An Unsuitable Job For a Woman

Director: Christopher Petit
Screenwriters: P.D. James, Elizabeth McKay, Brian Scobie

Institute History

  • 1985 Sundance Film Festival

Description

In An Unsuitable Job For A Woman, Petit reworks (and subverts) and a number of conventions specific to the whodunit film noir, combining prosaic reality with a striking visual evocation of its classic ambience. Being a tough-talking private eye is not usually considered a “suitable job” for a woman. But when Cordelia Gray is left in charge of a seedy London detective agency, upon the suicide of her boss, she bravely steps into his gunshoes. On her first case, Cordelia investigates the apparent suicide by hanging of a young student, the son of a wealthy businessman. Her growing involvement with the image of Mark, the dead boy, becomes an obsession and leads her into a strange and dangerous situation. She becomes entangled in a web of sexuality and horror and almost loses her life before finally exposing the riddle of Mark’s death and those behind it.

Preceded by The Last Seduction (Kim Depster, 1984, 10 min.), a short straight ahead comedy about birth control.

Screening Details

Credits

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