The ChickFlickGuide Blog

Nun so brave: the strange world of the movie nun

2007-03-04T16:24:00.000Z

Everyone loves a movie nun. And even if countless films, from Ken Russell’s histrionic The Devils (1971) to the lame comedy Nuns On The Run (1990), play on the skewed notion that those heavy habits are simply a cover up for lacy scanties and innate nymphomania, the best nun films are chick flicks par excellence.

It would take a pretty special man to beat Jesus in a Sister’s affection, and movie nuns have faced temptation beyond belief – Elvis Presley, Robert Mitchum, Peter Finch to name but three – leading to some seriously gripping moral grapplings. On the other hand, while romance in nun movies is invariably bubbling under the surface, a Bride of Christ is, unlike many female protagonists, actually able to form deep relationships with men based on more than just sex. Freed from the world’s demand to display their bodies, free of make-up and ornament, nuns can be independent and heroic.

In the closed orders, nuns get to be in a secret, very important club, free from bother from men; if working in the community, on the other hand, they can have worldly adventures unconstrained by the ties of marriage or child-rearing. And as jobs go, you can’t get much better than being God’s representative on Earth.

At the same time, wimples do frame the face rather exquisitely . . . (Movie nuns tend to be very striking, and invariably have soulful eyes).

Here's a selective list of the best nun movies available for rent.

Black Narcissus
dir Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946, UK, 100m
Genius directors Powell and Pressburger created a vivid, dreamlike and captivating movie, based on the novel by Rumer Godden, that uses a remote Himalayan convent as the setting for all sorts of derring do. With a dashing Brit hero gone native (David Farrar, wearing very short shorts), a blacked up Jean Seymour pouting and gyrating as a mute "beggar maid", and a feral, wild-eyed Kathleen Byron as the nun driven mad, this is highly charged – and exquisitely beautiful – stuff. Poor old Deborah Kerr, as the conflicted Sister Clodagh, struggles to keep things in order.

Heaven Knows, Mr Allison
dir John Huston, 1957, US, 105m
A bittersweet two-hander set during World War II, in which a nun (Deborah Kerr, again) and a marine (Robert Mitchum) form a decorous, mutually respectful friendship while hiding out from the dastardly Japanese on a remote desert island. Delicate, nuanced performances, fine direction from Huston, and a lump-in-the-throat finale – simply lovely.

The Nun’s Story
dir Fred Zinnemann, 1959, US, 149m
An uncharacteristically dressed down Audrey Hepburn – open face and expressive eyes framed beautifully by her wimple – shows her range with this mature performance as Sister Luke, a Belgian nun struggling valiantly with her faith. Peter Finch offers brusque potential love interest. (Hepburn took to the habit once more in 1976 with the bittersweet Robin And Marian, another great nun's tale, in which she and Sean Connery come to terms with the inevitable poignancy of ageing.)

Change Of Habit
dir William A. Graham, 1969, US, 93m
Elvis’s last film is a very watchable curiosity, trotting out Black Power, rage reduction therapy and rape among other gritty social issues. Elvis is the plain-speaking doctor in a tough area of New York, Mary Tyler Moore one of three nuns who come to work with him. Spreading the word of the Lord on these mean streets entails shedding their habits and donning fetching mini-dresses, thus awakening all sorts of impulses. Groovy.

Dark Habits (Entre Tinieblas)
dir Pedro Almodóvar, 1983, Sp, 116m
Typically crazy early Almodóvar, in which a junkie (Cristina Pascual) takes refuge in the Convent of Humble Redeemers. The sisters here – including Sister Rat (Chus Lampreave) and Sister Sin (Carmen Maura) – are certainly doing it for themselves in this utterly blasphemous romp.

Agnes Of God
dir Norman Jewison, 1985, US, 98m
Meg Tilly is Agnes, the young nun who, after being discovered in her cell with a murdered newborn baby, undergoes a series of intense investigations by tough-talking psychologist Jane Fonda. Somewhat portentous, but the performances, including Anne Bancroft as the Mother Superior with something to hide, keep it afloat.

The Song Of Bernadette
dir Henry King, 1943, US, 156m, b/w
Jennifer Jones spends the full two and a half hours either smiling beatifically or weeping nobly in this laborious, but hugely popular, account of the miracle of Lourdes. Romantic temptation is tossed aside in order to hammer the point home about Bernadette’s purity of spirit and her seemingly endless suffering.

I, The Worst Of All (Yo, la peor de todas)
dir María Luisa Bemberg, 1990, Arg, 105m
This true story of seventeenth-century Mexican poet Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz makes an intense and harrowing movie. Entering the convent so she can study and write, Juana (Assumpta Serna) is the idealistic young woman who becomes embroiled in increasingly distressing politicking and betrayals.

