Lee Mi-Mi’s intoxicating film, which sits in a rich cinematic tradition of all-girls’ schools, with their homoerotic tensions, as social microcosms, earns a rare screening this week
Love is a many-splendoured thing in Lee Mi-Mi’s Girls’ School, a Taiwanese gem from 1982 beautifully restored just in time for its 40th anniversary. Screened in the UK at BFI Southbank as part of Queer East, an LGBTQ+ film festival showcasing lesser-known treasures from east and south-east Asian cinema, Girls’ School is a time capsule of social attitudes towards homosexuality in 1980s Taiwan at the meeting point between commercial and arthouse film-making.
As a site of surveillance, tempestuous impulses and healing camaraderie, all-girls’ schools can double as a microcosm for society and have a psychological intensity that has fascinated generations of film-makers. Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) views such places as a source of horror and mystery while The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie...
Love is a many-splendoured thing in Lee Mi-Mi’s Girls’ School, a Taiwanese gem from 1982 beautifully restored just in time for its 40th anniversary. Screened in the UK at BFI Southbank as part of Queer East, an LGBTQ+ film festival showcasing lesser-known treasures from east and south-east Asian cinema, Girls’ School is a time capsule of social attitudes towards homosexuality in 1980s Taiwan at the meeting point between commercial and arthouse film-making.
As a site of surveillance, tempestuous impulses and healing camaraderie, all-girls’ schools can double as a microcosm for society and have a psychological intensity that has fascinated generations of film-makers. Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) views such places as a source of horror and mystery while The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie...
- 5/23/2022
- by Phuong Le
- The Guardian - Film News
Think, “I Was a Teenage Empress.” A trio of movies tell an optimized version of the life of a 19th century Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. It’s fuzzy history designed to prop up German morale, but the film is graced with the incredible presence of a teenaged Romy Schneider, whose beauty and personality became a sensation in the European film world.
The Sissi Collection:
Sissi
Sissi The Young Empress
Sissi The Fateful Years of an Empress
The Story of Vickie
Blu-ray
Film Movement
1955, 1956, 1957 / Color / 1:78 widescreen & 1:33 flat full frame / 102, 107, 109 min. / Street Date November 14, 2017 / 74.95
Starring: Romy Schneider, Karlheinz Böhm, Magda Schneider, Uta Franz, Vilma Degischer, Josef Meinrad, Gustav Knuth.
Cinematography: Bruno Mondi
Film Editor: Alfred Srp
Original Music: Anton Profes
Produced by Karl Erlich, Ernst Marischka
Written and Directed by Ernst Marischka
I’m fascinated by National Epics, movies that individual countries might take as a film...
The Sissi Collection:
Sissi
Sissi The Young Empress
Sissi The Fateful Years of an Empress
The Story of Vickie
Blu-ray
Film Movement
1955, 1956, 1957 / Color / 1:78 widescreen & 1:33 flat full frame / 102, 107, 109 min. / Street Date November 14, 2017 / 74.95
Starring: Romy Schneider, Karlheinz Böhm, Magda Schneider, Uta Franz, Vilma Degischer, Josef Meinrad, Gustav Knuth.
Cinematography: Bruno Mondi
Film Editor: Alfred Srp
Original Music: Anton Profes
Produced by Karl Erlich, Ernst Marischka
Written and Directed by Ernst Marischka
I’m fascinated by National Epics, movies that individual countries might take as a film...
- 11/14/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...
- 2/6/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
DVD Playhouse September 2010
By
Allen Gardner
The Girl Who Played With Fire (Music Box Films) Follow up to the hit The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo finds Lisabeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) joining forces once again as Blomkvist is about to break a story on Sweden’s sex trade, which leads unexpectedly to a dark secret from Elizabeth’s past. Starts off well, then quickly nose-dives into sensationalism and downright silliness, with a pair of villains who are straight out of a Roger Moore-era James Bond film. A real letdown for those of us who felt Dragon Tattoo had finally breathed life into the cinema’s long-stagnant genre of the thriller. Bonuses: English language track; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
The Killer Inside Me (IFC Films) Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s classic, and notorious, novel about the psychotic mind of a small town sheriff (Casey Affleck,...
By
Allen Gardner
The Girl Who Played With Fire (Music Box Films) Follow up to the hit The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo finds Lisabeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) joining forces once again as Blomkvist is about to break a story on Sweden’s sex trade, which leads unexpectedly to a dark secret from Elizabeth’s past. Starts off well, then quickly nose-dives into sensationalism and downright silliness, with a pair of villains who are straight out of a Roger Moore-era James Bond film. A real letdown for those of us who felt Dragon Tattoo had finally breathed life into the cinema’s long-stagnant genre of the thriller. Bonuses: English language track; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
The Killer Inside Me (IFC Films) Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s classic, and notorious, novel about the psychotic mind of a small town sheriff (Casey Affleck,...
- 9/25/2010
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Surreal and repressive, Mädchen in Uniform (1958) is the Technicolor remake of the dramatic — and downright shocking — 1931 German lesbian film of the same name. The story of a young woman who falls deeply in love with her teacher, it’s at once quaint and stirring.
Manuela (Romy Schneider) is the girl in question. It’s 1910, Prussia, and she’s just lost her mother. Her strict aunt brings her to a boarding school/convent to “learn discipline,” and the free-spirited youth immediately finds it a cold, unfriendly place. Run by the tyrannical Senior Superior, it's billed as the place where girls are turned into women who will be “fit to be soldiers’ mothers” – tough and ready for anything.
Discipline and suffering are the rules of the day. The kids are yelled at for the tiniest offense, physically disciplined, and given little love or affection by their cold fraeuleins (teachers). It's a direct commentary on the country's hard,...
Manuela (Romy Schneider) is the girl in question. It’s 1910, Prussia, and she’s just lost her mother. Her strict aunt brings her to a boarding school/convent to “learn discipline,” and the free-spirited youth immediately finds it a cold, unfriendly place. Run by the tyrannical Senior Superior, it's billed as the place where girls are turned into women who will be “fit to be soldiers’ mothers” – tough and ready for anything.
Discipline and suffering are the rules of the day. The kids are yelled at for the tiniest offense, physically disciplined, and given little love or affection by their cold fraeuleins (teachers). It's a direct commentary on the country's hard,...
- 9/14/2010
- by Danielle Riendeau
- AfterEllen.com
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