Sarah Williams

Belgian filmmaker Zoé Wittock's Jumbo is an atypical romance that, though its premise of a girl who falls in love with an amusement park ride named Jumbo may come off as an easy joke, manages to make its love story believable. disappointment media was able to talk to her about the film's unique subject, and her writing process.
Jumbo is a story of objectum sexuality, or an orientation where one builds a romantic relationship with an inanimate object. Wittock based Noémie Merlant's character, ...

After 2020’s Cesár Awards brought storms, the following year has brought nothing more than scattered dust showers. France’s Oscar equivalent has decided that the best way to follow a year of scandal due to their support of child rapist Roman Polanski is simply to pretend it hadn’t happened. The only acknowledgement of Adèle Haenel and Céline Sciamma’s walkouts, the latter of whom recently left a ceremony in which the president of the CNC, accused of sexual abuse, was present, as well as Aïssa Maïga’s public call-out of industry racism has been through offering Adèle Haenel an honorary award, w

78 days long, the 1990 Oka crisis was a protest led by two Mohawk communities in Quebec, when the white government zoned a golf course…

In The Affair, originally titled "The Glass Room" (a title change that's truly baffling given how much less unique the former sounds), Carice Van Houten is a gem in what is an otherwise messy and distant lesbian love story. Liesel (Hanna Alström) is content in her marriage to Viktor (Claes Bang), when her dynamic with close, free-spirited friend Hana (Van Houten) shifts. Liesel turns away as Hana confesses her love, turning away while things are still easy. Over the years, Hana tries her best...

Jacques Rivette works with actors like a child plays with dolls. His films are so lengthy because he often rewrites as his actors play out their scenes, allowing his mysteries to backtrack, rewind, and test new paths, creating a new, fluid narrative blueprint. Céline and Julie Go Boating is the most playful of his enigmatic puzzle boxes, and Céline (Juliet Berto) is, in effect, Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit, dropping her possessions behind her for Julie (Dominique Labourier) to find. The two w...

Céline Sciamma has a tradition with names. Water Lilies‘ Marie, Girlhood‘s Marieme, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire‘s Marianne all share variants of the name Marie, and an argument can be made that Tomboy‘s Mickaël uses a masculinized version of the name (the characters given name, Laure, comes from Sciamma’s brother Laurent). Her protagonists, who come from the heart, share one name, and over time, we’ve seen that character grow up. The same story continues with Petite Maman‘s Marion, shown a...

Coastal British streets feel hellish in the grimey mist, even a tender romantic moment can feel like possession when that atmosphere contains the sinking dread and draining heat of judgement day. The street lamps grow leering, eyes of God watching, waiting, for some reason to grow beyond a voice in the back of Maud (Morfydd Clark)’s mind. Holy imagery is twisted, but what’s most important is this constant worship, devotion without relent go any fault.

Growing up on the internet, there is both a comfort and a lurking threat. There is that comfort of finding someone who will listen there, that wealth of information, and seeing a likemindedness in traits you can’t always put into words. Then there’s this threat. It’s got a bitter metallic taste, a seedier underbelly of the community found. It’s the eyes peering through a webcam, watching for too long, a little too anonymous, and it’s conversations with strangers getting darker when you’re too...

Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga two-hander Passing is one of the showier pictures of Sundance in 2021. Adapted from Nella Larsen’s 1920s story, it’s a film about two women who’ve found themselves down radically different paths. Irene (Ruth Negga) approaches Clare (Tessa Thompson) as they dine. Clare hardly recognises her from when they grew up together, but Irene has chosen to pass as white. The two women, who came from the same place, find themselves on opposite sides of a vague racial line, o...

Sundance Film Festival has long been known for its notorious quirkiness. Often programming American indie films from a wealthy, nepotistic scene, filmmakers like Miranda July got started at American indie’s largest festival. Past the 2000s Golden Era of twee, it lives on through a millennial BuzzFeed style humor, much to the chagrin of many. This brings us to one of the festival’s largest disappointments, Band-Aid director Zoe Lister-Jones’s collaboration with filmmaker Daryl Wein, How it End...

Love letters are the most common surviving relic of relationships between women of the past. Diaries and notes are pieces together, getting a half idea if love affairs that, while not outwardly forbidden, went unnoticed in a male-driven society. These female friendships were often tinged with a burning passion, commitment beyond that to a husband. The World To Come is a chain of such love letters and diary entries, threaded into a delicate love tragedy, that though flawed, is so believably re...

10. Promising Young Woman (tie)
Carey Mulligan’s devastating, desperately barbed performance is at the heart of a thriller that flips the rape revenge genre on its head. Every Saturday night she goes home, fake drunk, with a man, and every night they try to make a move. What results is a messy adrenaline rush of open wounds, the messy beast that is guilt, and a stinging nihilism that all the glittery girlboss ideals in the world can’t quite take down this toxic culture, and neither can one gi...

With rare exceptions, like holiday zombie musical Anna and the Apocalypse, or Michael Dougherty’s Krampus, festive film is far from the golden days of the classics. The closest to memorability we’ve had as of late have been these genre-bender festive horror films, and the rest struggled to catch up. The closest thing we’ve truly had to a major lesbian Christmas movie is Carol, whose festive trappings around a love story qualify it, but it’s hard to argue that the ravishing drama is about Christmas. Happiest Season may often be written off for being the first on its scale, but it comes closer t

When a wave breaks, there are two parts to the sound. There is the dull, deafening roar, the power of the sea taking over, with no nuance to the distortion of pure noise. Then, there is peace. There is the gentle sound after the crest, the soothing tapping of water walking itself back along the…

There are two ways you can try to forget about grief. You can try to go back to the high, the moment right before the fall, and long to that moment of anticipation just before the climax. The other option is to go back to a time without this good you have lost, so that there never is anything to mourn for in the first place. These two methods are not as dynamically opposed, at least until an outside version of grief, one dwelling upon anger, and wanting to fight back, prods the situation. Pie...