Sweet nothings: a quiz

2007-02-11T12:53:00.000Z

It’s that time of year again … all the local restaurants are booked solid for next Wednesday night and the multiplexes are groaning with a veritable feast of rom-coms and weepies to sigh and sob over.

So, to join in the Valentine’s Day frenzy, here’s a quick quiz. Everyone has a favourite romantic chick flick quote. In Sleepless in Seattle, Meg Ryan and Rosie O'Donnell snuffle into their tissues together over the closing dialogue in the 1950s classic An Affair to Remember. Others can’t hear the word “ditto” without welling up. Some of the much-loved quotes below are poetry, while some, despite their power on screen, seem downright corny on the page. See how many you recognize. A clue: nearly all are taken from their film’s closing moments (often accompanied by a grand swell of iconic music), when the hard-fought battle for love is either lost forever or at long last won. The answers come at the bottom.

1/ “I can’t let him go. I can’t! There must be some way to bring him back. Oh, I can’t think about this now! I’ll go crazy if I do! I’ll think about it tomorrow. But I must think about it. I must think about it. What is there to do? What is there that matters? … Tara! … Home. I’ll go home, and I’ll think of some way to get him back! After all, tomorrow is another day!”

2/ “ButI’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now,now… Here’s looking at you kid.”

3/“This can’t last. This misery can’t last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts, really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long. There’ll come a time in the future when I shan’t mind about this any more, when I can look back and say quite peacefully and cheerfully how silly I was ... No, no! I don’t want that time to come, ever! I want to remember every minute,always, always to the end of my days!”

4/“OK, life’s a fact. People do fall in love, people do belong to each other – because that’s the only chance anybody’s got for real happiness.”

5/ “I’m not letting you get rid of me … I love you. You complete me.”

“Shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello.”

6/“I might be the only person on the face of the earth who knows you’re the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and how you are with Spencer – Spence – and in every single thought that you have, and in how you say what you mean and how you almost always mean something that’s all about being straight and good – I think most people miss that about you. And I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good. About me. Is that something that’s bad for you to be around, for you?”

7/ “I want to tell you with my last breath … I have always loved you. I would rather be a ghost, drifting by your side as a condemned soul, than enter heaven without you. Because of your love … I will never be a lonely spirit.”

ANSWERS
1/Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) in Gone With The Wind (1939), just after Rhett (Clark Gable) has stormed out, curling his lip with the immortal words “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

2/Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) saying goodbye at the airport in Casablanca (1942).

3/ Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) trying to forget in Brief Encounter (1945).

4/ A raindrenched Paul (George Peppard) to Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) in Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961).

5/ Jerry (Tom Cruise) and Dorothy (Renee Zellweger) in Jerry Maguire (1996).

6/Melvin (Jack Nicholson) paying Carol (Helen Hunt) what he calls "a compliment" in As Good As It Gets (1997).

7/Li (Chow Yun-Fat) to Yu (Michelle Yeoh) in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Be My Baby: Dirty Dancing hits twenty

2007-02-07T19:24:00.000Z

Hard to believe that Dirty Dancing is twenty years old. Following the highly successful stage show, which opened in London last winter, this classic dance movie has been re-released in time for Valentine's Day, sparring with another re-release,Casablanca, for the title of "Most romantic movie ever."

Though I’m beside myself at the prospect of seeing Baby and Swayze dryhumping on the big screen once more, I’m not sure that Dirty Dancing should be dressed up as a date movie for Valentine’s Day. Date movies – if we’re talking about heterosexual dates,that is – are, by their very nature, dependent on fifty percent of their audience being composed of heterosexual men. And if one criteria of a chick flick were to be the resistance of heterosexual male audiences to come withina mile of them, then Dirty Dancing would surely be the chickiest flick ofthem all. Has anyone ever met a chap who will admit to liking it?

Even the most macho of men can find it in themselves to confess a grudging soft spot for certain two-hankie weepies – the odd Bette Davis movie, say, or Terms of Endearment, or Bridges of Madison County – but will become grim-faced at the prospect of Dirty Dancing. Not only is it an unabashed teen girl fantasy, but also it spends a lot of time lingering on Patrick Swayze's unfeasibly toned pecs. Far too much for the average Joe to bear, this one is definitely best enjoyed on a girls' night in.

