#voleuses (wingwomen)

[heistcinema]

Adèle Exarchopoulos as Alex in WINGWOMEN Voleuses 2023 — dir. Mélanie Laurent

[whenfatecollides]

Adèle Exarchopoulos as Alex in WINGWOMEN (2023) dir. Mélanie Laurent

[dailyflicks]

Adèle Exarchopoulos in Wingwomen (Voleuses, 2023) dir. Mélanie Laurent

[goodobservationshirley]

Voleuses (2023)

[nerdside]

Alex & Carole - Wingwomen (2023)

[fairytaleasoldastime]

Married - Alex & Carole (Wingwomen 2023)

[gamemakerm]

Getting in on the ground floor with this one. Watch Wingwomen (2023) ya'll

[dykedivorce]

cannot stop thinking about Wingwomen and the way Carole/Alex felt so. soooo. They're Together in every single way except for sex. Their relationship is so far above any other romantic entanglements that it's never threatened by them for one second. They're planning to grow old together. They're talking about raising their child together like it never occurred to them that Carole would raise the baby by herself. Alex wishes the kid looked like her and she names her the worst name in history. They're not dating but they've been married their entire lives and there's no disentangling them. There's an actual lesbian next to them and she's not even as gay as whatever the fuck these two have going on.

[lasaraconor]

[luciasina]

VOLEUSES (2023) dir. Mélanie Laurent

Sources : netflix.com - cosmopolitan.fr

[cantsayidont]

Recentish movies of note, or not:

BOTTOMS: Ridiculous "teen" comedy about two gay high school losers, PJ (Rachel Sennott, who also co-wrote with director Emma Seligman) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), who seize on a rumor about their having been in juvenile detention to start an after-school "self-defense club," in the hope that introducing the school's hottest cheerleaders to the cathartic thrill of girls beating the shit out of each other will finally give these hopeless (and ho-less) virgins a chance to score. So silly that complaining about the stupidity of the plot seems a tad churlish, but the story misses some obvious comedic opportunities, and despite the premise, the film eventually becomes far more interested in cartoonish violence than sex. If you dig the overall vibe, you might not care, but as a gay teen sex comedy, it's ultimately less successful (and less outrageous) than BOOKSMART, even though only one of the latter film's teen loser heroines is gay.

DO REVENGE: Black comedy homage to the teen comedies of the '90s and early '00s, inspired in part by the 1951 movie version of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, about a disgraced prep school popular girl, Drea (Camila Mendes), who joins forces with gay weirdo Eleanor (Maya Hawke) to avenge herself on her former friends and find out who leaked her sex tape — a plan that involves giving Eleanor a makeover so she can infiltrate the popular kids. Hawke is a delight, Mendes is very good, and the homoerotic tension of their odd relationship makes the movie fun for a while, especially if you appreciate the many self-conscious homages to prior teen movies. However, a major reveal late in the second act makes hash of the already sloppy plot, and the finale is both nonsensical and as antisemitic as STRANGERS ON A TRAIN author Patricia Highsmith, which leaves a sour aftertaste.

IT'S A WONDERFUL KNIFE: Bizarre slasher movie pastiche of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, about a teenage girl named Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop of YELLOWJACKETS), who kills the masked serial killer who's been terrorizing the small town of Angel Falls and murdered her best friend (Hana Huggins) at Christmastime. A year later, everyone in town seems to have gotten over it except Winnie, who's miserable. On Christmas Eve, she's magically transported into an alternate timeline where she was never born and the masked slasher has continued murdering people, including Winnie's brother (Aiden Howard). To set things right, Winnie has to stop the villain all over again with the help of Bernie Simon (Jess McLeod), the town outcast and the only one who believes her story. Not scary, gruesome, or suspenseful enough to be much of a horror movie, but there are enough grisly murders to make the comedic holiday fantasy aspects seem a trifle sociopathic, and a late reveal that the killer has supernatural powers beyond just stabbing or slashing people feels like one ingredient too many in an already convoluted plot. The main redeeming feature is that it's ultimately a gay love story, which I wasn't expecting, but appreciated nonetheless.

