Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Joan Micklin Silver, 1976). This adaptation of a 1920 short story penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald served as the fifth episode of the PBS series The American Short Story, which paired rising filmmakers with literary works by esteemed authors. When she wrote and directed Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Joan Micklin Silver was coming off of her feature debut, Hester Street, which had gotten enough attention to earn Carol Kane an Oscar nomination for her lead performance. The film tells the story of Bernice (Shelley Duvall, who’s really wonderful in her odd, inimitable way), a mousy, naive young woman who visits Marjorie (Veronica Cartwright), her mean girl, flapper cousin. Marjorie loops Bernice into her social circle with some coaching that’s intended to make her seem strident and off-putting to various beaus buzzing about. The plan backfires when Bernice becomes genuinely popular, maybe more popular than Marjorie, leading to an escalation of vengeful machinations. The film is thoroughly charming in its vintage storytelling; Joan Micklin Silver gets the tone exactly right, looking at the Roaring Twenties with a more modern sensibility while also nudging her own style to be suitably old-fashioned. The film also shrewd in its depiction of feminine competition and genial manipulation, showing that a classiccally structured narrative can still have an edge.

Flipside (Chris Wilcha, 2023). This documentary is ostensibly about Flipside Records, a New Jersey record store with an endearingly ramshackle vibe that has shakily survived through decades of shifting consumer expectations. It was a favorite haunt and early employer of Chris Wilcha, who went on to direct the cult favorite and award-winning 1999 documentary The Target Shoots First. Following that jolt of success, Wilcha never quite found his next feature project, and he wound up building a lucrative if sometimes artistically underwhelming career directing commercials and other stray bits of business. As he considers the arguably futile doggedness of Dan Dondiego, Jr., the record store’s proprietor, Wilcha finds parallels to his own string of missed opportunities. Wilcha braids in footage from many of of his aborted projects, and Flipside becomes a wry rumination on the imperfections that come with pursuing passions professionally. The film bears some resemblance to Kirsten Johnson’s inventive documentaries, albeit without the tight control that distinguished those. What little resistance I might have to the film had was eradicated by the inspired final moment complete with a perfectly chosen song to accompany the closing credits roll.

Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2004). Wil Pang (Michelle Krusiec) is a up-and-coming surgeon whose life is knocked off balance when her mother (Joan Chen), unmarried and seemingly without any romantic partner, reveals she is pregnant, a development that has caused a major rift in their conservative, Chinese-American family. As she adjusts to again living with her mother, Wil tentatively enters into a relationship with Vivian (Lynn Chen), an aspiring dancer who’s the daughter of Wil’s boss. In her debut feature film, Alice Wu is already an elegant, economical visual storyteller. If some of the narrative beats are overly familiar, there’s an emotional specificity that compensates. Wu’s sensibility manages to be warm, slyly comic, and ruthlessly realistic all at the same time. The whole cast is terrific, hitting the sweet notes of romantic comedy while hinting at the melancholy underneath. Chen is especially winning, convey pathos without self-pity to a woman who has grown accustomed to denying herself happiness in her life.