Good morning everyone,

I saw a fantastic film last week, and it's quite a recent one too. Sibyl, directed by Justine Triet. Have you seen it? It's tense and funny and sexy and intricately patterned AND ALSO Sandra Hüller is genuinely hilarious in it. So here is a Fem Fri that is about that film and films and work.

Okay so yes Justine Triet made an incredible movie but I'm profoundly grateful that she is not my boss:

I push the actors emotionally very hard in the beginning of a series of takes, and they love that, to get really emotional and feeling they have done their best scene. But then in fact the next one, when they contain it a bit more but still have a trace of emotion in their face, that is often the best take. I need to really wear out my actors. For example Virginie […] when she is crying in the cinema, she was really in that state. Even when we said ‘cut’, she kept crying. I love to get them in that state, but of course only when the scene requires it.

https://icsfilm.org/features/cannes-2019-interview-sibyl-director-justine-triet/

OF COURSE only when the scene requires it.

Here's a review and a pullquote that captures some of the tension I really enjoyed:

In an early session with the patient, Sibyl encourages her to talk about her sex life, seemingly to help her work through things, but Efira shows Sibyl’s lurid enjoyment of the retelling in the way her breath hitches and her face gathers interest even as she keeps her body tightly controlled and unmoving. With her other patients, though, she listens with compassion, leaning in, calmly engaging them. You can see a woman who’s good at her job and yet on the verge of becoming very very bad at her job.

https://seventh-row.com/2021/01/01/virginie-efira-sibyl/

Staying with movies and work, here's a great example of a one joke Reductress slide show in which every execution of that joke is perfect. I genuinely howled at this, Pictures of Young Richard Gere with Captions about Sales and Marketing so You Can Read This at Work:

They sort of don’t make ‘em like anymore, you know? Like, when’s the last time you saw a man who looks like this? Never. Only Richard Gere looked like this, and now he certainly doesn’t. But to think! To imagine that he once roamed the streets with this face and this hair. Astonishing. And THAT’S how you INCREASE EARNINGS for a LUCRATIVE QUARTER. Synergy! Okay, go to the next.

https://reductress.com/post/pictures-of-young-richard-gere-with-captions-about-sales-and-marketing-so-you-can-read-this-at-work/

Love,

Alex.