I punched the air. Her answer to the question is a victory, a moment of striking agency so often absent in period romances. It's not whether she says yes or not; it's why she says it, how she says it. In wide wilderness, open fields, muddy holes, candlelit servant quarters, squalid hovels, elegant mansions, sprawling estates, open pastures, in dead or living trees, in the river or in the impossible gardens, wielding pillows or words. Class is examined through dancing, and love is examined through class, and sexism is examined through love.

52 project: 67/52

kind of missing the point but i'd just like to say i would marry sam neill. puttin that on the record. sam neill i will marry you

so beautiful, so charming, so bittersweet, so dorky. a movie to get lost in, a movie to love when you're 11, a movie to watch on a tiny tv/vcr combo in a couch fort in your pajamas when it's raining outside and laugh and cry and think about tomorrow.

I just can't fucking imagine ever turning down Sam Neill's marriage proposal. A girl can write and get good dick in the same house. These things are not mutually exclusive. He looks at her like she's made of cake and cake is his favorite fucking food in this and I am not as strong as she, I guess. Also, every time someone implied Sybylla (Judy Davis) is ugly I scoffed, loudly. Nonsense.

Not as perfect as Armstrong's Little Women, but then again, what is? When she throws the flowers into the pond! FUCK YOU, FRANK.

judy davis’s frizzy hair is more powerful than any man

“loneliness is a terrible price to pay for independence.”

sybylla melvyn and jo march be rejecting proposals from beautiful boys left and right and I can’t even leave my house. give me a field!! give me a beautiful boy to yell at and have a pillow fight with in said field!!! hell, give me a calf to pull out of a muddy ditch!!! my standards are very low at this point!!!!

Oh I adored this. The scene where Judy Davis and Sam Neill have a pillow fight is the loveliest thing. Neill is so dishy in this. I would not have been able to choose feminism over him and I apologize to women everywhere.

romance was created when gillian armstrong shot that outdoor pillow fight scene

“I’m so near loving you... but I’d destroy you. And I can’t do that.”

Watching this in a theater was a life changing experience.... just me and some old ladies laughing and crying together on a rainy Tuesday afternoon

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but: I love period pieces and part of what makes them so great is that they are often focused on women's stories rather than men. Because of that, I wish more of them, like My Brilliant Career, were directed by women because they just feel so much more authentic and empathetic to the story itself.

Us ugly girls have rights!