as the stories she wrote. How could this supposedly frail woman not be, given her disinterest in everything the conformist 1950s demands of her? She's everything her gender is told to reject: prickly, difficult, paranoid, agoraphobic, and merciless about prying into the lives of those around her, probing for their most vulnerable points. Even her body, wracked by depression, anxiety, and mental illness, resists being stifled by the rigid demands of the period, nearly bursting out of the attire that tries and fails to mold her into gentility.

Needless to say, newlyweds Fred (Logan Lerman) and Rose (Odessa Young) don't stand a chance. They have the kind of happiness that depends on innocence, and above all, ignorance. When they arrive in town to visit Shirley and her college professor husband Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg), they come off as intelligently as the people who willingly walk in the creepy woods the locals avoid. Then again, these locals they're benevolently smiling at look as though they'd shove them right in.

If their arrival at Stanley and Shirley's home feels like a soothing balm, filled with laughter, debate, and intellectualism, it's quickly revealed to be a Venus flytrap. Rose is a fan of Shirley's who is fascinated, then unsettled by the off-putting writer, who has little taste for social niceties and less use for another adoring fan. It makes Rose reluctant when she's recruited by the husbands to live in the Shirley's home, basically as an unpaid servant, allowing Fred to fulfill his teaching ambitions at the college, and Stanley to have another watchful eye on his unstable wife, who is struggling with writer's block on her latest novel.

But if nice girls don't say no, neither do good wives, and Rose is under more pressure than most women in her situation. Not only is she pregnant, Fred married her even though his parents disowned him for it. Guilt can go a long way in silencing women, and it leaves Rose especially vulnerable to Shirley's manipulations. In another time, their friendship might have become a nourishing love affair, but part of the gendered horror of the film is the knowledge that for the few women who managed to rise above it all and find happiness, there were so many more who fell through the cracks. The missing college girl who inspired the manuscript Shirley is struggling with is merely one example. Cruelty and madness take many forms, many of them far more subdued.

Films like “In The Cut” explored the outright violence of everyday sexism when taken to extremes, but “Shirley” more subtly, psychologically explores how women are united and divided by their oppression. Shirley may at first be envious of Rose's youth, beauty, and supposed happiness, but Rose gazes upon the even younger, lithe college coeds who cluster adoringly around both husbands with much of the same envy for them and the carefree life she's already beyond. In such ways do men create monsters.

Rose is drawn to Shirley for much the same reason these girls are drawn to their husbands, but of course there's far more to it. For all her suffering and dysfunction, Shirley represents a kind of freedom, a rejection of the social mores Rose finds so suffocating but feels powerless to fight. As their friendship intensifies, so does the void in Rose's life, as she's forced to realize how much she isn't seen, by her husband or anyone. Shirley is the one who creates a meaning that is entirely hers, and she ultimately can't respect anyone who derives all the meaning in their life from someone else's work.

If writer Sarah Gubbins nimbly navigates the slow psychological terror of women on verge of a nervous breakdown, director Josephine Decker is her partner in crime, bringing the same splintered, manic energy that was so spellbinding in “Madeline's Madeline.” That their focus is insular is to be expected, but it outright refuses to address the fact that in reality, Shirley Jackson had four children and wrote irreverent stories on the topic when the image of the perfectly coiffed, smiling housewife was at its height.

What it might come down to is simply a disinterest in family life. Tortured artists may have always been all the rage, but seldom have they been as gloriously unhinged and female, or as capable of being understood without being excused. That “Shirley” ends with its title character's triumphant laughter and confidence that her latest book will be a smash hit says just as much about us as it does about her. It came about at much personal expense, but after all, the film posits, wasn't it all in the name of art?

52 Films By Women: Sword of Trust (2019)

IMDB

By Andrea Thompson

“Sword of Trust” is an odd little film, and sadly will now be director Lynn Shelton's last due to her unexpected death this month from a blood disorder. Calling her film small is by no means an insult, however. Much like 2007's “Waitress,” another final film from a female filmmaker whose life was tragically cut short, “Sword of Trust” quietly and firmly keeps a tight focus on its characters in a small Southern town.

Those characters veer quite sharply from the usual stereotypes who typically populate such environments, all of whom find themselves right in the middle of some of the worst topics of our national conversation, such as conspiracy theorists and our post-truth world. It also quietly offers hope from the beginning, establishing a case for the continued existence of a social contract, aka trust, between people, whether it's between Mel (Marc Maron) and a customer in a pawn shop he owns, or the fellow proprietor of another store, who casually mentions leaving it unattended.

This optimism doesn't fade, not even when married couple Cynthia and Mary (Jillian Bell and Michaela Watkins proving their chemistry in “Brittany Runs A Marathon” was no fluke) walk into his store looking to sell a sword that was left to Cynthia by her grandfather, who believed it was proof that the South won the Civil War. After some skepticism, they realize Cynthia's grandfather was by no means alone in this belief, and that the sword is worth a large amount to the right (for lack of a better term) people. Once they all realize what they're dealing with, Cynthia, Mary, Mel, and Nathaniel (Jon Bass), Mel's employee and the dimwitted comic relief, decide to work together to “take these fuckers for everything they're worth,” as Mel puts it.

Films which address such harsh truths often try to explore why people are drawn to such toxicity or outright ridiculousness, or at least explore if they can be drawn back out again. But in “Sword of Trust,” ours is not to reason why, even if reasons are present. Rather, it chooses another, relatively new way entirely of offering hope for the unpredictable world we find ourselves in, that of not focusing on the worst of us. Things don't get too serious, since “Sword of Trust” always remains a comedy first and foremost, and a damn funny one, all while allowing its foursome to talk like actual people, rather than exchanging far too intellectual and insightful barbs.

It also stays true to its optimism. Cynthia, Mary, Mel, and Nathaniel do continually choose trust, even if they shouldn't at times. Other films would most likely punish them for it, but “Sword of Trust” is more interested in rewarding those who keep their humanity in a time when it's becoming frighteningly easy not to. All four share an easy chemistry, and most importantly, an impeccable sense of timing that allows the jokes to land in a fashion perfectly suited to the low key humor in a style deeply emblematic of 90s indie meets mumblecore.

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Make no mistake though, “Sword of Trust” remains deeply embedded in our current times, and not just because it flings its characters right into the headlines of the day. There's a deep undercurrent of longing for something we've all lost, as a community, as individuals. In the case of Mel, what should've been a touching look at a lost love becomes a bittersweet elegy to the real life love story between Marc Maron and Lynn Shelton, who has a small role as Mel's lost love Deirdre. We'll never see more from Shelton, but “Sword of Trust” remains a touching tribute to an artist we lost too soon.