2021 FEMALECENTRIC MOVIES: EMILY BRONTE WITH EMILY BEECHAM, JOE ALWYN, EMMA MACKEY, WOMEN IN THE CASTLE WITH KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS, DAISY RIDLEY, MIRACLE CLUB WITH MAGGIE SMITH, KATHY BATES, LAURA LINNEY

  2021 FEMALECENTRIC MOVIES  

EMILY ON EMILY BRONTE

This year we'll have a number of movies centred on female characters, among them is EMILY which will see Emma Mackey playing famous writer Emily Bronte in Frances O’Connor's film which will immerse us in Emily Brontë’s hidden world: Emily is a rebel and misfit, a young woman daring to form herself, to embrace her true nature… to hell with the consequences. We share the innermost relationships that inspired Emily. They are revelations of untold truths – her raw, passionate sisterhood for Charlotte (Emily Beecham) and Anne; her first aching, forbidden love for Weightman (Joe Alwyn) and her care for her maverick brother (Fionn Whitehead) whom she idolises. Who was this young woman whose heart burned with such love and life, and who wrote literature’s timeless and searing masterpiece, Wuthering Heights? 

WOMEN IN THE CASTLE

Post-war Germany: a country compromised – every citizen tarnished by complicity with the Nazi regime, and yet willing the past to disappear as they build a future from its ashes. But for Marianne – widow of a man murdered for defying the Nazi regime – the past must be spoken for. She cannot simply

The film is helmed and written by Jane Anderson

forgive her compatriots for what they’ve done, to her life and to her once-proud nation. She finds refuge from this rapidly transforming world in her family’s crumbling castle where she once played host to Germany’s liberal elite and there fulfills her promise to find and protect the wives and children of her husband’s brave conspirators. Rescuing her dearest friend’s widow, Benita, from the Russian army, and Ania, from a refugee camp, Marianne assembles a makeshift family, certain the women’s shared pain will bind them together. But as Benita begins a clandestine relationship and Ania struggles to conceal her Nazi past, Marianne learns that her clear-cut, highly principled worldview and moral certainty has no place in these new, frighteningly ambiguous and emotionally charged days. All three women (Kristin Scott Thomas, Daisy Ridley and Nina Hoss) must grapple with the realities they now face, and the terrible consequences of decisions they cannot undo.

 

THE MIRACLE CLUB

 Lourdes, a picturesque country town at the base of the magnificent French Pyrenees, and a place of miracles, is a magnet for 6 million visitors each year from across the globe. Ballyfermot, Ireland, 1960: A hilariously hard-knocks community in outer Dublin that marches to its own beat – frenzied, fast and loose – and yet also deeply soulful; rooted in traditions of loyalty, faith and togetherness. It’s a thriving community in a constant uphill battle to live as fully as possible, on very little. And the opportunity to rise above one’s daily struggles is frankly a pipe dream, especially for women.

Jane Anderson wrote and directed the film

There’s just one tantalising dream for the women of Ballyfermot to taste freedom and escape the gauntlet of domestic life: to win a pilgrimage to the sacred French town of Lourdes, and all for free. And with a little benevolent interference from their cheeky and rebellious priest, close friends played by Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates and Laura Linney, are the ‘lucky’ few to win this ticket of a lifetime at their riotous local raffle night. Having never even left Dublin the journey provides them the chance to let their hair down, celebrate life and delight in some sweet independence. But it’s not all just a ‘jolly’: the women have a very important role to play when they arrive in Lourdes – to act as ‘pushers’ for the seriously ill and disabled pilgrims, there to bathe in the town’s healing springs. And it’s also a chance to reflect on their own lives, with each of the women in search of their own personal miracles. But when they are joined by a woman recently returned from a decades long exile in the USA, deep wounds from the past are re-opened, and bitter truths exposed. As they confront one another and embrace their past, these women realise that the miracle they have all been looking for is right in front of them: in the strength of their friendships and unshakeable togetherness.