“The particular greatness of movies,” Pauline Kael once wrote, is the power to connect with us “emotionally … in spite of our thinking selves.” I’m never going to be swept away by films that are treatises, feminist or otherwise. Tell me a good story whose ending I can’t predict. Make me weep. Make me smile with pleasure. Turn me on. Give me one delicious image. Let me leave the theatre pondering what I’ve just seen. Break my heart. Just don’t lecture me. The Substance and Babygirl: Two films by female writer/directors, both inspired by the experience of living in a female body in a culture that instills shame and self-hatred in us. It’s an evergreen theme for feminists; we’ve been writing about it (though only occasionally making movies about it) since the dawn of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960’s, and freshening the ideas up is a challenge.