That’s Not My Age

Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton in The Room Next Door

The Toronto International Film Festival has just ended and already there are dozens of female-led films on my recommendation list for autumn. What’s most interesting are the common themes emerging seven years post-Weinstein scandal – when women in the industry took the storytelling reigns. Midlife women are now in their power, yet common themes of aging insecurities, inequalities and regrets are still ripe for analysis.

Demi Moore (The Substance), Elizabeth Moss (Shell) and Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl) star in new films that deal with ageism and women prematurely being aged-out of their careers. Of these, The Substance is the most original and interesting. Demi Moore is a force in this futuristic body-horror. She is a fitness guru desperately trying to save her career by pharmaceutically recapturing her youthfulness with a Dorian-Gray-esque elixir called ‘The Substance’. This film is not for the faint of heart (some scenes cannot be unseen), but it is also funny, futuristic, thrilling and cautionary. September 20th

Demi Moore in The Substance. Photo: Universal Studios

Reflecting on life’s regrets and trying to reconcile them is at the core of The Outrun (starring Saoirse Ronan) and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door. Both films are adaptations of best-selling female memoirs: the former is Amy Liptrot’s return to the Orkney Islands, to re-establish her sobriety on her dad’s farm – The Outrun. It is beautifully shot (if somewhat slow-moving, but this is remedied) with a little Celtic mysticism, Ronan’s mesmerizing performance and an uplifting message that we have an enormous capacity for hope and survival. October 4th

The Room Next Door  is Almodóvar’s first feature-length film in English. It received an eighteen-and-a-half-minute standing ovation at its debut and won Venice’s Golden Lion. Tilda Swinton plays a dual role as a war correspondent battling cancer as well as her own estranged daughter. Julianne Moore is her former colleague, author Ingrid (Nunez) whose book What Are You Going Through is the basis for this film. The topic is euthanasia, but as with many Almodóvar films the real focus is female relationships. TBD Autumn 2024

Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson on the set of BabyGirl

Complicated iterations of female sexuality are explored in the Palme D’Or–winning Anora; and Nicole Kidman’s erotic thriller Babygirl. Anora is emerging as the critics’ favourite, about a modern day Pretty Woman who marries the son of a Russian Oligarch. Needless to say, his family is not happy about it, and the action begins…October 25th

Hollywood’s favourite trope of late is the modern ‘Silver Vixen’. Babygirl is Kidman’s second May-December film this year, following A Family Affair [see also, Anne Hathaway’s The Idea of You and Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer]. Kidman is fearless in Babygirl, delivering her steamiest performance since Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, as a married boss-lady crossing all sorts of boundaries with her controlling intern. December 25th

My Favourite Cake

Sometimes, boundaries are imposed by external circumstances as in My Favourite Cake. Directors Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha were prevented from attending the film’s Berlin debut earlier this year by Iranian authorities, who confiscated their passports because their film shows a woman not wearing a hijab. Set in present-day theocratic Iran, Mahin (Lili Farhadpour) is 70-year-old, lonely widow. She decides to take control of her stagnant life by initiating a relationship with an equally lonely taxi driver her age. Nosey neighbours and the morality police become a looming threat to their happiness in this sweet story of late love. Out now

And, if you’re simply looking for pure entertainment…

The Wild Robot

Fans of Wall-E will love this DreamWorks adaptation starring Lupita Nyong’o as a robot named Roz, who must learn to survive in the wilderness, features Catherine O’Hara.  September 27th

White Bird

A spin-off of film Wonder, stars Helen Mirren as a young Jewish girl saved by the disabled boy she once bullied in Nazi-occupied France, features Gillian Anderson. October 4th

Saturday Night

A loose recreation of Saturday Night Live’s first broadcast on October 11, 1975 and based on the eyewitness testimony of 30+ people who were there – including living cast. October 11th

Wicked

Broadway Musical of The Wizard of Oz prequel gets a luscious treatment by Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians). Stars Emmy, Grammy and Tony winner Cynthia Erivo and pop-star Ariana Grande. November 22nd

LEE

This bio-pic of Lee Miller aka Lady Penrose, ex-Vogue model and WW2 photographer, stars Kate Winslet. Out now

Alexia Economou is a design and culture journalist, and regular TNMA contributor.

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