21. Marge Gunderson, Fargo (1996)
In Fargo, the seven-months pregnant Marge Gunderson (played in an Oscar-winning performance by Frances McDormand) has a belly so huge, it’s difficult to focus on anything else when she enters the room. Combined with her Minnesota-nice accent and pleasant demeanor, Marge’s condition is specifically calibrated to subvert, but not undermine, her extremely capable police work, as she doggedly (but politely!) untangles the events that left three dead bodies along the side of the road in Brainerd, Minnesota. In theory, Marge’s physical state could translate as vulnerability, or something to be overcome on the way to kicking ass and taking names. But in the capable hands of McDormand and Joel and Ethan Coen, Marge’s pregnancy simply amplifies her no-nonsense approach to her work, and her life: Upon seeing the crime scene, Marge is briefly overcome by nausea, before shaking it off and stating, “Well, that passed. Now I’m hungry again,” the way only a woman who’s been battling with her own body for months could. Marge represents a different kind of female badass, one whose toughness extends from a pronounced internal determination, rather than the anger, greed, and feelings of inadequacy that motivate the various fools and villains who surround her. She’s not just good police, she’s good people, and the fact that her goodness doesn’t stand in her way is what makes her a great character. [GK]
22. Jackie Brown, Jackie Brown (1997)
When Quentin Tarantino adapted Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch into his third feature, Jackie Brown, he changed his heroine’s skin from white to black, gave her a new surname inspired by one of cult film’s most prominent black female roles, then cast her with the same woman responsible for that inspiration: Pam Grier, the undisputed queen of 1970s blaxploitation features, including Foxy Brown. A flight attendant for a sketchy airline, Jackie resorts to smuggling money into Mexico for gun-runner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), treading the same morally dubious territory as the characters with whom Grier made her name, but with the focus turned from titillation toward real characterization. Jackie is sexy and tough—she’s played by Pam Grier, after all—but also conflicted and vulnerable in turn, particularly once bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) enters the picture. Via Jackie, Grier brings a maturity and resonance to Jackie Brown that makes it one of Tarantino’s more understated (and underappreciated) efforts. It’s a role only Grier could have played—because it was written for her, but also because it’s so specifically calibrated to her unique presence and personal history. The role of Jackie required Grier to call to her past without echoing it, and in the process, it let her find new depths of an archetype she helped create. [GK]
23. Karen Sisco, Out Of Sight (1998)
Sure, U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) falls for handsome, charming bank robber Jack Foley. Give her a break, he looks and acts like George Clooney. While Karen does agree to Jack’s “time out,” from their respective jobs, enabling Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant cross-cutting of sex and seduction, she never forgets her duties. Sisco acts on her feelings but remains loyal to her profession, because she’s the kind of a woman who’s deeply touched to receive a SIG Sauer .380 semi-automatic handgun as a birthday present from her father. (She can also more than hold her own against threatening men, as beautifully summarized by the “You wanted to tussle. We tussled” scene.) Loving Foley doesn’t mean she won’t arrest him if he insists on going through with the heist he’s planning, and it doesn’t mean she won’t shoot him if he resists arrest. She isn’t the romantic interest in his romanticized criminal hijinks: She’s an action hero who can recognize Clooney’s charms, act on the dictates of her heart, and not be softened or sidelined. She’s subversive because she doesn’t let love redefine her: She’s too well-defined for that already. [MDA]
24. Tracy Flick, Election (1999)
Over the course of her film career, Reese Witherspoon has come to specialize in characters whose polished, sweet surfaces—informed by her Southern upbringing—belie an inner grit. That specialty can be traced back to one Tracy Flick, the antagonist of Alexander Payne’s biting 1999 high-school comedy Election, who’s gone on to become a cult hero for so-called “difficult women” and those who love them. Tracy is inarguably Election’s “bad guy,” tormenting ineffectual Civics teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) with her overzealous determination to become student-body president, no matter the cost. (And oh, are there costs.) Tracy is no angel, but she believes her actions serve a higher purpose, which is the sort of moral relativism that fuels dangerous acts of ambition, and makes for a compelling, multifaceted villain who’s as easy to love as she is to hate. It’s an ambiguity Witherspoon clearly relishes, imbuing Tracy’s resolute pluck with just the right hint of wild-eyed mania to suggest she’s not as in control—of herself, or of those around her—as she’d like to believe. [GK]
