Too Much: Melodrama on Film

At BFI Southbank, in cinemas UK wide and on BFI Player, October to December

Cinema is, by nature, melodramatic.

Beautiful people perform impossible stories, hearts on sleeves as they dance through an artificial world. In a passionate purge of emotion, melodrama employs exaggerated staging, score and performance to create the ultimate spectacle. The stories it tells are intimate and familial, but stakes are high, and characters rarely behave rationally. They are human, after all.

Despite (or because of) its popularity, melodrama has repeatedly been dismissed by critics. They find sincerity confronting, a lack of restraint distasteful. As women through the ages have been told: it’s not right to be so hysterical.

The rare cinematic form concerned with women’s inner lives, these films span infidelity, motherhood and exploitation to capture our hearts and evoke our empathy. The legacy of early ‘women’s pictures’, created for female audiences with their favourite female stars, echoes across generations and around the world. As in life, these women do not always triumph. Imperfectly feminist yet endlessly relatable, their sensationalist struggles carry searing social commentary beneath their glossy veneer.

In the coming months we will embrace the vivid visual language and heightened dramatics of melodrama, inviting you to leave your cynicism at the door and feel something.

Don’t forget your tissues.

UK wide listings

October

From 1 October
The New Black Film Collective (multiple locations)

4 October
Queen’s Film Theatre
Screams By The Sea (Cottonwood Hotel)

From 5 October
Derby QUAD
Glasgow Film Theatre
International Film Festival Glasgow (IFFG), Grosvenor Picture Theatre, Glasgow

From 7 October
Malvern Theatres
Torch Theatre, Pembrokeshire

From 8 October
Exeter Phoenix, Exeter

From 9 October
The Poly
Riverside Studios

From 10 October
The Palace Cinema, Broadstairs

From 11 October 
ActOne Cinema

From 12 October
The Hippodrome, Bo’ness

From 13 October
Theatreship, London

From 15 October
Showroom Cinema

From 16 October
Invisible Women present Stronger Than Love: ¡Too Much Mexican Melodrama! (multiple locations)
Strand Arts Centre, Belfast

From 18 October
ActOne Cinema
Film Tottenham at The Beehive

From 19 October
Purbeck Film Festival
The Riverside Cinema and A Listers Restaurant

From 23 October
Bridport Arts Centre
Strand, Belfast

From 24 October
Cambridge Film Festival
Warwick Arts Centre

From 27 October
The Depot, Lewes

November

From 1 November
Electric Palace Cinema

From 2 November
The Ultimate Picture Palace
Storyhouse, Chester

From 4 November
Broadway, Nottingham

From 7 November
Darkened Rooms at Insole Court, Cardiff

From 10 November
Crip Melodrama (multiple locations)
 

From 15 November
South West Silents: Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson double bills, Bristol Megascreen

From 16 November
Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Falmer, Brighton

From 19 November
Foyle Film Festival / Nerve Centre

From 29 November
Aunty Social/Blackpool Film Festival — Chester, Blackpool, Preston

December

14 December

Out Freeze Frame Film Club, Out of the Blue, Edinburgh
Reel Life Monsters

January

From 23 January
London Short Film Festival

This list will be further updated when more participating venues are confirmed.