One's a story about Briony, a meddlesome pre-sexual teenager, and is directed with plenty of masculine flourishes — Joe Wright's now-notorious tracking shot around Dunkirk does nothing if not idolise men and war, airlifting us almost completely from any perspective that could realistically belong to Briony. Juno, like Knocked Up, is a romantic comedy about not having an abortion, directed by a man.

Both films are lucky to have made the list at all with so much male Sturm und Drang floating around in the cinematic ether.
Admittedly, in the best actress category, some genuine "women's films" are in the running: both Julie Christie (Away From Her) and Laura Linney (The Savages) are nominated for films by female directors, and Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) owns her starring vehicle like no one else this year except Daniel Day-Lewis. But the less said about Cate Blanchett in the atrocious Elizabeth: The Golden Age the better. And suffice to say that none of these films, save Ellen Page's Juno, are heavy-hitters in the awards race generally.

Playing a man

The marginalisation pattern rears its head again in best supporting actress. Ruby Dee gets nominated for a single scene slapping Denzel Washington in the entirely phallocentric American Gangster. Blanchett is in for playing a man.

And Tilda Swinton, superb in Michael Clayton, makes a virtue of being the only gal in her own otherwise male-dominated ensemble. Her performance as the morally decentred opposition lawyer Karen Crowder is a brilliant reproach to a frankly wretched part: the role is tinged with misogyny, but Swinton makes Karen, with all her neurosis and terror, seem like the stricken victim of a man's world.

It does seem that Hollywood has been overwhelmingly working out maleness issues, rather than feminine ones — whether it's rampant capitalism (There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton) or essays on violence (No Country For Old Men, Jesse James) or paeans to male solitude (Into the Wild).

Shift in focus

By Tim Robey/Daily Telegraph Group

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