25. Manuela, All About My Mother (1999)
All About My Mother marked a turning point for director Pedro Almodóvar. He’d been moving in a less-playful direction for years, but this is the film that proved definitively he could move viewers now as deeply as he’d amused them in the past. All that hinged on Cecilia Roth’s performance as Manuela, whose grief-driven odyssey gives the film its shape. A nurse and single mother, Manuela loses her loving teenage son early in the film, then sets off for Barcelona to inform the boy’s father: a transvestite named Lola (Toni Cantó) who never knew of the boy’s existence. In the process, Manuela becomes entwined in the complicated lives of diverse characters, remaining the still, damaged center of the melodrama swirling around her. It’s a lot to ask of any performance to more or less embody the way women persevere in the face of tragedy, but Roth both rises to the challenge and keeps the character from becoming more symbol than flesh. She watches and helps, but never gets lost in the stories of those around her. She has her own burdens to carry, and Roth never lets viewers forget that. [KP]
26. Asami Yamazaki, Audition (1999)
Takashi Miike’s unnerving fusion of Yasujiro Ozu-style tentative romance and Lucio Fulci-style grindhouse horror plays so many mind games that it’s hard to say with any certainty whether the film’s female lead even exists—and if she does, how much of what occurs in the movie really happens. It doesn’t much matter, in any case. What’s important is that Asami, the aspiring actress unaware that she’s auditioning for the role of a phony film producer’s second wife, represents two opposing male fantasies, and that she makes them seem equally ludicrous. Initially chosen because she comes across as demure, compliant, and downright self-abnegating, Asami is eventually revealed—whether in reality, or just in the protagonist’s imagination—as a sadistic she-devil intent on barely symbolic castration. (Ankle, meet piano wire.) The giddy viciousness of her second incarnation implicitly underlines how absurd her original demeanor was; there might be an actual woman in there somewhere, but the film’s whole point is that the “hero” can’t see her. [MDA]
27. Rosetta, Rosetta (1999)
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Palme d’Or-winning second feature film immerses viewers in the chaotic life of the title character, a teenager who just wants a steady job and a stable home environment. Sympathetic but not always likable, Rosetta is a high-strung, frighteningly driven person who lives in a crummy trailer park with her alcoholic mother, and is willing to screw over friends and family alike if it’ll get her closer to her idea of security. The Dardennes employ their usual style, using handheld cameras, tight close-ups, and follow-shots to get into the head of a person at the end of her tether. The effect of that approach—coupled with a no-frills performance by Émilie Dequenne—is to create a remarkably intimate portrait of someone who rarely talks, which forces the audience to think along with this woman who’s desperately poor and stubbornly angry. [NM]
28. Brandon Teena, Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
There are several reasons Brandon Teena (birth name Teena Brandon) is a daring role, and much of the lasting impact of Boys Don’t Cry is how deftly the movie navigates each one. Transgender issues weren’t as openly discussed in pop culture in 1999 as they are more than 15 years later, which might have led to a focus on specifics over character. But writer-director Kimberly Peirce skipped any after-school special explanations, and instead structures her film as a wrenchingly intimate portrait of Brandon’s lived experience, where every conversation is fraught with the terror of discovery. Brandon’s relationship with Lana Tisdel (Chloë Sevigny) could have focused entirely on Brandon’s fear of discovery. But Peirce writes and shoots their romance by focusing on low-key intimacy and understanding, rather than lingering on its specific sexual contact. And though in the movie’s pivotal scene, Brandon suffers horrific violence, Peirce shows his terror and humiliation unflinchingly, but without turning him into a victim. Brandon Teena was daring just for living in a world with all this stacked against him; Boys Don’t Cry is carefully constructed to remind audiences of that. [GV]
