The Grifters Stephen Frears, 1990Sentimental male directors can be very protective about the first woman in their life. But Frears knows bad-mother films can be brutally empowering. Lilly Dillon (a peroxided Anjelica Huston) is a veteran con woman, bursting back into the life of estranged son Roy (John Cusack) with the violence of an ex-lover. Is she motivated by incestuous passion or hatred? Is she even his mother? We should condemn Lilly – but, in best noir tradition, we find ourselves rooting for the desperate older woman. For other portrayals of the over-sexualised mother, see American Beauty, The Ice Storm and Mrs Robinson

Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive