Yentl

Dir. Barbra Streisand. 1983, 133 mins. DCP. With Barbra Streisand, Mandy Patinkin, Amy Irving. The hugely ambitious and gratifyingly personal directorial debut of Hollywood superstar multihyphenate Streisand, this adaptation of Issac Bashevis Singer’s short story about a young Jewish woman in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe who disguises herself as a boy in order to be allowed to study Talmud is a beautifully rendered queer, feminist love story. When Yentl—as Anshel—falls for handsome fellow student Patinkin, she gets embroiled in a genuinely compelling love triangle with his betrothed, played by an Oscar-nominated Irving. Featuring a soaring Academy Award–winning score by Michel Legrand, with songs, performed as internal monologues, by an exquisite-sounding Streisand.