THE FILM: Leading Ladies

WHERE IT’S PLAYING: Muvico Parisian CityPlace, 7 p.m. Sunday

THE REVIEW: Picture Baz Luhrmann’s fairy- tale dance competition flick, Strictly Ballroom, crossed with the Broadway musical Gypsy. Oh, and throw in a sweet lesbian coming-out tale for good measure. There is plenty going on in Daniel and Erika Randall Beahm’s first feature film, but they juggle it all adroitly, including a few high-energy dance turns.

Stage mother Sheri Campari dotes on her prettier daughter Tasi (Shannon Lea Smith), grooming her to inherit the family mantle as ballroom queen. But when Tasi gets pregnant, Shari is forced to focus on her other, plain-looking daughter, Toni (Laurel Vail).

Toni blossoms from the attention, or perhaps it is because she has accepted her sexual orientation with the help of decidedly more experienced club regular Mona (Nicole Dionne).

The performances are very winning, the direction is extremely assured and you have got to see the explosive 11 o’clock supermarket dance number.

THE GRADE: A

THE FILM: Starring Maja

WHERE IT’S PLAYING: PGA Gardens Cinamax, 5 p.m. today ; Lake Worth Playhouse Stonzek Theatre, 6 p.m. Saturday

THE REVIEW: Do they have Afternoon Specials on Swedish television? If so, that is probably where Starring Maja, the tale of a clumsy, overweight teenager with aspirations of becoming an actress, belongs. Of course Maja is socially inept and the butt of jokes from her insensitive fellow students, but deep inside she knows there is a talented girl waiting to be discovered and perhaps loved.

In the hope of reaching those goals, Maja allows a wedding videographer-filmmaker wannabe to follow her around, recording her life. Improbably, Maja gets cast on a Stockholm sitcom, but only because the show needs a "hideously obese creature" to ridicule.

The film, written and directed by Teresa Fabik, has a few other predictible twists, but it is saved by an endearing performance by Zandra Andersson, a plus-sized beauty who really can act, as a brief excerpt from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – with Maja as Malvolio, no less – attests.

THE GRADE: B

THE FILM: Women Without Men

WHERE IT’S PLAYING: PGA Gardens Cinamax, 7 p.m. today ; Muvico Parisian CityPlace, 3 p.m. Saturday

THE REVIEW: In adapting Shahrnush Parsipur’s feminist political novel, Women Without Men, about four women of diverse social stations caught in the struggles of 1953 Iran, first time director Shirin Neshat invokes the past to illuminate the current situation in her native country.

It is a film necessarily full of brutality, yet acclaimed photographer Neshat contrasts the violence with visuals of striking monochromatic beauty.

The women, ranging from a general’s wife to a lowly, painfully thin prostitute, each take refuge in a rural orchard, a magic realism safe zone. Shot in Morocco, which stands in for Iran, the film seems more interested in the cumulative effect of its imagery than its loose narrative, but that remains an effective art house means of paying tribute to those who have fought in the ongoing struggle for democracy in Iran.

THE GRADE: B+