Directed By Women: Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Neon

By Andrea Thompson

To see an artist break out is a truly wondrous thing. But there’s a special relish when a filmmaker has been honing their skills to become as assured as Justine Triet, who became only the third woman to win the Palme D’or for her film “Anatomy of a Fall” at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

With such a paucity of representation for one of the industry’s most prestigious awards, of course Triet’s win must be qualified in that she is a female filmmaker who received the coveted prize from a film festival with its own issues regarding female agency and sexism. Bestowing Triet with this award is likely something of an effort to reconcile (if not rectify) the problem, given that it was presented to her by Jane Fonda, whose legacy of activism is far too wide-ranging to expand on here.

It’s also very much earned, given how well Triet’s delicate yet unblinking gaze dissects the aftermath of Samuel Maleski’s (Samuel Theis) death, especially once his wife Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is implicated as his possible murderer, to the dismay and further trauma of their visually impaired 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Under such circumstances, the focus is never on mere evidence, but also the nature of Samuel and Sandra’s complex, at times turbulent relationship.

Combing through any long-term relationship with a microscope, or in this case, splatter analysis and sound recordings (in which Sandra was unaware her husband was recording her) is going to result in some ugly truths under the best of circumstances, but what Triet carefully mines is that anything discovered must also be interpreted. If there are any facts to be gleaned from a couple’s screaming match in a domestic setting, it’s going to largely depend on who is doing the interpreting, and there are a myriad number of people, from lawyers to spectators to media commentators, who are more than willing to do exactly that as Sandra’s trial is underway.

Peeling back the onion of a marriage can generally be counted on for the sort of fraught revelations that are inherently ripe for voyeuristic on-screen fascination, and Triet doesn't exactly differ in her approach; it’s more that there’s more room to maneuver. Free from the confines of the Hollywood film, Triet can be far more unfettered in conducting her analysis with far less compromise - there’s less of a need to conform to expectations about women, sexuality, language, and the legal system. 

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It’s also hard to think of a better setting than the French Alps, with its implications of beauty and naturalistic, snowy exoticism which also implicates the viewers, on-screen and otherwise, who are willing to judge Sandra in a similarly cold-blooded manner. Hardly surprising, given the many painful examples of women being torn down in the public square, but the French judicial system at least allows Sandra to defend herself against charges both legal and not throughout the proceedings rather than at a designated climax on the witness stand. It proves quite useful, since Sandra is revealed to be a bisexual, confident woman who feels no need to apologize for it or the need to conduct herself according to male expectations, including that of her late husband.

It hardly needs to be said what a dangerous phenomenon this can be, no less because Sandra is on actual trial, and she makes the kinds of unwise decisions people generally make in her situation. She lies for one: about the fight with Samuel, how she got the bruises on her body, because the truth would make her appear guilty. Her other actions are also left tantalizingly open to interpretation; is a private, stolen moment with her son an attempt to manipulate him?  Is her decision to switch between English and French a front in itself, an attempt to lie better in the language she’s more familiar with?

Regardless of what the truth is, it’s always about Sandra, not about the men involved in her situation, from the prosecuting attorney to the various others who testify, nearly all of whom seem to take Sandra’s life and actions as a personal affront, or even about the one defending her, who outright states that her guilt or innocence is beside the point for him. It’s about Sandra and how she and her husband saw each other as two people, both writers, who are used to writing their own stories in every sense, with Samuel in particular seeming to have great difficulty in the fact that his wife doesn’t consider him the arbiter of hers.

If Hüller’s performance makes her seem almost born for the role, it’s partly by design, since Triet wrote it with her in mind after collaborating with Hüller in her 2019 film “Sybil.” Hüller experienced her own breakout in the 2016 film “Toni Erdmann” and has been raking in the praise ever since, with 2023 seeing her reap the rewards not only for “Anatomy,” but for her chilling turn as Hedwig Höss, the wife of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, in “The Zone of Interest,” with the film winning the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Each film is a marvel in its very distinctive way, and in both Hüller almost seems to act with her very being. If that sounds evasively reductive, it’s because it’s the only explanation I can come up with for my own inability to recognize her from “Zone” during the entire time I spent viewing “Anatomy,” even though there were no great alterations in her appearance. That’s not to give short shrift to any of the fantastic talent in “Anatomy,” both behind and in front of the camera, merely that Hüller’s work in both films is the most obvious signifier of a presence which bolsters “Anatomy” to deserved heights in a market glutted with crime dramas. 

