Antonia's
Line (1995)
A celebration of the love, unity and strength of
women, this wonderfully endearing and touching family
chronicle/fable from lesbian director Gorris centering on four
generations of women playfully alternates between dramatic realism
and magical realism (and might very well have been what the film
version of Isabelle Allende's The House of the Spirits
should have been)...The story, set in a small Dutch village, spans
decades -- from the devastation of the post-war period to the
present -- and follows the fiercely independent-minded Antonia (Willeke
van Ammelrooy), who returns to her childhood farmhouse to till the
soil and raise a family; all without the aid of the misogynist
townsfolk, a hypocritical church and the often violence-prone men.
Antonia is aided by her lesbian daughter, a granddaughter and
great-granddaughter and a group of social rejects who flock to
her. This Oscar-winning Best Foreign Film is masterful
storytelling that enthralls. (Dutch with English subtitles)
Director: Marleen Gorris
Starring: Willeke van Ammelrooy, Els
Dottermans, Veere Van Overloop
Mrs.
Dalloway (1997)
From lesbian filmmaker Marleen Gorris comes this
non-lesbian themed story of one woman's unexpected and meloncholy
reflection on her life. On a perfect day in 1923, memories of her
youth course through the day's events as Mrs. Dalloway (Redgrave)
prepares for another of her elaborate parties. In an ordered
English garden, a young veteran makes his own peace with the
ravages of shell shock; at a nearby bench, Mrs. Dalloway's
rejected suitor of decades past indulges his own reminiscences.
Director Gorris has captured Virginia Woolf's novel of that
society of manners, a complex social structure unaware of its
impending demise; juxtaposing it against the oncoming realities of
the modern age. A dreamlike quality imbues recalled regrets,
passions, conviction; defining relationships that survive time and
distance, describing lives molded by unrecognized, subconscious
yearnings fleetingly glimpsed in chaste kisses and unexpected
flares of emotion. An intricately crafted film sparkled with
superb portrayals, Mrs. Dalloway unerringly evokes a time
recently, irrevocably past.
Director: Marleen Gorris
Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Natascha
McElhone, Rupert Graves, Michael Kitchen
Marleen Gorris Filmography