Personally,I missed Dirty Dancing the first time round. I was turned off by the corny 1980s-lite theme tune, and, in my last year at university, believed myself to be too mature, and too cool,for mainstream dance movies. Then I caught it on TV a few years ago, and was hooked, from the moment the opening credits – the Ronettes’ Be My Baby booming over some steamy slow-motion gyrating – began. Now, to make up for my youthful ignorance, I've paid homage by putting Dirty Dancing in my Top Fifty in
Rough Guide to Chick Flicks, and to celebrate its anniversary I’m reprinting it here.

DIRTY DANCING
dir Emile Ardolino, 1987, US, 100m
cast Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze, Jerry Orbach, Cynthia Rhodes, Jack Weston, Jane Bruckner
cin Jeff Jur
m John Morris

Although the massive sleeper hit Dirty Dancing has become something of a joke – “No one puts Baby in the corner!” – it is a fond joke, and the movie holds such a treasured place in so many women’s hearts that it has earned itself the proud status of not only blockbuster, but also cult classic.

It’s the summerof 1963, and, just as they have done for years, a host of middle-class Jewish families are descending on a Catskills holiday camp. Jennifer Grey plays Baby,a 17-year-old Plain Jane who adores her daddy, gets good grades and dreams only of joining the Peace Corps. That is until she meets Johnny (Patrick Swayze),the camp’s bad-boy dance teacher, and, under his close instruction, learns a few of his moves. Clad in a tight T-shirt, Cuban heels and shades, and with the acting ability of a plank, Swayze could be faintly ridiculous were it not for his graceful, dynamic and yes, dirty, dancing. Snake-hipped and broad-shouldered,he has an undeniably commanding physical presence, and after ninety minutes lingering upon his rippling torso you really do start to understand what Baby sees in him.

However, when she first catches sight of him, grinding with his glamorous partner on the dance floor, Baby is as excited by their abandon as she is by Johnny himself. Although they have to put a lid on their natural instincts when entertaining the holidaymakers, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks entertainment staff really let rip back at the staff quarters (which, although they are out of bounds,Baby manages to wander around freely), black and white bumping and grinding in ways that this particular nice Jewish girl has barely dreamed of. Before she knows it,the truculent Johnny has defiantly swept her onto the dancefloor and, though clumsy at first, she soon warms up, finishing the number knock-kneed and triumphant. Within moments, it seems, she finds herself with just a few daysto rehearse in order to take the place of Johnny’s partner at an important show.

If Swayze knows how to dance, Emile Ardolino,who died in 1993,certainly knew how to direct dance scenes. Even Baby and Johnny’s “dancingon a log” sequence (after which, prancing around in a lake,they practise a particularly tricky balancing-above-the-head move), daft asit is, works. Each dance cranks up the sexual tension to such a pitch that when they do eventually sleep together the release is palpable. The music,too, is exceptional. While the movie’s Oscar-winning theme song – “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life” – has long since passed its sell-by date, the rest of the soundtrack is extremely classy,studded with steamy soul numbers from the likes of Otis Redding and Solomon Burke.

Transformed from goody two-shoes into hotpants-clad sex kitten, Baby is a great heroine. Fearless and unashamed, off the dancefloor she is in control – partly through her money and class, but also through sheer feistiness. Because of her, Johnny can finally find the courage to demand the creative control he longs for, and can even stop acting as a gigolo for the older female guests. But can their forbidden love ever be?

The finale, when Johnny, who has previously walked out, storms back into the camp during its last night show, hisses the immortal line, “No one puts Baby in thecorner!”,and whisks her onto the stage, is as corny as you like. The metaphor for a nation on the brink of change, about to be blown apart by the youth revolution and civil rights movement, may be heavy-handed, but as a joyously sexy coming of age story Dirty Dancing can’t be beat.

Feeling hungry ... foodie chick flicks

2006-12-03T14:14:00.000Z

Food is a powerful force. And nowhere more so than in the movies, where the preparation and eating of a meal can unleash anything from desperate yearning through erotic ecstasy to horrified revulsion. Movies show food as romantic, nurturing, and sometimes even threatening; gathered around the dinner table, or bustling around the kitchen, characters bond, reveal secrets, change and grow.

Many movies celebrate the particular relationship between women and food. Preparing a feast can give a female character a welcome form of personal expression – and sometimes even magical powers – and the meals that she cooks will invariably be far more than simply something to eat. Food is a life force, and making a glorious meal is a metaphor for living life to the full. Foodie chick flicks also tend to equate food with female sensuality and subversive power, while movie men who can cook generally turn out to be the good guys. (There are exceptions, naturally; Hannibal Lecter, with his fried liver and glass of Chablis, comes to mind.)

Below, I’ve chosen a handful of the most tempting foodie chick flicks ever made, perfect for long winter nights. So curl up on the sofa, grab a little bit of whatever you fancy to munch on, and let a foodie movie feed your soul.

