WOMEN MAKE FILM: A NEW ROAD MOVIE THROUGH CINEMA
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Tonight is installment seven of Women Make Film, and it’s a sizzling entry: the chapters and topics are “Bodies” and “Sex.” Hard to have one without the other, for the most part, but the movies shown tonight as part of this months-long celebration of cinema made by women feature plenty of both – bodies and sex, that is. Of the movies I’ve seen in this international sampler, the most riveting, and disturbing, is 1974’s The Night Porter, directed by Liliana Cavani. Shown by TCM very late tonight at 4:15 a.m. ET, The Night Porter, set 13 years after the end of WWII, stars Dirk Bogarde as a former Nazi keeping a low profile as a hotel employee, when checking into his hotel one day, by chance, is a woman (played by Charlotte Rampling) who, years earlier, he had forced into a sadomasochistic relationship while in the same German concentration camp – he as an officer, she as a prisoner. Flashbacks of their wartime experiences are very unsettling – but so are the scenes showing how they act, and react, during their accidental 13-years-later reunion (pictured). Other films showcased tonight include Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki, a 2018 drama above love beginning to spark between two Nairobi women, televised at 12:15 a.m. ET.