Crime & Mystery
Not every film biography needs to behave like a dutiful crawl through the credits. Catherine Fowler’s Sally Potter has a bit more backbone than that.
The interesting bit is how it keeps circling Potter’s work rather than just listing it. Thriller, with that feminist reworking of La Bohème, and then Yes, with the post-9/11 relationship material, give it a sharper spine than a standard career survey. Much more my sort of thing. I’d rather have a book that actually thinks about why the work matters than one that politely files everything in order.
The interesting bit is how it keeps circling Potter’s work rather than just listing it. Thriller, with that feminist reworking of La Bohème, and then Yes, with the post-9/11 relationship material, give it a sharper spine than a standard career survey. Much more my sort of thing. I’d rather have a book that actually thinks about why the work matters than one that politely files everything in order.
Fowler’s the sort of critic-biographer I trust more than the ones who treat a film career like an archive to be dusted and put back. What matters here is the shape of the argument, not the list of titles. Potter’s work needs that. A neat chronology would be the least interesting way to handle her.