Suffragette

From its opening scene set in the veritable hellscape of the Glass House Laundry, a literal sweatshop where women are forced into servitude as children and live in constant fear of abuse and even death, Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette cannily links the women’s suffrage movement, and human struggle in general, to issues of economy and class.

While the film at times lacks subtlety and veers into didacticism, it’s compelling throughout, mostly due to the full-bodied strength and sensitivity of Carey Mulligan’s extraordinary central performance as laundry worker Maud Watts. Steam-burned and bedraggled, Watts becomes a foot soldier in the sometimes violent movement of real-life British suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst (Streep) both out of desire for survival and the idea that perhaps there should be more to life than merely surviving.

Suffragette has been criticised for its inability to resonate with the concerns of a modern audience, but the fact that it took a mere hundred years for this story to be told on the big screen is an indication that it’s still pretty damn relevant. [Michelle Devereaux]