In this one, it’s Hüller who embodies its many layers, in particular the film’s refusal to provide easy answers, or sometimes, any answers at all.

Directed By Women: We Grown Now (2023)

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes that and more to get them the hell out of poverty.

Much like “The Florida Project,” there’s a certain lightness in the fact that we are seeing an impoverished setting through the eyes of a child, even if things are a lot less grim in Minhal Baig’s “We Grown Now.” Nostalgia can be a convenient cover, and unlike the transient nature of the budget hotel in “The Florida Project,” there’s a retro setting of 1992, and the fact that the community which very much existed in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex no longer does.

But that kind of purging is unimaginable as the film begins, especially to the ten-year-old besties Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) as they simply live their lives and find the fun and joy that kids tend to do, at least before the pubescent angst kicks in.

Malik is the one who quickly emerges as the film’s star and central character, and it’s pretty clear he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with one way or another. He’s being raised in a household of women, which consists of his grandmother Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson), older sister Amber, and his mother Dolores (Jurnee Smollett). Malik moves among them with ease, effortlessly charming them all into fits of laughter, a sign of potential danger to come if there ever was one IMO.

This trio is far more likely to influence Malik for the better the way they also effortlessly impart their history and the ability to see beyond their immediate surroundings. Much like Detroit, Cabrini-Green has long been a symbol of decline, a setting for much of the ills plaguing American society. You know the drill: drugs, poverty, the breaking down of the family, all segregated in a fashion which would allow whiteness to dismiss a place and the people in it.

Minhal Baig, who also wrote the film, likewise hails from Chicago, having grown up in Rogers Park to Pakistani parents, a far cry from the setting she tenderly chronicles here. For “We Grown Now,” Baig conducted multiple interviews with former residents of Cabrini-Green’s high-rise apartments, and she clearly got a great deal of personal connection out of it in the way the film warmly depicts Malik’s residence as more than a living space.

It’s clearly a home, with pictures on the wall, the beauty of the mundane which makes use of lighting and a haunting score in a fashion will inevitably draw comparisons to “Moonlight.” “We Grown Now” certainly has its own link to the American South, with Anita’s stories of life in Tupelo Mississippi, which has a kind of living talisman in the sewing machine she brought north with her, as well as the belief she imparts to her family about seeing the poetry in everything.

So it feels like a violation when a tragedy rocks the neighborhood and the powers that be decide to do all the wrong things about it, bringing in the police to invade the neighborhood and homes to such a degree that they feel like an occupying force. Malik and Eric can scream that they exist at the top of their lungs, they can play hooky and experience more of what Chicago has to offer, such as the Art Institute, but Malik’s mother Dolores also has the clear-eyed vision of a woman who can see some of what her neighborhood is going to come to. And the family has saved up just enough to allow her to take an opportunity to better their lives by her taking a job and new home in the suburbs.

If “We Grown Now” was from her perspective, this would likely feel more akin to a gentle rebirth, but Malik mainly feels the pain of the impending separation from his friend Eric, whose lack of maternal presence in his own home where he lives with his sister and single father Jason (Lil Rel Howery) feels like being stripped of his ability to dream. We mourn with them too, as Malik and his family leave a place that always was far more than its worst aspects.

What is home, or any place really, but the people? Even if Malik and his family made the most of an opportunity just in time, “We Grown Now” allows us to see the bittersweet nature of making a new home and better life, especially when it means leaving behind a community that seemed as if nothing on Earth could match it for its resiliency. Until of course, forces beyond their control did.

Directed By Women: All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023)

By Andrea Thompson

Can a setting and the feelings and experiences it invokes be curated? Can a place and a story not so much leap from the screen as gently surround us while we view it? 

I’d make the case for yes after viewing Raven Jackson’s spectacular “All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt.” As Jackson explores one woman’s life over the decades in rural Mississippi, there’s minimal dialogue and not much more than the bare bones of a story. But the details are so immersive you can almost taste the night air on a quiet summer night, the almost impossibly rich lushness of the soil, and the water that bathes its characters (sometimes literally) as they wind their own way throughout their lives.

