"By zooming out to include multiple countries and contexts and by zooming in on individual films about women workers, Mennel makes a strong case that European cinema has something important to say about gender and the economy." --<i>Feminist German Studies</i> "<i>Women at Work</i> offers us a rich archive of cinematic depictions of female labor . . . It is to the credit of Mennel's sweeping cinematic analysis of the present that we now have a better understanding of not only the work women do across the continent but also the variety of <i>new</i> images European cinema has been offering us." --<i>German Studies Review</i> "Highly recommended." --<i>Choice</i> "A beautiful balance between plot analysis and aesthetic evaluation to show how cinematic forms and subjects work together to root women's labor in gendered and economic contexts." --<i>MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture</i><br /> <i></i>"This book makes an important intervention into both feminist film theory and scholarship on European cinema. Mennel provides a kaleidoscopic overview of the landscape of European filmmaking today, and a key achievement of her study is its truly transnational, comparative framework, which generatively juxtaposes films from a wide range of European countries without losing sight of their cultural specificity."--Hester Baer, author of <i>Dismantling the Dream Factory: Gender, German Cinema, and the Postwar Quest for a New Film Language</i> "A book steeped in cinematic analysis of style and form that is relevant far beyond the field of cinema and European studies. Innovative and unique in the way it brings a very timely topical focus to a large body of contemporary European cinema."--Maria Stehle, author of <i>Ghetto Voices in Contemporary Germany: Textscapes, Filmscapes, and Soundscapes</i>
Barbara Mennel delves into the ways these films about female labor capture the tension between feminist advances and their appropriation by capitalism in a time of ongoing transformation. Looking at independent and genre films from a cross-section of European nations, Mennel sees a focus on economics and work adapted to the continent's varied kinds of capitalism and influenced by concepts in second-wave feminism. More than ever, narratives of work put female characters front and center--and female directors behind the camera. Yet her analysis shows that each film remains a complex mix of progressive and retrogressive dynamics as it addresses the changing nature of work in Europe.