At a Tribeca Film Festival talk last week, Jodie Foster declared that she's a "little sick" of commenting on "the woman thing." Foster was onstage with Julie Taymor, another female director, and explained how both of them were growing tired of discussing the state of their gender in the industry. "But we can't ignore it," Taymor noted. Foster concurred: "It's real." She added: "For whatever reason, I don't think it's a plot, I think [people] still see women as a risk."
While the problem is, as Foster said, a "real" one in Hollywood at large, the festival itself gave a number of women a platform to shine. One-third of all the feature films represented at Tribeca were directed by women. Compare that to the mere 3.4% of major studio releases that are directed by women, according to a recent study. The Festival also played host to a Daring Women Summit, which yielded the stage to luminaries like Samantha Bee and Donna Karan. (Refinery29 was a media partner for the event, and our chief content officer, Amy Emmerich, appeared on one of the panels.)
Women also came alway with some of the festival's prizes. Ingrid Jungermann won Best Screenplay in a U.S. Narrative Feature Film for Women Who Kill. Priscilla Anany was the recipient of the Best New Narrative Director award for Children of the Mountain.
It's nearly impossible to see everything at a festival like Tribeca, but here are some of the women who stood out based on my viewing.
Sophia Takal, Director, Always Shine
Two movies I saw at the festival investigated how professional jealousy manifests between friends. Mike Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice chronicles a group of struggling improv comedians, one of whom hits it big when he gets cast on Weekend Live (a thinly veiled version of SNL). Don’t Think Twice is ultimately a melancholy but sweet look at how some bonds are unbreakable even as people drift apart. That is not the case with Always Shine. Sophia Takal’s film is a nasty little endeavor, but still delicious to watch.
Takal opens Always Shine with a fun trick. Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) pleads with an unseen person not to harm her. She quivers and cries. Turns out, it’s an audition. But thanks to an ominous score, the audience knows that something bad is in the air. This evil will come to pass when Beth takes a trip to Big Sur with her friend Anna (Mackenzie Davis). While Beth has made it somewhat big as an actress, Anna is still struggling. Beth, in her moderate success, has become a neglectful friend; Anna is bitter and resentful. Always Shine is, in moments, an acid take on Hollywood and what it does to women. It’s also a deconstruction of a friendship gone completely wrong. Takal manages to make the proceedings significantly menacing without foreshadowing too much.
Photo: MediaPunch/REX/Shutterstock.
Mackenzie Davis & Caitlin FitzGerald, Stars, Always Shine
Always Shine wouldn't be at all successful without the performances of these two women. If you know them, you probably are aware of their excellent work on television in Halt and Catch Fire and Masters of Sex, but this film makes me hope they get some more big-screen roles, stat. FitzGerald infuses Beth with a secret vindictiveness. Davis, meanwhile, gives Anna a brittle edge that softens as she starts to play with her notions of femininity. Davis was awarded the festival's prize for Best Actress in a U.S. Narrative Feature Film.
Ingrid Jungermann, Director & Actress, Women Who Kill
Jungermann’s film about lesbian podcasters and murder is just as weird as you expect it to be from that logline. It’s also dryly funny, and one of the most excitingly original movies I saw at Tribeca. Despite having broken up, Morgan (Jungermann) and Jean (Ann Carr) still live together and host a podcast where they interview female serial killers. Morgan is generally maudlin and apathetic but gets a spring in her step when she meets the alluring and mysterious Simone (Sheila Vand) at her food co-op. Morgan instantly falls in love with Simone, but her relationship takes a turn when she and Jean start suspecting that Simone may be connected to a serial killer — or may be a serial killer herself. The movie is alternately hilarious — featuring a pitch perfect parody of Park Slope culture — and unnerving.
Photo: Billy Farrell/BFA/REX/Shutterstock.
Sophie Goodhart, Director, My Blind Brother
Seeing Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother fully convinced me that Jenny Slate is our Meg Ryan. Slate, who won me over with Obvious Child, makes an incredible rom-com heroine, and My Blind Brother is a great example of her skill for charming neuroticism. Slate plays Rose, a mess of a woman who has a one-night stand with sad sack Bill (Nick Kroll). Bill is the perpetual second fiddle to his athletic and asshole-ish blind brother, Robbie (Adam Scott). Things get appropriately awkward when Rose decides to volunteer for Robbie, and they start dating even though it’s obvious Rose and Bill are perfect for one another.
Goodhart based the film, adapted from a short, on her reaction to her own sister's multiple sclerosis diagnosis. "After that initial sadness...a few months later it was like, oh fuck, I'm jealous," she said at the film's screening Thursday. "I realized she would always be brave and battling adversity, and I would just be a kind of flakey TV addict just doing not much with my life. So I decided to use her illness for my art."
Though there’s a happy ending to her movie, it has a healthy dose of cynicism, making you cringe as you laugh. I left wanting to see more Goodhart rom-coms.
Photo: Tara Mays/Variety/REX/Shutterstock.
Eve Lindley, Actress, All We Had
Katie Holmes’ directorial debut was not a perfect movie, but it was far from the disastrous vanity project it could have been. The episodic story of a mother (Holmes) and daughter (Stefania Owen) trying to find a home during the Great Recession is very corny and slightly scattered at times, but has moments where it sings. Holmes is adept at capturing the sometimes fractious, but always loving relationship between her two main characters. Furthermore the movie introduces us to Eve Lindley. Lindley, a trans actress, plays Pam, a trans waitress in a diner. Aside from the fact that Holmes deserves applause for actually casting a trans actress in a trans role, Lindley is excellent. Pam’s storyline takes a turn for the brutal, and Lindley plays it delicately, capturing her character’s spirit and dejection.
Photo: MediaPunch/REX/Shutterstock.
Jenny Gage, Director, All this Panic
Do you look back on your teenage years with rose-colored glasses? Or can you only see pimples and braces? Jenny Gage’s documentary somehow manages to both romanticize teenhood and show its warts. Gage chronicled a group of New York City teen girls over three years, shooting them like they were in a Sofia Coppola film. I didn’t always love her film — for a verité documentary, it often felt somewhat staged — but Gage has a knack for capturing youth and making us feel for her subjects.
Gillian Jacobs, Star, Dean & Don’t Think Twice
Okay, you probably know who Gillian Jacobs is from Community. But her film career is taking off in fascinating ways, and Tribeca was a great example of that. In Dean, Jacobs took a role that could have been a flat Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and gave her depth. (Credit for that should also go to star and writer-director Demetri Martin, who subverted expectations of the cute-girl-saves-sad-guy trope.) But you’ve never seen Jacbos give a better performance than in Don’t Think Twice. As an improv comedian who is reluctant to leave the comfort of her troupe, Jacobs has a virtuoso scene towards the end of the film. Without giving too much away, I’ll say this: solo improv comedy. And, miraculously, you’ll be weeping.
Photo: Andrew Morales/REX/Shutterstock.
Emily Harrold, Director, & Daniela Soto-Innes, Subject, La Cocinera
On April 21, Tribeca premiered three short documentaries made as part of the #ActuallySheCan campaign. Each film was directed by a woman and centered on a woman embarking on an incredible endeavor. The most intriguing of these was Emily Harrold's La Cocinera, which follows Daniela Soto-Innes, the 25-year-old chef de cuisine at New York's hot restaurant Cosme. I hope that this ends up a feature. Soto-Innes, who hails from Mexico City, is nothing short of remarkable, running a highly praised kitchen at an incredibly young age. Harrold, meanwhile, captures the intensity of Soto-Innes's job skillfully. (Read more about Soto-Innes here.)
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