Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep talk about their film and feminism at the 59th London Film Festival (October 7-18), where the forthright, heartfelt drama opened, and was extremely well-received.
The film stars Mulligan, who plays a fictionalΒ laundress called Maud Watts, a working-class characterΒ around whom the story is centred. Meryl Streep plays the famous suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, along with Helena Bonham Carter and Natalie Press. The film received rave reviews, despite the usual difficulties a female-dominated film that isn’t funny or romantic usually faces in impacting the audience.
(Image via: youtube.com)
On the film, Streep says,Β βThe great achievement of the film is that itβs not about women of a certain class; itβs about a working girl, a young laundress, who looks like us, and the circumstances of her life were out of her hands, completely.β Mulligan talks about the relatability of the film in the present, saying,Β βIt doesnβt feel like a documentary about the past, it feels like a film about today. I always felt itβs resonance was about where we are now, and its achievement is to mark what these women did, and what they gave to us. Of course, we still live in a sexist society, but the film allows us to look at where we are today.β
(Image via: theguardian.com)
With a film that is about class divide, gender inequality, and the suffragettes’ fight to be recognised as human, the London Film Festival opened on the perfect note, and there is more amazing cinema to come!