ABSTRACT
What follows is an abridged version of a chapter I wrote in 1996, ‘Crossing Thresholds: The Contemporary British Woman’s Film’ (for the full version of this chapter see Ashby 1996), in which I argued that feminist cultural politics had begun to make a palpable impression on British Cinema. In particular, a cycle of woman’s films made during the 1980s had offered some politically progressive narratives which arguably help pave the way for a more feminist British woman’s film in the 1990s. Since writing ‘Crossing Thresholds’, however, the genre – and, of course, British cinema more generally – has continued to reinvent itself and diversify, and to operate within and respond to new cultural and industrial contexts. As such, it certainly seems to me to be high time we revisit the genre to reassess its current viability. Following on from my original discussion, then, I will look at some more recent films which draw upon and rework the thematic and narrative paradigms developed by the 1980s cycle, to gauge the continued cinematic and cultural currency of what, for the time being at least, I want to persist in describing as ‘the contemporary British woman’s film’.
