Film
Bruce LaBruce Misfires with an Awkward Marriage of Punk and Camp
The provocative auteur's latest, The Misandrists, attempts a tongue-in-cheek critique of radical feminism.
Eileen G’Sell
Eileen G’Sell is a poet and culture critic whose work focuses on gender, sexuality, and economic class. She is a 2023 winner of the Rabkin Foundation Prize in arts journalism and teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
Film
Juliette Binoche Beds and Sheds Lovers in Claire Denis's Anti-Rom-Com
Let the Sunshine In is a rom-com only insofar as our heroine, a successful painter and divorcee, drinks and sleeps with a lot of men and frets about it later; but the laughs are few and the sighs are heavy.
Film
Visions of Joan of Arc as a Dancing, Singing, Head-Banging Kid
French director Bruno Dumont's latest, a ponderous experimental musical about Joan of Arc's childhood, celebrates the innocence and banality of a young saint’s life.
Film
Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg Spar in a Haunting Love Triangle
French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin's latest, Ismael's Ghosts, offers a nuanced look at how women in mid-life grapple with fear and loneliness.
Art
Rich and Varied Visions of Black Female Glamor
Two exhibitions in St. Louis explore very different but complementary visions of how Black women have redefined glamor.
Film
A Cruel and Comic Allegory of Destroyed Masculinity
Shock, gallows humor, and defanging the alpha male in Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Art
Tongue-in-Cheek Fetishism, Tied Up with a Pretty Bow
Playing photographically with femininity, commodity, and bodily perception, Heather Bennett reveals a sly sense of humor.
Film
Mother! Is a Wild Ride, But Is It Also Strangely Feminist?
The film has elicited intense reactions with its super-saturated horror, but it also has a campy streak with feminist implications.