THE KILL ROOM: Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Manganiello, and Maya Hawke go slumming in this dumb black comedy about a handsome hitman named Reggie (Manganiello) who becomes the sensation of the art world after his mob intermediary (Jackson) concocts a scheme to launder Reggie's payments by selling his abstract paintings (under the nom de plume "the Bagman") through a burned-out, Adderall-snorting art dealer (Thurman). Intended satire of the cutthroat vacuity of the art world lacks bite and no part of the plot makes any sense, but sheer star power gets the movie through about half its 80-minute running time before the banality becomes terminal.

POLITE SOCIETY: Silly British action-comedy by Nida Manzoor (creator of WE ARE LADY PARTS) about Ria Khan (Priya Kansara, delightful), a Pakistani teenager who aspires to be a stuntwoman, and her quest to save her flaky art student older sister Lena (Ritu Arya, radiant) from marrying a handsome doctor (Ashay Khanna) who seems a little too good to be true. It looks great, and the characters are very charming, but the story waits much too long to clarify the stakes of the plot: Until the finale, we don't know if Lena is actually in any danger or if Ria is just letting her imagination run away with her, and that uncertainty becomes an unwelcome distraction in the later action sequences. As a result, it feels more like an update of the John Hughes perennial SIXTEEN CANDLES than the over-the-top action movie it obviously aspires to be.

SHIVA BABY: Low-key but vivid comedy of manners, written and directed by Emma Seligman, starring Rachel Sennott as Danielle, a bisexual 20something Jewish girl who secretly pays her bills as a sugar baby. When she goes with her parents (Fred Melamed and Polly Draper) to a shiva, she finds herself trapped with not only her most annoying relatives, but also her disgruntled ex-girlfriend (Molly Gordon), her current sugar daddy (Danny Deferrari), his gorgeous blond wife (Dianna Agron), and their new baby. Seligman milks every awkward nuance of this uncomfortable social situation for maximum dramatic effect, and the tension of the final scene (which is nothing more complicated than the characters trying to squeeze into the back of Danielle's father's minivan) will drive you right up the wall.

VOLEUSES (WINGWOMEN): Is it really possible for a 40-year-old Frenchwoman living in the 21st century to not know that lesbians exist? One wouldn't think so, but watching this jokey buddy-action movie suggests that director/co-writer/star Mélanie Laurent desperately needs some kind of educational intervention in that regard. This is for all intents and purposes a lesbian romance: Master thieves Carole (Laurent) and Alex (Adèle Exarchopoulos) live together, routinely sleep in the same bed, and plan to retire together; they constantly express their love and affection for one another, and when Carole discovers that she's pregnant (the hows of which are never explained), Alex immediately assumes that they'll be moms together. Nonetheless, the story not only attempts to no-homo this cozy domestic scenario, but also presumes that there's no way Carole and Alex's relationship could ever be the de facto marriage it obviously already is — indeed, a crucial story moment involves Carole tearfully wishing she were a man so she could love Alex the way she deserves! If the movie had been made 50+ years ago, this might be poignant, but in 2023, it's just weird, and the resulting cognitive dissonance largely overshadows the thin plot, which concerns Carole and Alex trying to persuade their bitchy, cheerfully murderous employer Marraine (Isabelle Adjani, barely recognizable beneath her big hair and oversized sunglasses) to let them retire, while training a younger woman named Sam (Manon Bresch) to become their driver and the ambiguously defined third in their domestic ménage à trois.

[sunny-rants]

[goodobservationshirley]

I knew it. I can't believe it's happening. Why didn't you tell me?

[fairytaleasoldastime]

Carole and Alex - Wingwomen (2023)

[oldschoolvillageidiot]

I liked this movie (Wingwomen on Netflix, Voleuses in other places) enough to put it on my favorites of 2023 list, but it has a LOT of issues. One being… are Carole and Alex lovers or not?! For two women who love each other and spend pretty much every night sleeping in the same bed, they sure do seem platonic. It might be down to the fact they said they met when Alex was 14, which would make the relationship problematic, but… BUT… And I do have big problems/questions with how it ended. But overall, I thought it was a lot of fun. Three badass thieves, but they're not superheroes. They have flaws. One of them has to be taught how to shoot. Another one of them screams because their getaway driver goes too fast.

So yeah, it was a lot of fun! A nice French heist movie with some lovely direction, fun banter (I'd call it an action comedy), and three women being awesome thieves. I think it's worth checking out on Netflix, at least.

TW: a very cute bunny is killed. You don't see it happen but you do see the body.