Picture a woman at work. She’s good at her job, excellent even – in a field that’s still male-dominated – but she knows there’s something more to life than her professional expertise. Sure, she was the first person on Earth to talk to aliens, but is she complete? No. Thoughts of her lost daughter assail her at crucial moments, to the point that all the men she works with (and it is all men in the military tents) think she’s having a breakdown. Worried, the men examine her, drug her, put her to bed, chase her with guns – then finally another man explains to her, in a vision, what to do. It won't save her daughter but it will ensure she gets the guy. This is the plot of Arrival – starring Amy Adams as linguist Dr. Louise Banks, one of those fantasy academics who owns a stunning lakefront house – and the film's up there on all the awards lists. In Banks' final vision, she even wears an evening gown, as if to signal to voters how red-carpet this role really is. There’ll be competition, though, in the form of this season’s other heavy-hitting blockbusters with a female lead who falls to pieces: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Natalie Portman) has just been widowed in spectacularly violent (and violently spectacular) fashion in Jackie; Michèle Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert) has been raped in her home in Elle; Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) is going to kill herself on air in Christine ; oh, and of course, Mia (Emma Stone) has to put up with borderline harassment by a jazz bore in La La Land. Regardless of the considerable merits of individual performances in individual films here, I can’t shake the feeling that what shadows the mainstream critical approval they’ve received is the fact that these shiny-haired women are all suffering beautifully, and specifically, from the burdens of (cis) (straight) (white) (middle-class) (able-bodied) femininity. White femininity is presented as a no-way-out conundrum: the only available position is the Pietà of sacrificial victimhood, which then restores straight white middle-class cis women to the winners of the award for most-suffering. In fact, this awards season’s 'female-led' cinema feels a lot like the totes awks and super-racist women in film lunch at Sundance 2017, at which powerful female players in the film world adopted all those supposedly male behaviours – mansplaining, sealioning, general patronising – to try and shut down the wonder that is Daily Show correspondent and actor Jennifer Williams while she was discussing representation in cinema. This interaction between Williams and Salma Hayek says a lot: “I’m sorry,” Hayek said, jumping in. “Can I ask you a question?” “Yes, ma’am,” Williams answered. “Who are you when you’re not black and you’re not a woman? Who are you and what have you got to give?” Williams took a deep breath. “A lot. But some days, I’m just black, and I’m just a woman,” she said. “Like, it’s not my choice. I know who I am. I know I’m Jessica, and I’m the hottest bitch on the planet I know.”