In the new Netflix revamp of Borgen, the Danish series about a female politician at the height of power, former Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg is now the country’s Foreign Minister. At 53, her kids are grown and she’s single. With not a hint of guilt, she admits to a male colleague how much easier this lack of family responsibilities makes it to focus on a job she loves. But things are never that clear-cut for women, and Nyborg is no exception. In that same conversation, she drunkenly tries to bond with her younger colleague about sacrificing family to a “workaholic” life. He reacts with a combination of disappointment and rejection, and she ends the night alone, vomiting into a wastebasket and nearly passing out on her office floor – only to rise, fists clenched in the air and a triumphant smile on her face. The emotional and physical ramifications of being a high-achieving, middle-aged working woman are on full display in Borgen in all their glory and messiness. Similarly, in the Spanish series Intimacy, which premiered in the US June 10 on Netflix and quickly rose to the top spot worldwide among non-English series, 47-year-old mayoral candidate Malen Zubiri (Money Heist‘s Itziar Ituño) resists her party’s push to sideline her after a surreptitiously-recorded sex video is made public. Meanwhile, British actress Emma Thompson goes full-frontal at age 63 in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, which premiered Stateside on Hulu on June 17. Why do these middle-aged and older female characters feel like such novelties? Women are said to make up a good percentage of streaming audiences, and a study last year by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University found there were indeed more major female characters and creatives on streaming programs than on broadcast network programs. But the study also found that the percentage of female characters declined steeply from their 30s into their 40s, and women over 60 were still dramatically underrepresented. A January report from the European Audiovisual Observatory concluded that 38% of lead roles in films in the region between 2016 and 2020 were for women. Scandinavia has led Europe in pushing for gender parity in their film industry, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that a Danish series is showing us how it’s done. Morals, Motherhood and Menopause In the new season of Borgen, which premiered in the US on June 2, Nyborg isn’t the only woman in power. She’s been replaced by a new female Prime Minister, yet she is still at the pinnacle of her successful career. This, even while she’s dealing with the disruptive onset of menopause, a topic rarely depicted on screen. What’s more, in Season 4, Nyborg finds herself crossing ethical boundaries and about-facing on previously held convictions in order to hold onto that power, admitting in one emotional exchange with her son that it’s all she has left. Freedom from attachments and a hunger for “power and glory” (the season’s full title) come at a price. Played by the eminently believable Sidse Babett Knudsen, Nyborg admits that becoming Prime Minister cost her her marriage and family, but she says she’d do it all over again. She has been depicted as a loving and dedicated, if flawed, mother across all four seasons. Contrast this with Olivia Colman’s character in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Greece-set The Lost Daughter, which premiered on Netflix last December. That film tackled the subject of a middle-aged woman grappling with the guilt of having done the unthinkable – abandoning two young daughters in order to pursue her career. The sacrifices a woman might make for a demanding job, or perhaps the untapped potential of this topic in general, could be read into Borgen‘s Season 4 storyline about the promises and pitfalls of mining for oil in Greenland. Opening credits make the connection between the stunningly pristine territory, perennially pushing for full independence, and the season’s lead characters – particularly cold, isolated, independent-minded Nyborg, but also the other powerful women in leadership positions. One who gets a lot of screen time is Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), a journalist from earlier seasons now tapped to lead the state news channel. She ultimately collapses under the dual demands of work and home, but as she licks her wounds and sets up a home office in closing scenes, she also hints that she’ll put her knowledge and skills to work on a book. Likewise, by the last episode, Nyborg has reset her moral compass and maneuvered a new political future (for Season 5, hopefully). Both storylines allow for some refreshing grey area for professional women on screen. Rather than the usual ‘all or nothing’ debate, exemplified in The Lost Daughter for example, these characters embody that, for most women, the reality lies somewhere in between. Love in Later Life A starker portrayal of a late middle-aged woman grappling with the regrets of a life not particularly well-lived comes in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Thompson has spoken in interviews about ‘self-acceptance’ as a theme both of her character and her performance. Yes, she bares all at more than double the age most actresses might be asked to do so, but her character is much more complex than this misplaced buzz might suggest. The story turns on a retired religious education teacher who hires a 20-something male escort (Irish actor Daryl McCormack) for sex. She brings a list of positions she’d like to try, which she aims to meticulously check off one by one. Complicating her relationship with sex, she spent years shaming her female students for their sexual curiosity and ‘slutty’ short skirts, and she and her husband had a lifetime of unsatisfying intimacy. The blah-ness of it all is symbolized in the fact that she’s never had an orgasm. Sexual gratification for senior women is unchartered yet apparently fertile narrative territory, judging by Netflix’s 80-somethings Grace and Frankie, who made and sold vibrators for older women in that US series. They take matters into their own hands, literally, paralleling how the pair take control of their lives following late-life divorces. In French film I Love America, which began airing on Amazon Prime in April, eternally gorgeous Sophie Marceau, 56, plays Lisa, a woman who moves from Paris to Los Angeles to start a new life. Her daughters are grown and her mother, a professional singer with whom she had a distanced relationship, is close to death. Though the film itself is a disappointment, Lisa’s Tinder scrolling, blind dates (including one with a Danish nudist) and ultimate romance with a younger man provide a lot of fodder for some frank appraisal of mid-life dating and sexuality. The fact that Thompson’s character’s actual name in Leo Grande is Mrs. Robinson provides a little filmic humor, and Grande’s pseudonym is provocative. She admits she’s had offers from male peers but says she only desires a younger man’s body. When was the last time you heard a 60-something woman say that on film? If 60 is the new 50, then what’s 90? In the Spanish documentary 100 Days with Tata, a thirty-something man meticulously cares for his 95-year-old great-grandaunt. Theirs is a different kind of relationship from anything else seen in these other films and series. For starters, it’s real life. Tata’s advanced age raises all kinds of issues for the pair as they cohabitate during the pandemic, and he pushes her to reflect on her life. In the film, actor-director Miguel Angel Muñoz, who was born in 1983, says he remembers his Tata as always being old. But, he told me in an interview, “When I ask Tata how old she’d like to be now, she doesn’t say 15, 25 or 30; she says 80. At 70 years old, she felt she was still in the prime of her life.” “Prime” might look different for every woman. Thompson’s character in Leo Grande, for example, says she yearns to feel young again, not so much to enjoy physical strength, but rather to relish that feeling of possibility, of having her whole life ahead of her rather than behind. Youth was wasted on her, she says, an expression that takes on new depth through her character. But closing scenes show her discovering that possibility, all on her own. The European films and series mentioned here all end on a promising note of self-empowerment for their female characters. The message shared across these stories seems to be that there is plenty of life left to be explored and a realm of new experiences – physical, emotional, spiritual and professional – still to be had for women well into and even past middle age. The market for their stories is wide open. This article originally ran on The Alliance of Women Film Journalists. A different version on this topic also ran in The Daily Record. Images courtesy of Netflix and Hulu.

