MC Consensus - Top Films by Female Directors (2000-present)

[Spinal]

How the hell do the two Bigelow movies maintain such a good reputation?

I feel the same about American Psycho.

[Winston*]

Never even heard of The Holy Girl. Sounds good.

Didn't like that Claire Denis film that much, though willing to give it another go. Suprised that's the one that would catch on. I like White Material and Beau Travail.

[Melville]

I'm surprised how similar the results were to my list. Normally my favorites place pretty poorly in these consensuses. Nice to see the love for Bright Star especially.

And I dig the directors' quotes. Thanks for putting this together, Spinal.

[Melville]

I'm kinda embarrassed how little I've seen. This only reminds how I've never seen a film by Claire Denis. Where do I start?

Trouble Every Day, clearly. It's pretty dissimilar from her other stuff, but it shares Beau Travail's focus on fleshy physicality. Her stuff about postcolonial Africa (Chocolat and White Material) is really good too. And you should see Beau Travail if only for the ending. You've probably seen it posted on here multiple times, but as a moment of transcendence it's even better in context.

[Spinal]

Also noteworthy to me is how few of these films involve the director working with someone else's screenplay.

Apart from Bigelow's films and Selma, I believe every other film on the list involves a director working on a script they wrote themselves, or collaborated on with a partner.

[StanleyK]

Extremely surprised that Lost in Translation didn't get #1 (thought that was a cinch). Slightly less so that there was no love for Marie Antoinette.

[StanleyK]

Also noteworthy to me is how few of these films involve the director working with someone else's screenplay.

Apart from Bigelow's films and Selma, I believe every other film on the list involves a director working on a script they wrote themselves, or collaborated on with a partner.

That's likely because almost all these movies are independent, which tend to attract writer-directors more so than Hollywood.

[baby doll]

Extremely surprised that Lost in Translation didn't get #1 (thought that was a cinch). Slightly less so that there was no love for Marie Antoinette.

One of these days I'll have to try to get my thoughts down on Sofia Coppola, because I can't think of any director I have more conflicted feelings about. The Virgin Suicides had its moments but didn't completely win me over. I don't understand the appeal of Lost in Translation at all: the characters are boring and they don't do anything for two hours, though seeing the film a second time in 2012, I found it less racist than I'd remembered. Marie Antoinette, I thought, was a major step forward, both in terms of subject and style (particularly the sound mix). Somewhere seemed at once a confirmation that Coppola had turned a page and a reversion to her earlier work: the bored rich guy thing still bores me but Elle Fanning's scenes are wonderful, and in light of The Bling Ring (probably her emptiest film after Lost in Translation), I'm tempted to give most of the credit for this to Fanning herself.

[Melville]

I don't understand the appeal of Lost in Translation at all: the characters are boring and they don't do anything for two hours

They find a fleeting connection in the midst of their spiritual isolation. I don't know why you'd want them to do more than that.

[Spinal]

They definitely go to karaoke. I remember them going to karaoke.

[baby doll]

They find a fleeting connection in the midst of their spiritual isolation. I don't know why you'd want them to do more than that.

Finding a connection etc. is great for them, but on my end as a spectator, it's not very dramatic.

[Pop Trash]

Finding a connection etc. is great for them, but on my end as a spectator, it's not very dramatic.

Oh please. You could say the same thing about In the Mood for Love or the Before trilogy. You're the last person on here that I thought would make that complaint.

[baby doll]

Oh please. You could say the same thing about In the Mood for Love or the Before trilogy. You're the last person on here that I thought would make that complaint.

Well, as Roger Ebert would say, it's not what a film is about but how it's about it. The characters in Linklater's Before films have wit and charm, and Wong's film is so elliptical and enigmatic that it's often impossible to tell what the characters are really feeling, which makes the movie endlessly fascinating. By comparison, the characters in Lost in Translation are affluent zombies.

[Pop Trash]

By comparison, the characters in Lost in Translation are affluent zombies.

Well, as Roger Ebert would say, one man's affluent zombie is another man's well-heeled wraith.

[PURPLE]

Claire Denis, for me, is a very difficult filmmaker to connect with. There's a lot of cold characters in her films, and she oftentimes has an extremely opaque approach, there's rarely any humor, and there's that certain je ne sais quoi that often doesn't connect, and she has a certain fascination with things that I hate watching films about, so if you combine these five aspects together you get some films that just repulse me: Trouble Every Day, and I Can't Sleep.

Following on that, you get some films that I don't connect with that others love, and I can't necessarily explain why I don't, even when the latter is full of details that I love in individual moments: Friday Night and 35 rhums.

Above that, there's White Material, which to me lacked all of the things that I love about Denis but I think it's a bit less distinct and so I am not quite as pushed away by it...

And then you have these amazing, textured, creative, layered, unpredictable, and unique films: Beau Travail, Chocolat, and Nenette and Boni. They're amazing, and she would be one of the best female filmmakers on the strength of those alone.

And then there's L'intrus, which is staggeringly complicated in a narrative, aesthetic, and thematic sense. There would be no surprise whatsoever if everyone else unanimously called it the greatest film directed by a human, or a woman - except that it's clearly not the kind of film that is "easy to love". It's too great. It only gets better on repeat viewings, because its density and its complexity, so it can never do well in a consensus.

Trouble Every Day, though, is probably the film I like least from any director that I really like, and I will never understand how anyone can like it, and if someone asked me when they should watch it in watching Denis' films I would say, "Never; pretend it doesn't exist; watch L'intrus four times instead". And somehow it's #4 on this list! Crazy. But clearly not everyone is on the same page...

[origami_mustache]

A few of my favs not mentioned....

Girlhood (Céline Sciamma, 2014)
Hanezu (Namoi Kawase, 2011)
Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, 2016)