A human intruding on such a sensory experience to impose any kind of obvious framing device seems unnecessary to the point of ridiculous, and sure enough, the film rejects narration to the extent that it isn’t until about 35 minutes in until we learn the name of lead Mack, who is mostly played by Charleen McClure. And since the views on framing also extend to linear time, Jackson is clearly counting on her audience to pay close attention to the details she does provide, and appreciate how she lingers on the moments of tenderness she captures.

There’s been plenty of willingness to do so if the reviews are any indication, which have used words like powerful, achingly beautiful, and rapturous. Why not? Even if other filmmakers have expressed a longing for childhood and a world that seems both far simpler and forever lost to us, not since perhaps “Daughters of the Dust” - to cite one of the more obvious influences for “All Dirt Roads” - have sound and imagery fused together to such poetically awe-inspiring ends.

For outsiders, the American South can practically feel like a foreign country in itself. That’s been played up to the heights of epic historical drama, for laughs in films such as “My Cousin Vinny,” and this time it’s worthy of the choice to shoot on 35mm film. Whoever has the privilege of such a viewing, congratulations on being the object of my envy.

“All Dirt Roads” would be remarkable if it was content to be an ode to Black rural life as told through one woman’s experience, but it’s also a loving homage to what we create by handmade means. It’s no accident that one of the first things on-screen is a child’s hands as she’s being instructed by an adult on how to slowly and surely reel in the fish she’s hooked while an equal amount of care is lavished on the sounds of the water swirling and the life that congregates around it.

It’s usually pointless to hope that a cinematographer becomes a household name, but hopefully Jomo Fray defies the odds for his work, and editor Lee Chatametikool is also acknowledged for his skillful transitions, where tiny details like a little girl’s hair ribbons pass as markers for whichever point in time that’s getting a lingering look.

There are a few drawbacks to this approach, even if it’s all art. Such journeys still tend to require some manner of human anchor, and the main pivot becomes the relationship between mother and child, which reveals itself as one of the most potent forces in a film that’s all about the nature of it all. Even when I wish I knew more about what exactly was happening, or maybe just the bare minimum of this movie’s version of exposition, I can only respect a filmmaker who is so skillfully determined to take her time and create a kind of memoir that asks us simply to take our time and consider things.

 Hell, “All Dirt Roads” practically begs us to take our time and appreciate our present moments; that there’s plenty of room for modern implements and the old ways of appreciating the natural world.  As another film once proclaimed, “An artist is never poor.” The richness of the world in “All Dirt Roads” clearly doesn’t extend to things like bank accounts for any of its characters, but with such faces to do all the talking, and the wealth of music and natural bounty on display, it’s certainly hard to argue.

Directed By Women: The Marvels (2023)

Marvel Studios

By Andrea Thompson

Just when I thought I was out, Disney pulls me back in.

I thought the superhero fatigue was real for me, so much so that I completely opted out of “Blue Beetle.” But Disney does what it does, and since it insists on continuing its now sprawling universe, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by “The Marvels.”

How could it be otherwise? “The Marvels” is a concept that’s still relatively rare for a Marvel Cinematic Universe offering that doesn’t go straight to streaming - it’s about a superheroine who gets backup from not just one, but two others in supporting roles, each with their own rich history and complexities. 

Teyonah Parris gets some needed development as Monica Rambeau, who finally gets to sort things out with Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), currently hanging out in space with Nick Fury (a very much missed from the big screen Samuel L. Jackson). 

But one of the most radical turns “The Marvels” takes is to make their story a continuation Kamala Khan’s (Iman Vellani), who has only recently taken up the Ms. Marvel moniker. Her miniseries of the same name is what is required viewing, not to mention the first Marvel product in a while to make me not only tear up, but reminisce at what it’s still possible to accomplish within corporate guidelines.

The Marvels” actually picks up where “Ms. Marvel” left off, with Carol finding herself transported to Kamala’s room, much to her confusion. This development is both central premise and running gag, with Carol, Kamala, and Monica switching places with each other whenever one of them uses their powers, which is justified by the sciencey explanation that it’s all because each of their abilities make use of light.