Babette’s Feast, 1987
This Danish classic is a wonderfully celebratory treat, following the transformative powers of a sumptuous banquet cooked by Babette, a French woman, on the household of two withdrawn and duty-bound sisters. From a short story by Isak Dinesen (the pseudonym adopted by Karen Blixen), who also wrote Out of Africa.

Like Water For Chocolate, 1991
Based on the bestselling magical realism novel by Laura Esquivel, this delightful film is suffused with Mexican culture; a culture in which the struggle between duty, tradition, family and passion looms large. A twenty-year-long domestic saga – taking in revolution, long-held secrets, erotic obsession, curses and ghosts – it features a rich array of beautifully drawn female characters, with the intensely emotional power of food, and the magic that can occur in the kitchen, always to the fore.

Eat Drink Man Woman, 1994
Before Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Brokeback Mountain, director Ang Lee came up with this gentle family drama about a Taiwanese master chef and his three unmarried daughters, who play out their latest dramas and crises over the weekly ritual of an elaborate Sunday meal.

Soul Food, 1997
This time the family is African American, and the chef is the formidable matriarch Mama Joe, who has cooked a soul food feast for her family every Sunday for forty years. When she’s hospitalized with diabetes, the family seems set to fall apart – until Joe’s grandson hatches a cunning plot.

Chocolat, 2000
Though fans of Joanne Harris’ book may be disappointed to find that the movie diverges from the novel, this is another feat of glorious magical realism, with Juliette Binoche appealing as the mysterious young mother who turns a repressed French town upside-down with her sensuous chocolates. Visually, it’s gorgeous – Binoche’s outfits are as stunning as the confections she prepares, and Johnny Depp makes a welcome appearance as the wildly romantic gypsy, Roux.

What’s Cooking?, 2000
Director Gurinder Chadha (who also brought us Bend It Like Beckham) transports her knack for domestic drama to LA with this deft saga of secrets, lies and family feuds played out around the kitchen and the dining room tables. The strong female cast – including ER’s Julianna Margulies as a feisty lesbian daughter and the always-watchable Alfre Woodard as the career woman battling her traditional mother-in-law – is superb.

Pieces Of April, 2003
Katie Holmes, in between playing the too good-to-be-true Joey in TV teen soap Dawson’s Creek and hooking up with Tom Cruise, puts in a fantastic performance in this sharp, poignant indie comedy. She shines as stroppy punk April, who invites her estranged family – including her difficult, dying mother (Patricia Clarkson) – to Thanksgiving dinner in her grimy New York apartment, and faces an increasingly frantic race against time when her oven packs in.

Marie Antoinette, 2006
For anyone who appreciates the sheer aesthetic beauty of Ladurée macaroons, exquisite fruit tarts, and sumptuous cream cakes, Sofia Coppola’s stylish, ultra-feminine movie provides a heavenly, candy-coated all-you-can eat fantasy.

NB This article was written originally for the newsletter of Beyond Chocolate, a series of inspiring workshops that offer a few simple principles to support women to form a healthy relationship both with food and their own bodies.

The Page Turner: French chicks get nasty

2006-11-14T23:46:00.000Z

Not a page turner as such, this delicately slow and quietly nasty fable of jealousy and obsession has a certain French frostiness, with a touch of knowing sub-Hitchcock camp, and is entirely based on the premise that the female is deadler than the male. Lots to relish there, then.

The simple story of two women – one young, one older; one successful, the other whose ambitions have been thwarted; both yearning, in their way, for something that cannot be named – it's a film whose violence is deadly silent (except for one deliciously vicious and utterly warranted physical moment) and whose power depents entirely on the controlled, understated performances of its two female leads. For any woman who has been jealous, competitive, dependent, spiteful, it will ring a bell. Whether it's a chick flick – that is, whether it speaks more to women than men, by accident or design –is debatable.

It's nothing if not subtle. Perhaps too subtle. Give me Whatever Happened to Baby Jane – another classic of female jealousy and sado-masochism – any day.

Notting Hill: Just say no

2006-11-04T18:58:00.000Z

I didn't waste space in my book writing about chick flick turkeys. It was far more gratifying to spend time on all the great movies out there. There's enough critical snobbery about the genre as it is, and I was more interested in celebrating than sneering.

I did permit myself just one short rant, however, on the subject of what I believe to be the most over-rated chick flick ever. Written more out of exasperation than anything else (I expected so much more from the people who gave us Four Weddings and Bridget Jones – and there are *four* Julia Roberts movies in my top fifty), this is what I said...