There’s something about aging that pushes people toward introspection. Maybe it’s knowing there’s more time behind you than ahead, or maybe it’s the sum of joys and losses added up over the course of a lifetime or the missed opportunities and regrets that nag at you. Whatever the inspiration, Marcel Proust captured the nostalgia and the vivid life of human memory in his 7-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (À la Recherche du Temps Perdu), first published in France between 1913 and 1927. In the 2020 documentary Lost Time (El Tiempo Perdido), a group of elderly Argentinians meet regularly in a café to read and discuss Proust’s novel. They read passages out loud to each other (from pages printed with large-size font) and comment on the writing and the story, finding deep connections between his descriptions and their own lives and memories. Proust’s book might have been written in French, but the translation into such elegant Spanish, read aloud in the lilting sway of the Argentine accent provides the perfect conduit for his words. Proust seems to have invaded the lives of the group’s members. A woman crossing the street feels for a moment that she’s in Paris. Another woman recalls being served a madeleine cookie with her afternoon tea every day while she was in a hospital. The group was started in 2001 by a man, Alberto, whose daughter was named Albertina, the name of the main female character in the book. Their motivation is to inspire each other to continue reading Proust—and only Proust. Alberto repeats the anecdote about his daughter’s name at least three times over the course of the film. Others repeat themselves as well. Still others talk about their vision problems, hearing aids and hip replacements. The camera captures their wrinkled faces and crinkled hands. One remembers that Proust said trying to reach an agreement with the body, presumably the aging body, “is like talking to an octopus.” But there’s symmetry in their aging bodies and Proust’s theme of lost time, just like there are allusions in this film to lost arts (reading, café societies, slow-moving documentaries) and lost attention spans (the main remaining audience for books and films like these may well be older people). The group’s members prop up old-timey photos of their loved ones on the table while they read about accepting that ‘absence’ comes after ‘presence,’ that after a loved one dies you might still discover new things about them or only remember gestures like a particular smile. Much like sitting down with a novel, this film requires effort – it asks that you settle in, get past the first chapter, focus and then let go entirely and be carried away by the story and its characters. The film’s director, Maria Alvarez, has made no cinematographic attempts to entertain or inform viewers beyond what happens in the café reading group (besides street scenes shown every 20 minutes or so and set to wistful flute music). Black and white cinematography narrows the focus and removes distractions even more. But Alvarez has allowed or nurtured (and edited together) a million small connections between the novel and the reading group. One member describes Proust’s method of revealing character details little by little, and that happens here as well. You might wish to know more about their lives outside the café, but as with any artistic work, we’re only given what the creator wants us to know, hear or see. Alvarez seems particularly interested in these themes – her other documentaries are also about older people’s arts-focused pastimes and memories. When the group finishes the last paragraph of the last volume, they flip a few pages forward and start volume 1 all over again. Reading and re-reading Proust seems to provide them inspiration, companionship and also comfort, perhaps in dealing with their own aging, memories and losses. Sometimes the words inspire rowdy conversations; other times, tears and nods of recognition. Proust died at age 51 and the last volume of the classic work looks back as if from the perspective of an old man, one member of the group notes. Of course, 51 is young to this group, and it’s another reminder of how little time we actually have on earth and how quickly it passes. A hundred minutes of that dedicated to this film is time well spent. This review originally ran on the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Image courtesy of Cinema Tropical.