Marvel Studios

Either way, Iman Vellani is a standout, with her fangirling over Captain Marvel proving to be even more adorable than when Tom Holland’s Spider-Man first met Iron Man. In a time where the Marvel universe and multiverse and prequels and sequels seem to be on the verge of becoming an exhaustive, never-ending sprawl, Vellani might prove to be its savior. 

She is already its heart, since the movie is aware that Kamala is a package deal, with her family already proven to be so central that matriarch Muneeba Khan (Zenobia Shroff) is the one who creates her daughter’s on-screen superhero look, and patriarch Yusuf Khan (Mohan Kapur) is the inspiration behind his daughter’s decision to choose an alias that fuses her history and hero worship.

The Khans are the ones who emphasize how the simple act of trashing a house has serious consequences in a movie about traversing space and different realities. When Captain Marvel shows up, one of their first questions is whether she’s pressuring their daughter, and they are a centering influence even when they’re whisked from Earth to Fury’s base of operations.

So who cares that the actual plot of “The Marvels” is actually kind of a mess, with a premise that could be lifted straight from “Spaceballs”? With very few exceptions, it’s the heroes that are icons in this franchise, so Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) follows the usual pattern of being rather lackluster in comparison to the good guys, plotting to steal the atmosphere and suns of other worlds in order to revive her homeworld, which has been stripped of much of its wealth and resources. It’s so old school that the only development which veers slightly into originality is the climax involves a big beam of light in space rather than the plain ol’ sky. 

Thing is though, “The Marvels” is also old school in another, more unfortunate way, sticking to a thin veneer of heteronormativity to the point that Monica’s admission that she was just a kid who wanted her…aunt brings the kinds of tears that we can all see for what they really are. Because right, Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune were cousins, and Xena and Gabrielle were merely best friends. 😉

Marvel Studios

You wouldn’t think such pretense would be necessary in these times, but Captain Marvel is a heroine so queer-coded she brings her cat into space with her. Hell, “The Marvels” might actually be the closest thing the MCU has gotten to a queer party, with Tessa Thompson showing up for a Valkyrie cameo fabulously attired in a suit, and the central trio journeying to another planet where the language is based in song, and sees Carol dancing with a gorgeously androgynous prince.

If it seems like the movie ricochets in all kinds of directions, that’s because it does, and the result is a gorgeous mess that never loses its sense of fun. In that sense, it bears a passing resemblance to “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which saw communing with ants as the key to saving the universe. But that has nothing on one of the later developments of this movie, where otherworldly kittens prove to be the key to saving lives. Whoever thought of that particular development was either high, a genius, or possibly a combination of the two.

You’ll just have to see it to believe it, and it’s a kick to see a movie that proves Nia DaCosta is still the director of the excellent, woefully underseen “Little Woods” after the dismal experience that was the new “Candyman,” with “The Marvels” also written by women. It shows, and it also explains the exhaustively predictable backlash this one is earning. If you do give it a watch though, you might just get excited about what the MCU has in store for the first time in a very long time.

Directed By Women: Priscilla (2023)

A24

By Andrea Thompson

A biopic of Priscilla Presley directed by Sofia Coppola? What is there to say besides what took so long?

Or at least, you would think so. Coming back from a vacation (hence the absence of last week’s column), all I could think was how much I hate it when I disagree with my favorite creatives. I am among the minority who absolutely loathed Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and while my feelings are far less negative for Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” I still find it to be among her weakest films.

Especially when a comparison to another, more superior film is inevitable. In last year’s “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann used his trademark fascination with pomp and flash to propel the story, but unfortunately Coppola allows hers to bog it down. It makes “Elvis” function far better as propaganda than “Priscilla” does as a biopic.

And make no mistake, the way Luhrmann depicted his subject as a passionate activist for civil rights who suffered for his beliefs while leaving Priscilla’s role to little more than a cameo was absolutely wish fulfillment for the icon Luhrmann clearly reveres. But this column is about “Priscilla,” so this can be left for others to expand on.