Five years after the phenomenal success of Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994), Working Title came up with this cynical return to formula. Scripted by Richard Curtis, who knows a thing or two about people-pleasing, Notting Hill should, by rights, be far funnier, fresher and more romantic than it is. Hugh Grant, who proved in Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and About A Boy (2002) – both of which also came from the Working Title stable – that he could do so much better, bumbles and bores as William, a book shop owner. The usually effervescent Julia Roberts, meanwhile, here all lank straightened hair and sulkily jutting jaw, gracelessly plays “the most famous film starin the world” as if she’s having a really, really bad day.

And as for her big line, the one that is supposedly set to get us all weeping – “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her” – words simply fail. Girl? Boy? The two of them have as much chemistry as a couple of dead fish.

Bella (Gina McKee), the token wheelchair-user – who is also infertile (the revelation of which is passed over and forgotten in seconds) – and Honey (Emma Chambers), Will’s “kooky” sister, are woefully underwritten, while Rhys Ifans provides unbelievably annoying support as Spike, Will’s supposedly hilarious friend. All in all, Notting Hill is a sad waste of talent, money and time.

The alternative chick flick playlist . . . .

2006-10-29T20:29:00.000Z

Not much chick flick viewing this week. I’ve been on the road. Listening to a lot of music in the car. Which brings me neatly onto an ongoing project of mine: the alternative chick flicks playlist. Time to drag these classic tunes out of the closet and show the world that there’s more to chick flick soundtracks than “I've Had the Time of My Life”. This could grow and grow, and is in no particular order.

Any additions gratefully received!

“Do Your Thing” Basement Jaxx
Bend It Like Beckham
This movie's soundtrack is consistently fresh and original (including a couple of sneaky tracks from Victoria Beckham). I've chosen the impossibly infectious dance tune – with the immortal refrain “And a boom boom boom and a bang bang bang (boom, bang, boom, bang bang)” – from Brixton’s finest house music outfit.

“Moon River” Danny Williams
Breakfast At Tiffany’s
Henry Mancini’s small, sweet and perfectly formed song won an Oscar – and though no one knows for sure what it is, a “huckleberry friend” sounds like a delightful thing to have. Inextricably linked with the image of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, sitting on the windowsill in sweatshirt and jeans, looking vulnerable as she strums her guitar and plaintively sings into the night.

“All By Myself” Jamie O’Neal
Bridget Jones’s Diary
Who hasn’t bellowed along to this one, eyes screwed shut, in a frenzy of self-pity after a glass too many?

“Respect” Aretha Franklin
Bridget Jones’s Diary
And who hasn’t snapped out of it with a feisty rendition of this? (As also performed in Thelma & Louise, a version which comes a close second, for moody visuals and lump-in-the-throat context at the very least.) Aretha Franklin is the chick flick soundtrack queen.

“Just Blew In From The Windy City” Doris Day
Calamity Jane
While it was the film’s wistful “Secret Love” that won the Oscar, this rambunctious singalong has the wonderful Day giving it a little less yearning and rather more oomph – at her gutsy thigh-slapping best with every throaty “no, sir-eee!”.

“As Time Goes By” Dooley Wilson
Casablanca
“You must remember this…” – who could ever forget? Could this be the most romantic movie song ever?

“Kids In America” The Muffs
Clueless
Kim Wilde’s lo-fi mid-1980s original (cue nostalgic memories of my copycat, home-shorn short-top long-back hairdo – am horrified to find myself wondering if it was in fact a mullet?) revisited a decade later by this Californian garage-punk outfit.

“These Arms Of Mine” Otis Redding
Dirty Dancing
Nobody in the world sings about love like the Love Man himself. Wrap yourself up in his magnificent voice and swoon. (This was the first dance at my wedding,so I have a particular soft spot.)

“You Don’t Own Me” The Blow Monkeys
Dirty Dancing
This campy version of Lesley Gore’s powerful pre-Girl Power proclamation – also immortalized by Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler in The First Wives Club – sneaks onto this list as a shameless excuse to plug the 1960s original. Female defiance has never been sexier or more stylish.

“I Want Candy” Bow Wow Wow
Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola takes us deftly back to the New Romantic 80s with this pouting, posturing,joyful tirade – also featured in the splendid nostalgia-fest Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.

“Unchained Melody” The Righteous Brothers
Ghost
Grand Guignol meets blue-eyed soul. You may snigger at those potter’s wheel antics,but just try and hit that high note while choking back the lump in your throat.

“Angkor Wat Theme II” Michael Galasso
In The Mood For Love
A heartbreakingly delicate string arrangement that weeps with remorse and regret.

