US 1993, D, SC Maggie Greenwald, C Declan Quinn, E Keith Reamer, M David Mansfield, S Felipe Borrero, P Fred Berner, Brenda Goodman, Joco Productions, Cast Suzy Amis, Bo Hopkins, Ian McKellen, David Chung, Heather Graham, René Auberjonois, Carrie Snodgress, Anthony Heald, Melissa Leo, Print colour, 35mm, 120 min, engl. OV

Suzy Amis plays Little Jo, a character based on an actual woman (Josephine Monaghan) who lived as a man in the nineteenth century and worked as a cowboy and sheep tender. The screenplay of THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JO, written by Maggie Greenwald, is designed to counterbalance years of sexist portrayals (or omissions) of women in the American West. Little Jo is abandoned by her family after she gets pregnant (out of „wedlock“). She survives an attempted rape and decides that the only way to live free is to live as a man. Greenwald deconstructs male gender identity through the vehicle of Little Jo’s cross-dressing. [...] THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JOT is a down-beat, almost noirish vision of the West, though it does show a sense of humor. The women have the last laugh, literally and figuratively, in the final unveiling of Jo [...]. (Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Women Film Directors: An International Bio-critical Dictionary, 1995