To criticize Coppola for making fashion and the lushness of a great setting part of her focus is to miss the point. Coppola has always had a deeply feminine eye and has unapologetically made fashionable visuals of her films a key element of the stories she tells. The swirling 70’s dresses of sunny suburbia, the eye-popping trappings of pre-Revolutionary France, the heaving bodices of a repressed Southern Gothic locked in the midst Civil War - we don’t just picture it, we feel every bit of it due to a director who has made style and substance blend seamlessly.

Due to her pedigree, Coppola has also long had a fascination for the fashionable world she hails from, and it sometimes causes her to sink into superficiality, even if it is of a type uniquely her own. Not to mention it’s quite satisfying to hear Francis referred to as Sofia’s dad in some cinephile chatter.

This flaw is what ultimately prevents her from telling Priscilla Presley’s story more effectively. The timing is right, she has fantastic leads in Cailee Spaeny as the title character, who believably transforms from lovestruck girl to confident woman, “Euphoria” villain Jacob Elordi as an Elvis who is both believably vulnerable and manipulative, and a story that seems right out of every one of the Sofia Coppola trademarks we’ve come to know. But the world of the rich and famous is no match for what Priscilla creates once she leaves it.

It’s hard to fault Coppola too much, since the cloistered world of these particular celebrities utterly changed the zeitgeist as we know it. Priscilla Presley mined empowerment from exploitation in a very female version of the hero’s journey, transforming from a princess stashed away in a tower to empowered queen, and lately, the executive producer on the film.

And the film does get quite a bit right, especially in the way it portrays a patriarchal world which not only allowed a rich, powerful man in the public eye to court a 14-year-old, but to actively enable him. From the tunes of the times, which sang of little girls in love, to the negotiations between the military men in Priscilla’s life about where and when she could spend her time, and especially the hangers-on who were unwilling to give anything resembling pushback to the King, every one of them knew where the money was and how it would benefit them.

This is clearly where Coppola’s interest lies, and from the cherry on top of her ice cream sundae in a pocket of Americana in West Germany, to the various textures of the plush carpeting, soft velvet, and the general look of life in Graceland, Sofia is clearly in her element, infusing the first appearance of Priscilla’s signature bob and look with the rousing momentousness of Darth Vader suiting up for the first time.

A24

But adulthood has to arrive sometime, and the movie loses interest once Priscilla actually starts to get a life. Once she stops dying her hair and lets it grow in its more natural state, dresses in more practical, less forcefully feminine attire like jeans, the story is clearly over, with time flying by via various montages. Some of that is clearly to be expected, since the movie is based on the memoir written by Priscilla herself about her relationship with Elvis.

Yet there’s a reason that Priscilla has become a cultural force in her own right, turning Graceland into a tourist attraction and ensuring her ex-husband’s legacy financially and otherwise, with granddaughter Riley Keough establishing herself as an acclaimed actress and currently the sole owner of Graceland. Part of it is simply that unlike other attempts to tell Priscilla’s story, such as the 1988 TV movie “Elvis and Me,” “Priscilla” doesn’t have the luxury of time. And let’s face it, her business ventures are far less cinematic and mostly outside of Coppola’s oeuvre.

Directed By Women: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

By Andrea Thompson

Since the last two films in this column have been all about the new kids on the block, this week’s column features a throwback, a movie that’s every bit as lean and mean as its intro promises.

No, Ida Lupino’s slim, 70 minute 1953 thriller “The Hitch-Hiker” isn’t technically horror, but rather a noir. It takes place south of the border, and while we don’t travel the world and see its wonders, the cruelty of men, or more accurately, one man, is on full display, and that’s plenty.

The movie was inspired by the real life story of Billy Cook’s murder spree, which Lupino apparently had to soften to satisfy censors. But her introduction of the sociopathic Emmett Myers (William Talman) is nonetheless weighted with menace, with Myers coming off as demented as any slasher villain.

Like many of the best monsters, “The Hitch-Hiker” shrouds its killer with an air of mystery, only showing the lower portion of Myers’s body as he unrepentantly shoots those who have the bad fortune to offer him a ride before Roy Collins (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) unwittingly kick off their own nightmarish odyssey by inviting him into their car. Face enshrouded in shadow in the backseat, Myers quickly reveals himself, producing a gun and issuing orders clearly borne of a long history of brutally using and disposing of people as he sees fit.

