Pulitzer Prize-winning author (for The Hours) Michael Cunningham’s earlier novel about a troika of close friends who enter into an unconventional living arrangement gets deft treatment. Boyhood pals Bobby (Colin Farrell) and Jonathan (Dallas Roberts) both love the same woman (Robin Wright Penn), but in different ways (Jonathan is gay). Undaunted, they all try to make a life together — and even have a baby — in 1980s New York.

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Iris Murdoch was l’enfant terrible of the literary world in early 1950s Britain — a live wire who thumbed her nose at the conformity of the era via a voracious sex life that included male and female partners. In this snippet of her life, Murdoch (Judi Dench) faces the onset of Alzheimer’s disease alongside her adoring husband (Jim Broadbent). Kate Winslet portrays the young, free-spirited Iris in flashbacks.

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This gripping drama follows the parallel lives of three 20th-century women. The incomparable Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, in an Oscar-winning performance) is hard at work on the classic story of Mrs. Dalloway while battling depression in the 1920s; Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is an unsatisfied 1950s housewife who finds solace in Woolf’s novel; and Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep) is a modern-day book editor who’s losing her former lover to AIDS.

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Sam (Thomas Cavanagh) and Gray (Heather Graham) are devoted siblings who share an apartment and a love of many things — ballroom dancing, 1940s movie musicals and, much to their surprise, an attractive woman named Charlie (Bridget Moynahan). Historically heterosexual, Gray is confused by her new feelings. Sibling rivalry, love and destiny are turned upside down in first-time writer-director Sue Kramer’s romantic comedy.

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After a botched sex-change operation, East German glam rocker Hansel (John Cameron Mitchell) becomes Hedwig and travels across the United States with a stage show, following her ex-boyfriend (and former band mate) and telling her life story. Hedwig’s offbeat show slays audiences — but in diners not clubs. Mitchell also wrote and directed the comedy, which won at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for several Independent Spirit Awards.

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