The Love Story finale is a showcase for every questionable narrative instinct put to use throughout the season. More thoughts here:

"Though it has the force and scope of myth, it’s impossible to extract from it any neat lessons, or to answer with any confidence a simple question: What is Wuthering Heights about? Where Hollywood is concerned, Wuthering Heights is about love..." Rafaela Bassili (@sallyjaygorce) writes on adaptations of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, from William Wyler's WUTHERING HEIGHTS to Emerald Fennell's "WUTHERING HEIGHTS": mubi.com/notebook/posts/driv…

"The visual language of horror films is everywhere in The Secret Agent, and this, too, is an anthropophagic move: [Kleber] Mendonça Filho transposes the tropes of the American genre film to a place that operates, day in and day out, according to the logic of horror..." Revisit Rafaela Bassili (@sallyjaygorce) on THE SECRET AGENT: mubi.com/notebook/posts/what…

Recently on @mubinotebook:⁠ 🔹 @danielkasman surveys @berlinale filmmakers on key moments from their new films 🔹 @adriancurry shares personal reflections on the posters of Béla Tarr; Katherine Franco (@kaththegr8) on Francisco Lezama, Martín Rejtman, and El Pampero Cine; Elissa Suh (@oddbarnacles) writes on feral eating in feminist cinema; @mattlloydturner traces a history of the cutscene; Rafaela Bassili (@sallyjaygorce) dives into adaptations of Emily Brontë’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS 🔹 Elena Lazic (@elazic) sits down with Simón Mesa Soto to discuss A POET; Adam Nayman (@brofromanother) talks with NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE director Matt Johnson; @mattlloydturner speaks with director Ross McElwee about his latest documentary REMAKE (Pictured film: Martin Scorsese’s THE WOLF OF WALL STREET)

"The quotes around the title remind the viewer that the filmmaker is putting herself at a remove from her own material. Even the sex... absent of any darkness or longing, is vanilla." Rafaela Bassili (@sallyjaygorce) on Emerald Fennell's WUTHERING HEIGHTS.mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/d…

I wrote about Suburban Fury, a strange, compelling documentary about Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to kill Gerald Ford in 1975. Over at @DefectorMedia: defector.com/suburban-fury-i…

Ironically, in attempting to argue for Jane Birkin as a secret visionary, a new biography neglects what about her life was most interesting, writes @sallyjaygorce: theatln.tc/a80a8GsP

For @TheAtlantic, I reviewed the new Jane Birkin biography. She was an extraordinary woman who lived a varied, intense, messy life; the book can't always make sense of it. theatlantic.com/culture/2025…

In arguing for Jane Birkin as a secret visionary, a new biography ironically neglects the most interesting thing about her life, @sallyjaygorce writes: theatlantic.com/culture/2025…

"It was damned if you do, damned if you don’t; or, as we’d say in Brazil, If you run, the beast will catch you; if you stay, the beast will eat you."⁠ ⁠ Rafaela Bassili (@sallyjaygorce) writes on the absurdity and horror peculiar to Brazil captured in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s paranoid thriller THE SECRET AGENT: mubi.com/notebook/posts/what…

Que país é esse?

The Secret Agent opens today! When I watched it at @TheNYFF I thought it was suco de Brasil: KMF squeezed the juice out of the country and made a paranoid thriller of the essence. On @mubinotebook, my tour thru Brazilian history, culture, film, etc: mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/w…

"Working in Germany in the 1980s and early ’90s, during the golden age of romantic comedies in Hollywood, [Pia] Frankenberg saw that the absurdity of the genre rested in the devil’s bargain it offered women: your freedom for security. [...] The pressure women feel to weigh that bargain plagues every one of Frankenberg’s female protagonists." Rafaela Bassili (@sallyjaygorce) on German filmmaker Pia Frankenberg: mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/a…

"Either you sacrifice security for love, or you sacrifice love for security." With a retrospective now underway at @ICALondon, Rafaela Bassili (@sallyjaygorce) revisits the 1980s and ’90s anti-rom-coms of underseen German auteur Pia Frankenberg. mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/a…

❤️‍🔥 @sallyjaygorce has written about Pia Frankenberg’s ‘idiosyncratic, irresistible characters’ with such beautiful understanding and insight @MUBINotebook mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/a…