"With Film and Female Consciousness Lucy Bolton has made an opportune and important intervention in the field as well as a vital contribution to our understanding of how the work of psychoanalyst and philosopher Luce Irigaray provides fecund material for feminist film theory." - Anna Backman Rogers, author, American Independent Cinema "What stands out in Film and Female Consciousness, and what makes it exceptional, is quite simply the care and attention given to the films themselves. This makes it very much a work of cinephilia in all of the best senses: it is a book that loves the cinema (and it is a book that makes me want to love the cinema too)." - Richard Rushton, author, The Politics of Hollywood Cinema and Cinema After Deleuze

Film and Female Consciousness analyses three contemporary films that offer complex and original representations of women's thoughtfulness and individuality: In the Cut (2003), Lost in Translation (2003) and Morvern Callar (2002). Lucy Bolton compares these recent works with well-known and influential films that offer more familiar treatments of female subjectivity: Klute (1971), The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Marnie (1964). Considering each of the older, celebrated films alongside the recent, unconventional works illustrates how contemporary filmmaking techniques and critical practices can work together to create provocative depictions of on-screen female consciousness.

Bolton's approach demonstrates how the encounter between the philosophy of Luce Irigaray and cinema can yield a fuller understanding of the fundamental relationship between film and philosophy. Furthermore, the book explores the implications of this approach for filmmakers and spectators, and suggests Irigarayan models of authorship and spectatorship that reinvigorate the notion of women's cinema.