29. Erin Brockovich, Erin Brockovich (2000)
Brassy, bossy, and downright domineering, Erin Brockovich is the cinematic equivalent of the reality-television trope “I’m not here to make friends.” She’s here to get the job done, no matter what the job is. Feeding her kids? Done. Busting balls? Check. Unearthing a state-wide conspiracy that hurts people—good, regular, hard-working people, just like Erin—and taking everyone to task in the process? You know it. Although Erin works her sexuality to get what she wants—a tight skirt there, a pulled-down top there—she remains consistently in control of what she’s putting out there, fully aware that she’s using it for her own ends, and unashamed about the way she likes to dress. Still, her personality is couched in immaturity, and even her can-do spirit can’t hide the fact that she’s got some serious growing-up to do. That comes at a price, as Erin grapples with disappointments—personal, professional, legal—on the way to saving both her clients and herself. [KE]
30. Betty/Diane in Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Within a movie (and a career) full of audacious, risky creative choices, Mulholland Dr.’s morphing character Betty/Diane stands out as a particularly brave and unorthodox female role. She’s an emblem of something larger—David Lynch and Naomi Watts use her to build up and deconstruct the myth of Hollywood, both paying homage to it and criticizing it for its illusory nature, its inherent deceit, and its emptiness, especially as it pertains to women. Betty/Diane marks one of David Lynch’s richest and most complex creations; over the course of just a few hours, she drifts in and out of a velvet dream world, straddling fantasy and reality while trying to solve a murder case, falling in love with a woman she’s just met, descending deep into the darkest corners of her own mind, and eventually ending her own life. Betty/Diane would have been a meaty role for any actress, but Watts tears every last bit of flesh straight from the bone, transforming effortlessly from a near-stereotype of an Old-Hollywood actress—bubbly, naïve, starry-eyed—to a corrupted, jaded cynic who’s been broken by the industry and lost love. The part works within the film’s surface narrative—her story reads as real and heartbreaking—but it’s also a bottomless metaphorical well, one that fans will draw from and argue about for years to come. [RH]
31. Morvern Callar, Morvern Callar (2002)
Lynne Ramsay’s 2002 adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel Morvern Callar spends virtually every moment with its title character, a Scottish grocery clerk played by Samantha Morton. But for all the time viewers have in her company, Morvern remains a mystery. She finds her boyfriend’s body, a suicide note, access to his money, a mixtape, and the manuscript of a novel. She responds by dismembering the body, ignoring the note’s instructions, claiming the novel as her own, and going on vacation. That only sounds callous in description, though. Morvern spends much of the film endlessly listening to to the mixtape, immersing herself in her boyfriend’s headspace via the melancholy mixed messages of songs from Can, The Velvet Underground, and Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, whose duet “Some Velvet Morning” provides the film with its mysterious keynote. It’s a challenge to play someone so distant, maybe even from herself, but Morton makes Morvern simultaneously compelling and elusive. She may be driven by grief, opportunism, shock, or some combination of the above. It’s never clear. Some things remain unknowable no matter how much closeness a film and its lead create. [KP]
32. Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 (2003-2004)
Beatrix Kiddo, aka The Bride, contains multitudes, moreso than any other action heroine (or heroine, period) in recent memory. Over the course of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and 2, while literally doing cartwheels around peers both male and female, Beatrix flits back and forth from vengeful assassin to vulnerable victim to warm, loving mother. She’s simultaneously a sexually free, emotionally empowered woman; a violent, unrepentant warrior; and a raw, exposed nerve. It’s a stunning role, both on and off the page—Thurman and Tarantino make sure to hit every possible emotional (and physical) note befitting a woman who’s been manipulated, brainwashed, raped, nearly murdered multiple times, then robbed of her own offspring. Not once do the films undermine Beatrix, or suggest that because she’s a woman or a mother, she’s incapable of kicking major ass. In fact, both facts are painted as an asset. Imagine! Underneath both films’ action/thriller exteriors, there’s an important point being made about how women—just like men!—are capable of being complex, multi-layered beings. And also graphically murdering entire crowds of assailants. [RH]
