Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.
NOT A PRETTY PICTURE
Synopsis
Using strategies of reenactment, a filmmaker dramatizes her high-school experience of sexual assault, and looks back at coming of age in 1960s New York. She reflects with actors on that process of reconstruction, and makes space for them to work through their own dealings with violence and desire.
Synopsis
Using strategies of reenactment, a filmmaker dramatizes her high-school experience of sexual assault, and looks back at coming of age in 1960s New York. She reflects with actors on that process of reconstruction, and makes space for them to work through their own dealings with violence and desire.
Our take
Allowing catharsis to take honest form, Martha Coolidge’s debut feature pushes narrative convention aside, embracing what truth might come from unpredictable collective reckoning. Gathering admirers (Céline Sciamma!) after its restoration, this is an underseen classic of ’70s feminist cinema.