Suffragette (2015)

Directed by Sarah Gavron
Country: USA

Movie Review: Sarah Gavron’s “Suffragette” is a fact-based period drama, set in London, whose intention is to dramatize a notable span in the life of the 24-year-old laundress, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), who joins a feminine movement to fight for the women’s rights in a society dominated by often abusive men who are not willing to give up their prolonged hegemony. Noble intentions aside, the film works very intermittently, only managing to escape the extreme banality due to the great performances of a cast that besides Mulligan also includes Anne Marie-Duff, Helena Bonham Carter, and the revered Meryl Streep, in the kind of a cameo appearance, as the movement’s fugitive leader. The intended riotous tones scarcely hit me, maybe because Ms. Gavron decided to include a lame musical score into a drama that proved problematic in terms of direction. Her sophomore feature exhibits annoying zooms and unsteady frames, and is more concerned with drawing some tears from the viewers rather than exhibiting these women's great deeds with vigor and straightforwardness. This way, what should have been a catching and powerful work, becomes a conventional, tepid melodrama.