33. Vera Drake, Vera Drake (2004)
Vera Drake is the sort of role for which phrases like “quietly devastating” were coined. It’s no surprise Mike Leigh cast Imelda Staunton; she brings deep inner life to most of her characters. But in this case, that character and the part were inextricably tied. Leigh works largely through rehearsal and improvisation, so his ensemble builds their characters organically from the inside out. At the outset, Leigh knew only that he wanted to incorporate his own childhood, and that he wanted Vera to be an abortionist (something kept secret from most of the actors, to preserve their shock at Vera’s hidden life). It’s on a different plane of intimacy—and one of much less security—than working from a script, but it allows each actor the spontaneity to be bold, even in small moments. The immersive result makes Vera an unforgettable character, whose secret is the least of her defining traits. Vera’s unflinching kindness in the face of hard times feels like both her armor and her deepest self, and as built by Staunton right from the clay, the effect is softly profound. [GV]
34. María Álvarez, Maria Full Of Grace (2004)
The phrase “drug mule” puts in the starkest possible terms what happens when human beings are used to transport illegal drugs from one place to another: They’re reduced to animals, unthinking vessels for illicit business. The thrill of watching María Álvarez in Maria Full Of Grace is that viewers are intensely aware of her humanity at every moment, as she struggles with a job that first preys on her desperation, then requires her to make good decisions in a seemingly impossible situation. Writer-director Joshua Marston establishes the high stakes—an unwanted pregnancy, an offer to make a little money as a courier from Colombia to the U.S., the terrible consequences of failure—and leaves the rest to Catalina Sandino Moreno, a first-time actress, who gives a performance of great vulnerability and equally great resolve. She’s victimized by social circumstance and some cruel twists of fate, but she’s never a victim.
35. Ensemble, Offside (2006)
Iranian director Jafar Panahi has paid a high price for his political daring in making films that question the politics and social mores of his native Iran: Confined to his house and banned from making more movies (though he’s made three since his house arrest started), he’s become a low-key cause célèbre in international filmmaking. Looking at films like 2006’s transcendent, funny Offside, it’s easy to see why Iran’s government considers him a subversive and a threat. The film concerns a group of women individually caught trying to sneak into a major sporting event, Iran’s World Cup qualification match against Bahrain. (Panahi shot the film in the stadium during the actual game.) Women are banned from attending sporting events in Iran, but this group defies the law as well as cultural expectations and gender stereotypes: They’re all enthusiastic sports fans, and as they appeal to the young soldiers holding them for transport to prison, they mount a noisy, rebellious group argument for why petty statutes shouldn’t keep them from expressing their patriotism and cheering on the home team. Their tactics for getting into the game, and for manipulating the soldiers when they fail, are all funny. The punishment they face isn’t. The film is transgressive in all the right ways: It portrays the women as diverse and specific, but also united in a just cause, and collectively representing the diversity of an entire generation actively resisting being held back by narrow-minded sexism. As they stand up for themselves, they start to look like revolution in drag. [TR]
36. Juno MacGuff, Juno (2007)
It’s Juno’s attitude that sets her apart, not her situation. Accidentally pregnant thanks to an ill-timed roll in the hay (read: playroom) with her immature best pal, 16-year-old Juno has to decide what’s best for her and the little nugget taking hold of her body. Uninterested in cliché and hellbent on doing what’s best, she considers her options, weighs the consequences, then makes her own decision. She’s got reasoning and logic down pat, but she also has a maturity that’s rarely reflected in the lives of teens on the big screen. Sure, Juno is quirky—hello, hamburger phone—and she doesn’t always make the most appropriate choices—hello, Mark Loring—but that’s not what makes her special. It’s that she can blend those quirks with an honesty and practicality that eludes most of her age range, if not people 10 or 20 years older than her. [KE]
