Each week, we recommend films directed by women with the aim of celebrating and highlighting female achievements in cinema. Our rec for this week is The Hitch Hiker directed by Ida Lupino in 1953 during the swells of Golden Age Hollywood.
Director: Hallie Meyers-Shyer Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Candice Bergen, Nico Alexander, Nat Wolff, Jon Rudnitsky Running Time: 97 minutes
First off, Home Again is not a rom-com. Don’t listen to what the critics want to tell you. It follows Alice, played with aplomb by Reese Witherspoon, who has recently left her man-child husband (Michael Sheen) in New York and returned to the restorative comforts of Los Angeles. With the help of her mother, she reclaims her identity and finds fulfilment.
With the year that’s in it, it’s perhaps easy to imagine that we have reached gender parity in the film industry (or in Hollywood at least), what with Patty Jenkins behind the biggest blockbuster of the year and the success of female-driven stories like Atomic Blonde and The Beguiled. But considering Jenkins hadn’t directed a film for around 14 years since her debut, neither Marvel or DC had released a female-centric story in this decade of endless superhero movies and the percentage of films directed by women is the same as it was in 1998, we clearly have more steps to take. So we here at Film In Dublin have an announcement…