This ultra-violent, LA-cool vampire comedy is the perfect vehicle for Foxx, who knows how to infuse his macho killers with a heart of gold and a tinge of aw-shucks charm. The casting is what makes Day Shift, an otherwise run-of-the-mill bloodfest, worth the time. Snoop Dogg gets the applause lines as the invincible Black Cowboy, and Franco is very funny as the nerdy sidekick turned good vampire. Some unnecessarily long expository dialogues are offset by comical moments, like when two men bond over the Twilight saga or when a little girl is distracted from a high-speed car chase with an iPad and some earphones. Predictably, the film isn't for the weak of stomach; it also won't stand up under too-close scrutiny. The glorification of machine gun-style weaponry in Snoop's hands is also a questionable choice in today's age. Read the full review at Common Sense Media. Images courtesy of Netflix.

This film aims to capture that unique space between childhood and adulthood, and it features a cute and talented group of kids giving it their all, but it feels formulaic. Why did 13: The Musical need to be a musical? We're raising a generation of kids who all want to sing and dance, and that isn't bad, but not every story benefits from the inclusion. In this case, the musical numbers neither add nor detract from the storyline itself and feel instead like a knock-off concept. As a hint, middle school here looks a lot like high school (since when do middle schools have football teams and cheerleading squads?). In other words, the film might have been benefited from taking the musical numbers out and sticking with just the concept of "13." The film is bookended by two songs about being that age, and on the day of his bar mitzvah, the main character's mom says he's a "man" now. This uncertainty about growing up was an interesting theme that might have been better developed through dialogue and action rather than song and dance. What's also original here is the set-up of a Jewish kid, about to celebrate his coming-of-age ceremony, who is uprooted and moved to small-town Middle America. His grandma (played by a wonderful Perlman) provides stability, while his mom (a subdued, almost uncomfortable Messing) regains her composure following a messy separation. His bar mitzvah will be the defining moment in his young life and the character's entire raison d' être is to put on a great party. This feels pretty accurate in terms of a young teen's priorities, and Golden offers a relaxed performance. His subtle hints of New York sarcasm are welcomed in this otherwise forgettable package. Read the full review at Common Sense Media. Image courtesy of Netflix.

This concert documentary has very little story; come for the music, but don't expect any new insights into what makes this artist tick -- or even basic biographical details. What you do get in Post Malone: Runaway is backstage access, where it appears there's a whole lot of music-making and beer-drinking going on. It's disappointing if you're interested in the person behind the music because a documentary like this offers a celebrity the chance to tell his own story. The fact that he doesn't sends the message that he wants us to only think about his music, in which case, was a movie necessary? In some scenes, he and his entourage push the camera away and he complains he doesn't have privacy. Did the artist even want this movie made? Expect some platitudes about how important music is to the face-tattooed artist, sycophantic comments from handlers, and concert scenes spliced together by song. Read the full review at Common Sense Media. Images courtesy of Amazon Prime Video via CSM.