37. Otilia, 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days (2007)
In 1987, near the end of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s rule in Romania, the atmosphere of intense paranoia and suspicion accompanying his regime reached a fever pitch. Cristian Mungiu’s Palme D’Or-winning drama follows two college students through this dread-soaked environment as they seek out an illegal abortion. As an advocate for Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), the friend who’s looking to have the procedure, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) bears all the pressure of hiding their intentions from nosy hotel clerks and officials, protecting Gabita from the coercive black-market creep who performs it, and keeping both of them safe. It’s such a pressure-cooker situation that 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days often plays as much like a thriller as a drama, anchored to a character whose loyalty, conviction, and compassion pierces through the forces of oppression that oppose these friends at every turn. [ST]
38. Verónica, The Headless Woman (2008)
To a certain extent, Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman is about the oblivious narcissism of the wealthy and privileged. In a moment of distraction, Verónica, played by Maria Onetto (Wild Tales), runs into something with her car. It could be a dog, it could be something or someone else, but her instinct is to flee the scene rather than take responsibility for whatever she might have done. In her typically suggestive style, Martel (The Holy Girl) spends the remainder of The Headless Woman catching the twitches of guilt and uncertainty that register on Veró’s face, which is outwardly placid as she continues to go about her affairs. Though her response to the accident is to retreat to a state of extreme detachment, Veró is and isn’t the bourgeois zombie she appears to be; the insistent tug of her conscience makes her human and mysterious, and Martel succeeds in bringing depth to a character who by most measures would be dismissed as monstrous. [ST]
39. Julia, Julia (2008)
The cult of Tilda Swinton has many sources—her breakthrough in Orlando, her unimpeachable cool in films like Michael Clayton and Only Lovers Left Alive, her alien oddness in Snowpiercer, her willingness to pop up in auteur pieces like Béla Tarr’s The Man From London—but she’s never given a more full-bodied performance than the one in Julia, which stands as her (and director Erick Zonca’s) homage to the lunatic spirit of Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes. As Julia, Swinton sinks her teeth into the larger-than-life role of a foul, vulgar creature whose heart still thumps mightily under the alcoholism, greed, desperation, and moral lapses that plague her. After going broke, Julia agrees to a scheme to kidnap a fellow AA member’s son and demand a $2 million ransom from the kid’s wealthy grandfather. Things don’t go remotely as planned, of course, but the situation gives Swinton space to reveal both the rotten and noble aspects of Julia’s character, much in the way Rowlands did for Cassavetes’ Gloria. [ST]
40. “The mother,” Mother (2009)
One of the best tragic movie heroines of recent years, the unnamed elderly mother in Bong Joon-ho’s psychological thriller Mother goes to extraordinary measures to protect her mentally challenged adult son Do-joon when the local police accuse him of murdering a teenage girl. As the mother (Kim Hye-ja) plays detective to try and vindicate her boy, Bong explores the small southern town where she’s lived and worked for years, and gradually exposes the guilt she feels for not having thought enough about what’ll become of Do-joon as they both get older. There’s a reason why both the film and its main character have such a generic name. Mother uses the form of the mystery genre to touch a raw nerve deep within nearly all parents, who worry they’ve brought somebody into the world who’s not just a burden on society, but a dangerous one. But the mother is also a daringly specific and unusual character: an older woman, a defiant one willing to stand up to her entire community, and a complicated figure who simultaneously represents the warm, protective maternal influence and the ruthlessness and selfishness it can become. The way the role subverts and plays on Kim’s long career of playing warm, popular Korean mom figures is just an added bonus. [NM]