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‘Lilly’ Review: Equal-Pay Activist and Trailblazer Lilly Ledbetter Deserves a Much Better Film
Patricia Clarkson is forgettable in tonally confusing 'Lilly,' full of intrusively edited archival material and curious stylistic choices.
Despite the constant harassment — sometimes even physical abuse — that she and other female workers routinely endure, Ledbetter puts herself on the map in the company’s management program (she was the first woman to achieve that at the time), committing to the corporation with nearly two decades of hard, top-shelf work. The moments in which she wins her case initially, but loses the longer game in the House and Supreme Court (despite RBG’s dissents) are engaging, though mostly due to their informational nature and in spite of some overtly expository dialogue and country music tracks that superfluously spell out the film’s themes. There is an undeniably winning nonfiction film in this fact that can capture the spirit of Ledbetter’s contributions to the American society as a middle-class worker, or a rousing narrative picture (à la “On the Basis of Sex”) with some big-hearted dynamism.
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