Collins and Bowen are everymen who share a long history of friendship, and much of the movie’s suspense, and Myers’s sadism, is borne of the fact that the two refuse to abandon each other. Each pit stop, from a gas station to a store where they stop to grab necessary supplies, we all hold our breath for that false move that could mean the end of every innocent person the trio happens to come across.

Because make no mistake, Myers is so human that his character lends itself to the many ways he seems inhuman. His vigilance, the gleeful ways he psychologically tortures Collins and Bowen, the tattered pieces of his backstory - all of it confirms that this is a tortured man who is beyond redemption. Myers views the care his captives show for each other as soft, nothing more, and his guiding philosophy is that since no one gave him anything, he owes nothing to any human being, least of all mercy.

But the most chilling thing of all is his and the movie’s lack of pretense. Myers makes plain that he plans to kill the duo once they’re no longer useful, and as they make their way through the Mexican countryside, whether or not the radio reports the police tracking their progress, the discovery of a wedding ring, could mean the difference between an extra few hours of life. They are also completely unable to tell when they can make a break for it, since one of Myers’s eyes refuses to close all the way.

It’s very likely Lupino also felt like she had something to prove. In a time when female directors were nearly nonexistent, she had a number of women’s pictures under her directorial belt, including “Outrage,” which in 1950 was one of the first films to deal with the subject of rape, before turning her attention to a thriller. And that was only due to the fact that the film’s original male director fell ill and was unable to finish filming.

Clearly the film didn’t suffer for it. It remains a classic, well worth the investment of its relatively paltry $100,000 budget, still earning praise for how gleefully we root for the noose to tighten around the Myers’s neck. Unsentimental, unsparing, and utterly exhausting once the climax finally puts an end to a very American brand of senseless violence, it remains one of Lupino’s finest works in a long career that nevertheless should’ve seen far more.

Directed By Women: The People's Joker (2022)

By Andrea Thompson

Ah, autumn. For others, it means leaves changing, pumpkin spice lattes, spooky fun, and sweaters. For film critics, it means a whole lot of film festivals that we insist on running ourselves ragged for. Why should that change? For those afflicted with cinephilia, it’s a fantastic way to experience films that wouldn’t otherwise be discoverable, even in our supposedly stuffed-with-options streaming content era. 

Personally, I have immersed myself in the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Reeling International Film Festival, and am now turning my attention to the Chicago International Film Festival, which features an absolute beauty of a lineup this year. And one particular offering seemed to almost beg for a place in this recently revamped Directed By Women column: “The People’s Joker”. 

Like last week’s focus, “T Blockers,” “The People’s Joker” is a trans film, and there’s a whole lot of horror contained in it without its characters being reduced to their oppression. But where “T Blockers” is a Gen Z anthem of defiance made by a budding artist just on the cusp of what will hopefully be a long and promising career, Vera Drew’s “The People’s Joker” is a millennial tale full of hard-lived wisdom and steeped in meta.

It’s also an incredibly low budget movie that’s equal parts queer coming-of-age story, extremely unauthorized superhero parody, and love letter to queer creatives. And filmed in a style that I can only describe as mixed media dystopian zine fused with pure camp. 

If that sounds baffling, that’s nothing against you or me, it’s merely part of the gleefully deranged, utterly fearless experience that is viewing this movie. IP doesn’t generally lend itself to much creativity in our incredibly corporatized environs, but Drew, who not only directs, but co-writes and stars as the lead, a trans girl who eventually blooms into her true identity as Joker the Harlequin, makes gleeful use of beloved fan favorites of the DC universe, as well as her many inspirations.

Batman’s problematic nature has been discussed and dissected long before this, but in “The People’s Joker” he’s not only a corporate fascist who’s unleashed a vicious army of drones onto Gotham, he’s also a predatory closeted gay man who grooms and exploits the penniless orphans he takes in. When Joker arrives in Gotham to pursue a comedy career after a harrowing childhood in Smallville - the kind only sunny Midwestern repression can dish out - she meets and falls for one of them, Jason Todd (Kane Distler), a young queer boy who has since refashioned himself into a Leto-esque Joker.