This charming animated film manages to maintain a sweet innocence without compromising its desire to layer in ideas and characters that can be appreciated by more mature audiences. Luck's characters, animated with subtlety, are seemingly tailor-made for the high-profile cast. Bob's calm, cool, standoffish demeanor is captured in his cat poses and almond eyes, and Pegg's accent hilariously changes to fit the storyline. Goldberg infuses her wise-cracking Captain with a soft heart, and Fonda oozes seductive power as the confident dragon lady who recognizes that a lot of creatures are intimidated by "ladies of stature" and who just knows she would "excel" at running the universe. The Land of Luck is a magical place imbued with soft colors and made to look like the inside of a watch, constantly in motion and with Jetsons-style platforms transporting characters. There's magic in other scenes as well, particularly a dialogue-free sequence where Sam chases Bob through town. The cat is suave as Fred Astaire as he glides nonchalantly over the tops of opened umbrellas. The entire film is set to an orchestral score that also has classical Hollywood nuances. Read the full review at Common Sense Media. Images courtesy of Apple TV+.

This Finnish film, distributed Stateside by Strand Releasing, is a Lena Dunham’s Girls-like tale of three young women figuring themselves out through relationships and sex. It’s visually interesting and offers insight into young adulthood in Finland, but there’s not quite enough story here to sustain the entire film, letting its three promising actresses down. Still, the confusion, awkwardness, excitement and anxiety of growing up are on full display in the story’s span of three Fridays in three young women’s lives. Smoothie shack co-workers Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Ronkko (Elonoora Kauhanen) are best friends. Ronkko sticks up for the volatile Mimmi when she loses her temper at school and work. Mimmi, in turn, offers Ronkko advice about dating and sex. Ronkko is concerned she doesn’t enjoy sex, and she tries with pretty much any guy who crosses her path. Mimmi has abandonment and anger issues since her mom remarried and had a much younger child. One day Mimmi meets Emma (Linnea Leino), a competitive ice skater, and the two fall in love. Accustomed to training year-round since she was five, Emma has never cut loose before, and Mimmi provides the opportunity. When Emma, frustrated with her tough coach and even tougher new routine, gets a taste of what she’s been missing, she impulsively quits skating the day before a major competition. Emma will have to take matters into her own hands to ensure her girlfriend doesn’t make the biggest mistake of her life. Had Emma’s tale been the backbone of the narrative, or had Mimmi and Ronkko been given more backstory, this would have been a more engaging movie. The idea of a young woman who has never had a day of fun in her whole life, but does have a passion and a purpose – unlike her peers – is compelling. Leino plays Emma with a mixture of restrained energy and fragility, much like she describes the required characteristics of competitive skaters: “You have to be strong and sensitive at the same time.” The other actresses also do a fine job embodying their characters, but they’re not given quite as much to work with. Mimmo’s relationship with her mom provides some motivation, but her actions are often very hard to comprehend or empathize with (as are her oddly bleached eyebrows). Maybe that’s the point – she’s figuring out how to control her own emotions – but she gets away with more than most people would in real life. Ronkko is the least developed character, and thus her obsession with sex (“I came to come!”) lands as overly scripted. Much as we’d like to put young women in a post-feminist bubble, it doesn’t feel authentic to have them sitting around talking about their experiences “dry humping” or wanting “new dick.” At least give them other interests and topics to talk about as well. Again, Emma probably feels the most authentic precisely because she has genuine interests and original ideas, like when she takes offense at a comment commending “female athletes” – why not just consider women “athletes,” like men? Co-scripters Ilona Ahti and Daniela Hakulinen incorporate these elements but aren’t fully successful at rounding out the story or the characters to make their journeys more believable. Tisch School-trained director Alli Haapsalo toys creatively with the use of color to match mood – romantic scenes are red and blue, for example, while a gloomy sequence is yellow-tinged. One club dance and make-out scene has lights flashing to the rhythm of the music. She also incorporates some great mood music, like punk song “Look Like That” by US-based artist Sneaks. This review originally ran on The Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Image courtesy of Strand Releasing.

