She has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award and two
Golden Globes, and in 2004 became the first ever American woman to be
nominated for a Best Director Oscar. From The Virgin Suicides to The
Bling Ring, her work carves out new spaces for the expression of female
subjectivity that embraces rather than rejects femininity. Fiona
Handyside here considers the careful counter-balance of vulnerability
with the possibilities and pleasures of being female in Coppola's
films - albeit for the white and the privileged - through their
recurrent themes of girlhood, fame, power, sex and celebrity. Chapters
reveal a post-feminist aesthetic that offers sustained, intimate
engagements with female characters. These characters inhabit luminous
worlds of girlish adornments, light and sparkle and yet find homes in
unexpected places from hotels to swimming pools, palaces to strip clubs:
resisting stereotypes and the ordinary. In this original study,
Handyside brings critical attention to a rare female auteur and in so
doing contributes to important analyses of post-feminism, authorship in
film, and the growing field of girlhood studies.