This isn’t only a setup for a toxic relationship that the older, wiser Joker the Harlequin uses as a guide for how to recognize abuse, it’s also a way for Drew to throw a whole lot of shade, with much of her ire reserved for Lorne Michaels and his toxic stranglehold on the state of comedy itself. He may be the catalyst for Harlequin’s rebellion and subsequently forming her own anti-comedy troupe that becomes her found family of recognizable DC villains, but Drew isn’t about to allow her own story to become subsumed in any sense.

And what a story, which doesn’t only incorporate fan conspiracy theories, Michelle Pfeiffer’s legendary Catwoman transformation, but shout-outs to “Goodfellas,” with Harlequin proclaiming she “always wanted to be a Joker,” and bringing in the Necronomicon itself for a cameo.

It’s a lot for a tight, 92 minute runtime that’s also a sincere laugh riot in the way stories from those who have not only survived but thrived tend to be. Drew’s most important inspirations get their due right away however. The film is dedicated to “Mom and Joel Schumacher.”

Directed By Women: T Blockers (2023)

By Andrea Thompson

Yes, the prodigal column has returned, just in time for spooky season, and my favorite holiday no less. Choosing a film to focus on was something of a dilemma, at least until I came across Alice Maio Mackay’s “T Blockers” while I was writing up a festival preview for the Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival Reeling. Then it became something of an easy choice.

Mackay was all of 17 when she made “T Blockers,” already has a respectable chunk of IMDB credits as well as a host of other accomplishments to her name, all of which shout upcoming filmmaker. Mackay is also trans, and the slim 74 minute runtime contains a multitude of complications her surrogate heroine Sophie (Lauren Last), also a trans filmmaker, must wrestle with once she discovers an ancient parasitic worm is preying on the bigots in her small Australian town.

Some of “T Blockers” is about exactly what you’d expect, and a fair amount of it is the rage of it all. There’s the viciousness of the anti-LGBTQ+ politicians, the minefield of attempting to find love in the midst of what seems like a neverending oppression in their daily lives, the crappy jobs the characters have to sustain themselves with as they struggle with every step in fulfilling their artistic ambitions, and the rising hordes of fascists who are rallying against any attempt they make at proclaiming their humanity.

No, the kids are not alright, but they are an extremely tight-knit group in the way people under siege tend to be. But bring on the camp, because Sophie and her bff and roommate Spencer (Lewi Dawson) refuse to be all gloom and doom. The gross-out humor isn’t only reserved for the worms which find plenty of willing hosts, but some of the less than healthy coping methods Spencer and Sophie utilize, which include drugs and vomit. Learn your limits kids, but in the meantime it fits well with the movie’s punk sensibilities, with the more obvious influence John Waters getting himself a name drop later.

These kids also have a kind of clear-eyed, lived wisdom it often takes their more privileged brethren years to acquire. They wait for no one’s approval and make no apologies for immediately fighting back once the possessed gather and go on the prowl, but they have no illusions that this will make their problems vanish, or even their lives necessarily easier. As Sophie tearfully acknowledges after facing a devastating personal loss, the bigots they’re really fighting can win even when they lose, and the battle will have to be fought again and again.

“T Blockers” isn’t merely a salute to Mackay’s B-movie sensibilities and their accompanying idols, it’s also a heartfelt tribute to queer filmmakers of the past, some of whom ultimately lost the battle with their own demons, but managed to create something for future generations to stand on. The movie’s framing device is a film made by a fellow trans filmmaker in the ‘90s who later committed suicide, but which nevertheless acts as both warning and guide so Sophie and her friends can put out the fire this time. In some cases by burning it all down, but I digress.

It’s so damn fun that the movie’s real flaw is all that more irritating (and somewhat spoilery), namely that the whiteness of it all somewhat bogs things down. The first victim of the parasites is Thai Hoa Steven Nguyen, and the other good guy casualty is another actor of color, Toshiro Glenn. In any other movie this would absolutely reek of hypocrisy, yet Mackay shows such promise, namely by making the most of the screen time both of them get. And Glenn’s is infused with a special tenderness due to his budding romance with Sophie, which finally gives her a taste of romantic love, untainted by fetishization.

So “T Blockers” is a success at getting its audience to consider the very questions it brings up. Namely, whether we really know an oppressive regime when we see one, and what exactly makes a monster.