“I Say A Little Prayer” The cast
My Best Friend’s Wedding
Penned by Burt Bacharach, this is probably the best feelgood love song ever recorded.Root out Aretha Franklin’s definitive version, grab your favourite karaoke hairbrush, and let rip.

“The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan” Marianne Faithfull
Thelma & Louise
For any woman who, at the age of 37, realized she would never drive – to Paris – in a sports car – with the warm wind in her hay-ayr…
(Best wishes to the iconic Faithfull, who is currently being treated for breast cancer, and, it is said, is doing well.)

“Playground Love” Air
The Virgin Suicides
Chick flicks come over all woozy with help from the psychedelic Gallic electronica twosome. (Try saying that with a mouthful of chocolate raisins.)

“The Way We Were” Barbra Streisand
The Way We Were
Babs at her divaesque best with this bittersweet torch song to nostalgia and loss.

And finally ...

“I Will Always Love You” Whitney Houston
The Bodyguard
...Because every playlist has to feature a guilty pleasure. (I’m talking about the song here, not the film, throughout which I slept like a baby.)

Marie Antoinette: Coppola's candy-coated revolution

2006-10-22T09:17:00.000Z

So much hatred has been spat at Sofia Coppola and her latest movie. Jonathan Ross, speaking on his TV show, said sniffily that he wasn't sure there was a guiding intelligence behind Marie Antoinette (this from the man that raved about Adam Sandler's latest turkey, Click. Not sure where you find the "guiding intelligence" in that one).

Time Out London, with a poker firmly lodged where the sun don’t shine, tells us that this "grand folly of style over substance" "leans heavily on decor, shoes and various superficial confections", and concludes that it is "hip – but never history." I’m sorry? What? Time Out London has the final say on what makes history? Who says it’s not history? Whose history is it anyway?

Nina Caplan, meanwhile, in the free London newspaper London Lite (the name speaks volumes), is also concerned with cutting Coppola down to size, huffing about the “narcissistic writer-director” and her “lofty indifference to the cinema-going public” – and she, too, is quick to criticize the movie’s historical credentials (apparently there aren’t enough peasants in the movie for Caplan’s taste; it’s just not *realistic* enough).

Not everyone is so consumed by bitterness, however. One critic who isn’t worried about realism is Pam Cook, who has written a superb article about Marie Antoinette in the November 2006 issue of Sight and Sound. Cook takes a refreshingly original and intelligent angle on the movie, defining it in terms of travesty, with all the pleasure and subversion that involves.

Over in the US, Roger Ebert is also excited by the movie, giving it four thumbs up out of four, and stating, beautifully, that “Every criticism I have read of this film would alter its fragile magic”.

Turning to rottentomatoes.com, a quick glance of the reviews there shows that among audiences, opinion is dramatically divided. And this is one of the fascinating things about this movie; just how worked up people get about it, whether they love it or hate it. I’ve seen it twice now, and I’m still struggling to decide.

Something, apart from its sheer, undeniable gorgeousness, keeps drawing me back. I can’t quite pin it, or how I feel about it, down – and that intrigues me, gets under my skin. I loved Virgin Suicides, was less keen on Lost in Translation (I’m allergic to Scarlett Johannsen), was seduced by this latest film and yet also felt vaguely critical.

And for me, too, I’ve come to see, it’s about Sofia Coppola. Deep in my heart, I suddenly realize, I’m envious of this successful, confident, beautiful young woman. Her style, her aura, her privilege, her brains, her pregnancy, her Oscar. I don’t come out of this admission very well – but I can’t help but think that my secret pricks of resentment are reflected and writ large, without any heartsearching, by the vast majority of film reviewers. There’s something rotten at the core in the way in which Coppola gets picked on – a lifetime of bitching that started when she appeared in in Godfather 3 and was slated for her performance, and, far more disturbingly, for her looks (not pretty enough, apparently. Big nose.)

Partly born from that mean streak in us Brits that needs to put down the success of others in order to feel better about ourselves, this vitriol is also, I think, tinged with misogyny. (And the bitchy voices were certainly not limited to this side of the Pond.) That a young female director should take the brave step of breaking free from the grip of her father (a man hailed as a god in the eyes of many cinephiles), making her own movies according to her own very distinctive aesthetic, becoming, heaven forbid, an auteur in the meantime; that’s outrageous enough. That she should take the story of a female historical figure and play with it, experiment, imagine, dream – apply with cool confidence her own, personal and impressionistic take on historical “fact” – this is not only shocking but actually terrifying to some.

