Should women directors make films that are identifiably, even explicitly, female -- or should they invade traditional male preserves in gender neutral ways? Make action, horror and gross-out comedies for teenage boys? My own feeling is they should make whatever they want to make. My own observation, however, is that, in Japan at least, more are taking the former path than the latter.

Is this ghettoization? Imposed from within or without? Maybe, but the local "ghetto" of female-generated/targeted pop culture has a lot of energy and power, culturally and economically. The "Nana" phenomenon -- Ai Yazawa's best-selling comic and Kentaro Otani's megahit movie about two girlfriends who are at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, one super-punk, the other super-fem -- is one indication that this "ghetto" is prospering nicely, thank you, while changing the largely male-defined meaning of "mainstream."

Other, somewhat different, signs can be seen in three recent films, two of which are still playing. Just-ended is "Tenshi (Angel)," Mayumi Miyasaka's film, based on Erika Sakurazawa's eponymous shojo manga (girls' comic), about a sweetly ditzy angel (Kyoko Fukada) who helps troubled Tokyoites get their priorities straight and find true love, all without uttering a word. Fukada, a former idol who proved herself a gifted comedian in the hit female-buddy movie "Shimotsuma Monogatari (Kamikaze Girls)," is all white silk, feathery wings and fluttering ribbons as the angel, but tosses down gin and tonics as though they were lemonade. The story is mostly standard-issue romantic drama, but Fukada's character is an amusingly off-kilter example of contemporary girl power, supernatural division.