Mark Kermode on… Kathryn Bigelow, a stylish ruffler of feathers

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From vampire noir to Bin Laden, Point Break to Detroit, the first woman to win an Oscar for best director has never pulled her punches Watching new Jeff Nichols release The Bikeriders , starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy as 60s Chicago greasers, I was reminded of two other movies: László Benedek’s 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle The Wild One , explicitly cited as an inspiration, and The Loveless , the 1981 feature debut of Kathryn Bigelow , the American film-maker (b.1951) who would go on to become the first woman to win a best director Oscar with her 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker . A symphony of leather-clad posing (with just a touch of Kenneth Anger ), The Loveless was a staple of the late-night circuit in the 80s, often on a double bill with David Lynch’s Eraserhead . Sharing directing credits with Monty Montgomery, Bigelow playfully deconstructed masculinity and machismo in a manner that was one part wry to two parts relish. I remember seeing The Loveless at the Phoenix in East
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Penelope My Love review – admirably honest portrait of a mother and her autistic child

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Film-maker Claire Doyon’s bio-doc charts the rich but deeply challenging experiences of being a parent to daughter Pénélope and the intense bond that changes as they both grow older

In 2012, French film-maker Claire Doyon made Pénélope, a 50-minute documentary, about taking her autistic daughter Pénélope to deepest Mongolia to meet a shaman. As a parent of children with autism, I made it a mission to watch as many films as I could about the condition, and this unfortunately appears to have slipped through the net and is not available anywhere, at least in the UK or US.

That elusiveness alone might suggest that Doyon’s own feelings about the film, her daughter and her quest to find ways to cope with Pénélope’s condition have changed over the years. What’s more, she has now made another film, Penelope My Love, which incorporates footage from her earlier work, forming what feels more like a revision than a mere revisiting.

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