Top 4 Movies of 2020 With Female Leads
By: Stephanie D'Ornelas
Tags: Movies, Cinema, Film Reviews, Film, Feminism

Top 4 Movies of 2020 With Female Leads

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, Beanpole and Swallow: some of my favorite films of the year starring women Stephanie D'Ornelas Dec 11, 2020·5 min read

Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Photo: Reproduction

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This year I watched fantastic films with one thing in common: they bring women as protagonists (with some directed and produced by women too). Cinema is, still, essentially masculine in most of its productions and protagonism on the screens. Throughout history, cinema has almost always been made by men and for men. The woman is often reduced to the good guy’s “final reward”, bearing stunning beauty … according to beauty standards, of course. In these productions, the woman’s narrative is not independent: it’s always associated with some male character trajectory.

While men watch themselves on the screen, women watch them being watched by men. This thinking is based on the words of art critic John Berger, who said in Ways of Seeing: “men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object — and most particularly an object of vision: a sight”.

In this context, watching films made from a non-hegemonic perspective is to expand your views about yourself through identification, or even to put yourself in the place of the other who is underrepresented. This allows you to see from new perspectives.

Now, let’s go to the list of great films starring women, all released between 2019 and 2020. These four films are beautiful but also painful when exposing the realities of women’s experiences.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Photo: Reproduction

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is art from beginning to end. Set in France in the late 18th century, the film tells the story of a young painter, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), who is commissioned to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) in a secret way. That’s because the portrait will be sent to the young woman’s future husband, but she does not want to be married and refuses to pose for any artist. So Marianne pretends to be a chaperone, painting her in secret. As the days go by, the two end up connecting in an increasingly deep and intimate way.

The film is beautiful in showing with sensitivity the love between two women. It is also fantastic to see a production almost entirely feminine, from the actresses to the direction of the French filmmaker Céline Sciamma. Another incredible woman who stays behind the scenes (except for the hands that appear on screen) is the author of the paintings, Hélène Delmaire. She shares her amazing work on Instagram.

Invisible Life

Photo: Reproduction

Invisible Life is a beautiful, sensitive and sad film. It depicts two sisters’ lives, from adolescence to old age, who are cruelly separated by life. Following each of them’s journey, we see how misogyny within the family can destroy dreams and shatter brilliant women’s lives.

The film was selected as the Brazilian entry for the Oscars in 2019 (I think it should have been Bacurau, but anyway, the Invisible Life is also fantastic). Although the movie was not nominated, it was recognized in several film festivals and awarded in Cannes. The film is based on the novel The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão by Martha Batalha. It has a short but brilliant appearance of Oscar-nominated Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro.

Beanpole

Photo: Reproduction

Beanpole is probably very different from the war movies you’ve seen. Mainly because it is told from a very invisible perspective, whether in the cinema or by the story itself: the women’s perspective. The Russian production follows the lives of two friends, Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), amid a shattered Russia after World War II. They try to rebuild their lives in an environment filled with the trauma of war, poverty and death. The script is inspired by the book War Does Not Have a Woman’s Face, by Svetlana Aleksiévitch. The film’s photography, directed by young Kseniya Sereda, is a brilliant work of art.

Swallow

Photo: Reproduction

My feelings while watching Swallow can be summed up in discomfort and distress. It may seem cliché to say that (because of the movie’s name), but it isn’t easy to swallow and digest. Swallow tells the story of Hunter (Haley Bennett), who seems to have won the lottery of what society defines as success for a woman. She married a beautiful and wealthy husband, who gave her access to a beautiful mansion and a lot of free hours to do whatever she wanted throughout the day (in addition to household chores, of course).

But what seems like a perfect life to those who see it from the outside is nothing more than a representation in which she has to pretend to be a flawless woman, under constant demands from her husband and in-laws. Trapped in a cycle of unhappiness, she finds a way to regain control over herself in an unhealthy and self-destructive way: she begins to swallow bizarre objects that she finds around the house, like a battery and a pin. The tension is constant throughout the entire plot.

Swallow reminded me, in a way, of the wonderful Gone Girl, which shows the deconstruction of the “perfect woman”. Hunter also reminded me of Betty Draper, from Mad Men: a woman who, at first glance, follows all standards of beauty and seems to live a perfect marriage, in addition to being sweet, patient and delicate as a porcelain doll. But, throughout history (just like Betty in Mad Men), we discovered the different layers that complex Hunter beyond her beautiful face.