5 Serious/Darkly Comedic/Indie #DirectedByWomen Movie Ideas

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It's day 5 in my daily blogging thing I'm doing for the Directed By Women Worldwide Viewing Party. I'm going to follow up the Friday Fun Movie List with a Saturday Serious List - all #DirectedByWomen and movies I have actually seen of course. They're not really serious, actually. They're more like dark comedy. I don't know, maybe indie is a better way to say it. Whatever. I like these movies a lot, but I also know they may be of a certain taste. So, here they are...and seriously, check these out.

1 Me and You and Everyone We Know - This was directed by Miranda July, and it's up there on my fave movies list. It's just got some great shit in there. See for yourself though. I wouldn't do it justice.



  2 Obvious Child - by Gillian Robespierre is a funny-ass movie. It kinda revolves around an abortion, so that's why it's in this list and not just a comedies/romantic comedy list, cause, you know...people and their whole abortion thing. Anyway, it's really solid. Plus, this was Gillian's first full length movie (she's writer/director/producer), so if there's more to come from her...oh I will definitely go check it out.




3 The Virgin Suicides - This is Sofia Coppola's movie. It's dark. It's cool. Although, full disclosure, this is not my very favorite Sophia Coppola movie, but it's a good one, and it's got that Sophia flare that I like. You should check it out.


 


4 But I'm a Cheerleader - Jamie Babbit directed this one. This is a wild, over the top, colorful (literally, I remember it as very colorful) movie, and as I'm thinking about it now, I realize I could definitely do an SSL review on it (depictions of lady-bation and and lady-gasms in it, ya'll!!), so watch the move and then look forward to that.




5 Slums of Beverly Hills  - This one is directed by Tamara Jenkins. Okay, I said number one up there was on my top fave movie list, but this one is too, AND it got a 5 vulva rating when I SSL Reviewed it. It's just got a lot of elements that hit all the right notes for me. Love it.

SSL Review - Slums of Beverly Hills

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I'm pleased to present another SSL review. In an SSL review, of course, I specifically critique the depictions and discussions of female sexual response. I also like to add in my 2 cents about the movie as a whole, so we'll begin with that.

Slums of Beverly Hills was written and directed in 1998 by Tamara Jenkins and is said to be somewhat autobiographical. I have caught it on TV a few times over the last several years and from my memories thought it could be an SSL review candidate. As I suspected there was a notable depiction warranting an SSL review, and I was happy to find I liked the movie just as much this time around. If I must categorize it, it would be a coming of age story. Vivian is a middle child about to start high school, who travels from crappy motel apartment to crappy motel apartment with her 2 brothers and divorced 65- year old father in Beverly Hills. This movie to me has an authenticity to it that is endearing. A lot of reviews called this movie a comedy, but I think if a drama has the good sense, as this movie does, to allow ample comedy in, it gets mixed up in the purely comedy genre, and it is much more than that. It is a sort of raw peak into a family - the good, the bad, and the ugly, and during that glimpse, we get to see Vivian exploring her place in the family, in society as a woman, and her exploration of herself as a sexual being.

Now that I've just kinda described this as a drama, I want to say that I like the lack of drama in this drama. There is no obsession with a big event that forces her into adulthood. In fact there are events in this movie that would have overtaken the plot of other movies; loss of virginity and witnessing a distasteful side of your parent for instance. However, instead of dwelling on these "life events" they simply flowed along with the rest of her experiences. Speaking of her experiences....Let's movie on to the SSL review.

There was only one scene in here that depicted female sexual response. Let me set it up first though - going a few scenes back...Vivian is sharing a room with her 29 year old sweet, fun, addict, fuck-up cousin Rita (Marisa Tomei) who has come to live with Vivian's family to get her life together while Rita's father subsidizes a nicer place for the family to live in. So, as Rita is unpacking, she holds up an item, a cream colored hard plastic dildo-shaped vibrator.