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian offers a considered and interesting take on the movie, but perhaps inevitably misses some of it. Intrigued by this “anthem to doomed youth”, he pays due respect to Coppola’s consummate skill as a risk-taker, but frets at the fact that we never really know what is going on in the young queen’s mind. Personally, I’d disagree. The moment when the still childless Marie runs to her room and breaks down in floods of anguished tears after having congratulated her sister-in-law on the birth of her new baby, for example, is a shard of real, raw pain that reveals the young queen's fragility and frustration.

This is a ravishing, enchanting movie – and somehow that fact is seen as irrelevant, a sideline. But in Coppola’s work the visuals are never a sideline. The visuals tell the story – dreamy, seductive, mysterious, troubling – and in that, she is an artist. Why should visual pleasure be seen as shallow? Why is costume, and décor, seen as superficial? And why should Sofia Coppola, in painting a portrait of a shallow world, be judged as shallow herself? Could it not be seen as a supremely bold move to put herself and her privileged world under the microscope – to reach out and communicate and lay herself bare? To make art out of what she knows?

Maybe many, men and women included, find themselves embarrassed by the sheer overblown femininity of Marie Antoinette’s world. The responses to it bear a strong similarity to those to Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, another audacious visual spectacle that plays with “historical fact”. Marie Antoinette is a movie of parasols and plumes and ribbons and bows and flowers and shoes and hairdos and hats and chokers and candy and corsets and corsages and cakes. Lots and lots of cakes. Mountains of fondant fancies and cream buns, pretty fruit tarts and rainbow-coloured macaroons. And these cakes aren’t just “superficial confections”. As Marie Antoinette becomes more claustrophobic, more trapped, more miserable, the candy and the conspicuous consumption increases.

It’s been repeated ad nauseam that the movie was booed at Cannes. What is less commonly told is that it also, at the same screening, received a standing ovation. And that many movies showcased at Cannes get a similarly mixed reception. So much for historical verisimilitude. When it comes to slagging off Sofia Coppola, it seems, it’s not so important to stick to the facts.

Incidentally, the macaroons, as key to this movie as the ravishing Manolo Blahnik shoes, were ordered from French patissier Ladurée; you can buy them from Harrods.

They are, literally, divine.

Superficial? Moi?

The Devil Wears Prada: footless tights, yes or no?

2006-10-15T18:18:00.000Z

What a surprise – The Devil Wears Prada has received none of the critical acclaim of The Departed or Children of Men. I won’t rant . . .it’s not quite a good enough movie for me to get all hot and bothered. But it’s far more interesting than most reviewers give it credit for, and that does bug me.

Most pundits have grudgingly allowed that Meryl Streep carries the movie, which is indisputable. She’s an actress who improves with age, I think, mellowing and deepening and losing some of her early nervy affectation – and she gives a subtle, very complex performance. It’s striking to me that I identify with her character, the older woman who has given up a lot by making the choices that have got her where she is today, and not the slip of a thing played by Anne Hathaway, the striving modern miss with all her life ahead of her.

Devil isn’t as anti-fashion as I thought it was going to be, and for that I applaud it. Streep gives a great speech explaining, with terrifying, razor-sharp intelligence, that Hathaway’s “choice” not to follow fashion is no choice at all; that her frumpy blue jumper is in fact as conscious a style statement as her co-worker’s Chanel handbag. If I hadn’t been stuffing chocolate raisins down my gullet I would have applauded. It used to drive me mad when a certain ex-boyfriend of mine would dismiss my concerns about his sludgy cardigans and ill-fitting Gap chinos as shallow and insignificant. “I just don’t care about clothes,” he’d insist loftily, as if that somehow made him superior to me. It’s not like I wanted him to deck himself out in designer T-shirts and ridiculously priced jeans (I’m an anti-label snob; a hangover from growing up in the punk years). I was just asking him to care about himself, I think, and ultimately, to care about me.

Am currently wondering whether I’m too old to wear footless tights. I loved them the first time around, worn with 1950s jumble sale skirts, cheap Woolworth’s plimsolls and men’s cardigans; but it feels just a little weird to kit myself out in the clothes I wore twenty years ago. (I’d ditch the baggy cardis today, but the skirts and plimsolls look is one I still hold dear, and explains my current enchantment with Lily Allen.) Perhaps I should watch The Devil Wears Prada again. I don’t think The Departed is going to help me out much.

The Departed: damaged men and mobile phones

2006-10-15T18:16:00.000Z

I loved The Departed, because I have a soft spot for Martin Scorsese, and even though his women are always appalling or disappointing (except, of course, for Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More) his men are complex and damaged and conflicted enough for me to find them deeply interesting. I’ve recently cracked and finally got my first-ever mobile phone, too, so all the shenanigans with top secret texting in terrifying life-and-death situations tickled me no end.