This romantic comedy feels like a throwback to My Big Fat Greek Wedding style productions aimed at a family audience. Wedding Season is sweet and easy to digest, and it leaves audiences feeling good. Though the Indian diaspora setting adds a colorful layer of cultural details, some aspects feel overly exaggerated, like the mother's meddling or the sister's fiancé, who tries way too hard to adapt Indian customs and language (a final sword-wielding scene is just weird). Other elements are predictable, like the parents coming around to their grown children's perspective or the many clues dropped about one character's secret wealth. As an aside, it's disappointing that male characters so often have to be positioned as more attractive because they have money. Though the premise has been done before, this film will find an audience. Expect little and the story and its amenable cast will entertain. Read the full review at Common Sense Media. Image courtesy of Netflix.

The actors in this film deserve better than this predictable romcom. Well known to local viewers, the lead cast of Don't Blame Karma! is a talented, attractive, and charismatic group. The film, based on a story previously adapted in a 2016 Spanish movie, appears to have been tailor-built around them. But the situations, humor, and editing feel awkward, especially the random breaking of the fourth wall by the main character (played by Eugenio Derbez's daughter, Aislinn). Still, the 85 minutes are watchable and the settings in picturesque Merida are charming. Read the full review at Common Sense Media. Image courtesy of Netflix.

This film is formulaic but its actors and central love story do enough to sustain its nearly two-hour run time. That's not to say that everything in Purple Hearts hits its mark. Cassie and Luke are meant to embody stereotypes of opposite ends of the political spectrum -- she the "lib snowflake," he the conservative military brat. Some of their arguments, especially those involving Luke's exaggerated Marine peers, feel very much scripted and only skirt the edges of serious topics. But their finding of common ground sends a positive message in polarizing times, and the evolution of their affection for each other feels believable enough. Carson is the real standout in the movie, coming across as more authentic than many of her free-spirited, tough-girl film predecessors. She certainly has stage presence as a musical performer. Galitzine is a sensitive actor and is movie-star handsome, but his best scenes here are those with Carson. Sneakerella's Jacobs is also solid in a supporting role. The film runs a bit long, partly because it wants to let Carson perform at least three or four full songs (and star in an ending that looks and feels like a music video or an Instagram reel). Carson fans and the movie's target teen audience won't mind this at all. Read the full review at Common Sense Media. Images courtesy of Netflix.

This satire on superficiality and social media fame is driven by great performances and some sharp commentary. Not Okay is broken into nine "parts," which track the main character's "arc" from nobody to famous (fake) victim to villain. Danni's total cluelessness about what it means to actually be victimized, traumatized, or even "a good person" is framed as "White privilege," but this film is more of a commentary on the zeitgeist of our times. This is also all embodied in the character of Colin, Instagram-famous for an entirely fictional, gangster-like persona ("Colin, you're from Maine," a colleague reminds him, deadpan), but seemingly devoid of any actual principles or convictions. Despite the satirical tone and bubbly look, there's some very serious commentary about the inability to curb mass shootings, the toxicity of the online world, and how this all impacts the most vulnerable in our society. This is reflected most acutely in the character of Rowan, a fragile young woman who transforms her trauma into art. Isaac is a discovery in this role, giving forceful spoken word performances, including one that ends the film on a solemn note. Deutch is funny as the clueless perpetrator who thinks "tone deaf" is a brand, but the actress captures how she's ultimately a victim too -- someone raised in a virtual reality that prioritizes celebrity over substance, image over action, and clicks over facts. Read the full review on Common Sense Media. Images courtesy of Hulu.

This documentary focuses on an image of Shania Twain as an innovative, genre-bending, record-breaking artist, so it's surprising the film itself doesn't aim for that same originality. Instead, Shania Twain: Not Just a Girl relies on a predictable combination of archive footage and interviews, strung together with intertitles filling in biographical details and career highlights. Even so, Twain's landmark career and the childhood struggles that she overcame are a story worth telling. The theme here is Twain's status as a feminist who blazed a path for artists as wide-ranging as Avril Lavigne, Orville Peck, and Kelsea Ballerini. The evidence is clear and unequivocal. An opening sequence with Twain in voiceover proclaiming she's always wanted to make her own decisions and not depend on anyone else fits with many of her best-known lyrics, and they introduce the trailblazing career the film goes on to detail. The documentary does drop some strings, like what happened to the siblings she took care of and her own son? And it completely ignores other parts of her life, like her second husband -- though her 2010 divorce from the first is given a lot of screen time. Read the full review at Common Sense Media. Image courtesy of Netflix.