Review: The Party, 2018, dir. Sally Potter

Sally Potter is the typical female auteur in that she is often underappreciated in comparison to her male peers. I happen to think that this is a big dumb failing of movie culture; Potter is superb, at drawing characters, at evoking a sense of time and place in her movies, at constructing sharp-ass dialogue for her cast members that never fails to suit the tone and the genre she’s working in. I dug her last movie, Ginger & Rosa. I really dig her new film, The Party, which is much shorter and much meaner but in its meanness much more satisfying. Imagine being stuck at the most awkward and painfully uncomfortable get-together of all time for an hour with no hope of escape, and you’ve pretty much got the film in a nutshell. It’s great. Over at Paste Magazine, I talk about why.