Oh, and it features two of my favourite songs: Sweet Dreams by Patsy Cline and Gimme Shelter by the Stones. You can always depend on Scorsese for a supercool soundtrack.

Children of Men: puppy dogs and pretension

2006-10-15T17:11:00.000Z

Unlike the rest of the world, who seem to be universally singing its praises, I thought Children of Men was a bit tiresome. Pretentious, portentous and far too worthy for its own good. As a childless woman, watching the tragedy of a world without babies – along with the Jesus Christ allusions – played out in a dystopian war zone wore a bit thin after a while. I entertained myself counting the many dogs and cats swarming all over the screen – the point, presumably, being that in a world without kids adults instinctively turn towards other forms of small, dependent beings to look after and to love.

Welcome to the ChickFlickGuide.com blog

2006-09-26T21:47:00.000Z

The Rough Guide to Chick Flicks is out today! You can order it now from the online Rough Guides shop or click below to get it from Amazon UK.

So just what is a chick flick?. Most of us recognize one when we see one. Regarded more as a guilty pleasure than as an art form, it’s a breed of movie that’s given little attentionin comparison to other, more recognized genres. Mention chick flicks and people think of Julia Roberts and Renee Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon and Drew Barrymore. Many come over all condescending, bandying dismissive words around like "light", "formulaic", and my personal favourite – “frothy”.

The Rough Guide to Chick Flicks – and this blog, which will expand upon the book – doesn’t knock froth. In fact, it delights in it. What, after all, would a cappuccino be without froth, or a bubble bath? Movies like Pretty Woman and Beaches, Ghost and Steel Magnolias are all classic examples of the 1980s/90sboom in the genre, and they all fit the bill nicely when you're craving aweepy night in with the girls and a gallon of wine. But how much more fun to broaden the scope – to use “chick flick” as an umbrella term for the rich and varied body of movies out there that have particular appeal to women. While we adore melodramas, flock to weepies in droves, and are absolute suckersfor rom-coms, I’d argue that an action movie can also be a chick flick if told from a female point of view – and even a horror movie. (Witness the huge popularity of Aliens and Terminator 2 with female audiences, or theappeal of Agent Clarice Starling – as played by the iconic Jodie Foster –in The Silence Of The Lambs. Think about Geena Davis looking cool as Hell in blonde wig and assassin's catsuit in The Long Kiss Goodnight.) And whilethe term chick flick could hardly be more American, we should never overlook world cinema when hunting down the best in women's pictures. It was fascinating, while researching the Rough Guide, to sift through everything from neorealism to New Australian cinema, French comedies to post-Tiananmen melodramas, plucking out films that would be of particular interest to female audiences.

So, the chick flick comes in many guises – but there are,of course, many constants. Be it a fairy-tale fantasy or a terminal illness sobfest, a bouncy musical or a haughty costume drama, a chick flick willinclude, in some combination, the following: fun female bonding, thick-as-thievesfriendship, and devastating family crises; mothers and daughters raging andloving with equal passion; strong women and suffering women; sacrifice, sickness,love and loss. Lots and lots of loss. Above all, a chick flick will bring emotion – feelings – unashamedly to the fore. And when that's done well,that can be a profoundly cathartic experience. Bridges of Madison County. Brief Encounter. Imitation of Life. In The Mood For Love. Just four out ofdozens that can bring a tear to my eye at the mere mention.

The Rough Guide To Chick Flicks is a valentine to the movies that women love, and offers a glittering grab bag of recommendations, whatever your viewing mood. It's the first book ever to gather together, with the same delight, reflections on Dirty Dancing and on new Iranian cinema, flappers and feminism, the gaudy excess of Gainsborough studio’s 1940s costume dramas and the dry irony of Jane Austen. Hugh Grant sits cheek by jowl with Cary Grant; scriptwriter Frances Marion cosies up with Julia Roberts. When it heads off around the world it gives as much space to silent Chinese melodrama as to Amélie, and, in discussions of the chick flick/chick lit crossover, is as excited by thework of 1960s trash icon Jacqueline Susann as by Virginia Woolf. It’s a bookthat adores any movie in which women – clowns and femmes fatales, wicked ladies and working girls, fast-talking broads and silent icons – occupy centre stage and that thinks the ranks of remarkable women (and men) behind the scenes should take a long-overdue bow.

I hope you enjoy it.

Oh – and do come back to this blog for all sorts of chick flick content not available in the book or anywhere else. That includes reviews of the latest movies, plus details of screenings, events and news for chick flick fans. And just to start, here's a link to hear me in interview about the book in a Rough Guides podcast. Have a listen and find out which is my favourite chick flick of all the time - and the one I think is the most overrated.