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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Queens of the Qing Dynasty review – unsettling but rewarding study of an unlikely friendship

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Hypnotic odd-couple story of a teenager struggling with her mental health and a carer exploring their gender

At times it feels like Canadian director Ashley McKenzie is setting a challenge with this: are you arthouse enough? Have you got the cinematic endurance? Her film is the story of a friendship between a neurodivergent teenager called Star struggling with her mental health, and a hospital volunteer newly immigrated from China. You could imagine it being turned into a quirky-cute odd-couple indie comedy with a superficial take on neurodivergence. Instead, McKenzie pulls us into Star’s reality, how she experiences the world. It’s a disorientating, unrelaxing two-hour experience, but rewarding.

It is set in the middle of winter in Nova Scotia, with snow up to the height of car roofs. Star (brilliantly played by Sarah Walker) has been admitted to hospital after drinking poison – not her first suicide attempt. A doctor recognises her from the last time, but Star doesn’t remember him. “Must have been in nervous breakdown mode.” She speaks in unfiltered streams of consciousness like this, eyes blank and glazed. Star has been in foster care for years; we never find out why, though she blurts out a terrible fact about her past in one scene. All the while, a jarring electronic score pings away, seeming to signal her heightened awareness of the world. On the ward, Star meets An (played by Ziyin Zheng, who uses “they” and “them” pronouns). An is an outsider, too: an immigrant from China who is exploring their gender. Something between the pair clicks. An tells Star about concubines in ancient China; this is the life An craves: “I want to be a trophy wife.”

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