A challenging look at twenty years of feminist film theory

...Mellencamp...has undertaken to address the issues, and that she has done so with great thoroughness, soul searching, wit, and intelligence, will surely position this book as a must-read for film theorists and many other feminists and feminist-influenced scholars and critics. --Elayne Rapping Bold, brilliant, radiantly funny and just sizzling with intelligence, A Fine Romance rewrites film history as an action adventure for women. Patricia Mellencamp is one of feminism's most audaciously creative thinkers. --Meaghan Morris, author of The Pirate's Fiancee: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism This is a book of mega-energetic proportions by a brilliant cultural critic who engages the disabling fiction of romance through a double reading--of films by women from all over the globe and of feminist film theory over the past two decades. A fine romance glitters with Mellencamp's legendary wit. It is also deeply serious and wide-ranging, addressing questions of work and money, age and friendship, obsession and addiction, history and the emotions. --Kathleen Woodward, Director, Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin

Acknowledgments To Begin with... 1. What Cinderella and Snow White Forgot to Tell Thelma and Louise Age One: Intellectual Feminism 2. A Fine Romance, with No Kisses: Discourse, Not Intercourse 3. Sexual Economics: Gold Diggers of 1933 4. Romantic Delusions 5. Fatal Attractions and Obsessions Age Two: Irascible Feminism 6. Protofeminists 7. Cryptofeminists Age Three: Experimental Feminism 8. What I Really Want to Do Is Direct Age Four: Empirical Feminism 9. Archival and Avant-Garde 10. Haunted History Age Five: Economical Feminism 11. What Virginia Wolf Did Tell Sally Potter Notes Index