This week the Gene Siskel Film Center is showing two superior debut features by women directors that are set in the 19th century. Marine Francen’s French film The Sower plays through Thursday, and Ash Mayfair’s Vietnamese drama The Third Wife opens for a weeklong run on Friday. Both are highly assured works that interrogate the sexual mores of two centuries ago in subtle, provocative fashion. I prefer The Sower—its visual aesthetic (seemingly inspired by Millet’s paintings) is richer and its montage more surprising—but The Third Wife is nothing to sneeze at. That film tackles the difficult subject of a 14-year-old girl sold into marriage in a manner that’s not at all sensationalistic or moralizing, but rather calm and inquisitive. Mayfair recognizes that life was simply different in the late 19th century, and while it didn’t afford much agency to girls like the film’s heroine, it still allowed for moments of solace and camaraderie. The most interesting aspect of The Third Wife concerns the friendship that blossoms between the title character and one of her husband’s other wives—viewers expecting a thoroughly depressing experience will be surprised by the warmth Mayfair finds in this relationship.
Charulata Also known as The Lonely Wife, this relatively early (1964) film by Satyajit Ray (The World of Apu), based on a Tagore novel of Victorian India, may be the first of his features in which he really discovers mise-en-scène, and it’s an exhilarating encounter. It’s typically rich in the nuances of grief and in extraordinarily allusive dialogue, though not very much happens in terms of plot (a sensitive woman is neglected by her newspaper-publisher husband and drawn to his younger cousin). But at every moment, the gorgeous cinematography and expressive camera movements and dissolves have plenty of stories of their own to tell. You shouldn’t miss this. —Dave Kehr
