Partners in crimes: Film's finest female dynamic duos

We have to start with the queens of the ultimate getaway road movie, . These two badass ladies, played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, paved the way for many of the other women on this list. They don’t set out to be criminals, but they’re forced into it by a society that insists they sublimate their own desires and identities for the comfort and convenience of men. Watching them come into their power and experience true freedom for the first time through an increasingly volatile joyride is still exhilarating, and unfortunately remains painfully relevant to this day.

Based on a true story that became a scandal in New Zealand in the 1950s, has achieved cult status, not just for its subversive material, but also for the careers it launched. Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, both young and unknown at the time, star as Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, teenage school girls who become so wrapped up in their all-consuming friendship that they’re willing to resort to murder to protect it. Director Peter Jackson had made three films up to that point—Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles, and Dead Alive—but he was just coming into his own as a sophisticated filmmaker, and Heavenly Creatures was the first to receive widespread critical acclaim. The film never passes judgment on its delusional subjects, nor does it excuse their actions, it merely takes us inside their fantasy world and lets us marvel at the capacity of the human mind to create such elaborate refuges from reality.

In an era when queer characters were more commonly treated as tragic figures or comic relief, the Wachowskis set out to make their first film a crime thriller centering these characters as heroes, or perhaps antiheroes, of their own story. became notorious for its lesbian sex scenes, choreographed with help from feminist Susie Bright to ensure authenticity, but it’s not the sensationalism that makes it a classic. The way it plays with the conventions of neo-noir and gangster films with reverence and respect elevates it beyond mere sexploitation. Jennifer Tilly’s Violet is an unusual femme fatale in that she remains loyal to her co-conspirator in a plot to steal $2 million from the mob. And Gina Gershon’s Corky is more than Violet’s butch love interest, she has an interior life and desires of her own. The heist story doesn’t ultimately depend on the central couple being two women, but it’s a killer twist that was revolutionary for its time.

When we first meet them in the musical , Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) and Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) aren’t even friends, let alone partners. In fact, they’re bitter rivals right up to the end. But after they’re both acquitted of the murders they definitely committed and released from prison they discover their fame as notorious criminals may not translate to the stage stardom they dreamed of behind bars. What else can they do but team up? The 2002 film adaptation directed by Rob Marshall ends in spectacular fashion with their joint musical number, “Nowadays,” and one of the most iconic dance duets in Broadway theater (with modified Bob Fosse choreography), the Hot Honey Rag. It left a strong enough impression that the film would go on to win six Oscars, including Best Picture.

You could say that Thelma And Louise walked so could run. But the true story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos and her murder spree makes Thelma and Louise’s calamitous road trip seem sane, almost quaint, in comparison. In her feature film debut, writer-director Patty Jenkins takes a sympathetic approach to Aileen’s story, examining her motivations and her protective relationship with her girlfriend Selby Wall, played by Christina Ricci. Charlize Theron famously disappeared into the role of Aileen, transforming her look, voice, and physicality to match the real person, and won an Oscar for her efforts.

Director Park Chan-wook is a master of twisty thrillers, and he certainly keeps you guessing in . Loosely based on Sarah Waters’ Victorian crime novel Fingersmith, the remake puts lovers Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) and Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) front and center. Sook-hee is a street urchin sent to work as a maid in the house where Hideko lives with her lecherous uncle. Using the alias Tamako, Sook-hee’s real job is to convince the lady to marry a greedy Count who plans to commit her to a mental asylum and steal her money. But all is not as it seems, and things become even more complicated when the two women fall in love. Even as they scheme their way through the story, which jumps back and forth between their points of view, they seem to only lower their masks for each other. It’s those realistically portrayed emotions that keep the convoluted plot from spinning off course, even as it constantly reverses on itself and heads in new directions.

echoes Heavenly Creatures in several ways, most notably in its dark premise about two mentally unstable teenage girls who scheme to kill one of their parents. It also stars a pair of young and relatively unknown actresses, Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy, who would go on to become more familiar to audiences in subsequent years. But that’s where the similarities end. This clever psychological thriller strikes a far more cynical tone, often straying into screwball comedy. Cooke plays Amanda, an admitted sociopath facing animal cruelty charges for killing her horse with a knife. She has a fraught relationship with her classmate and one-time friend Lily, a tightly wound overachiever. After Amanda’s mother pays Lily to rekindle their estranged friendship, the two of them hatch a plan to kill Lily’s controlling stepfather and blame it on a local drug dealer (played by Anton Yelchin in his final screen appearance). It goes wrong in all sorts of entertaining ways that are made even better by Cooke and Taylor-Joy’s sharp performances.

This indie comedy slasher flew under the radar when it came out, but it hasn’t lost any of its bite since then. We’re still completely obsessed with true crime. If anything, it might be even more popular now. Tragedy Girls attempts to dissect and then skewer this obsession, through the lens of social media and influencer popularity. It stars Alexandra Shipp (Barbie) and Brianna Hildebrand (the Deadpool franchise) as high school students who run a popular true crime blog and YouTube channel under the name Tragedy Girls. They’ll do anything to boost their engagement numbers, including kidnapping a serial killer in order to learn his methods so they can stage their own attacks for the show. Eventually, and you can probably see this coming, they give up the whole idea of staging at all and just go for the real thing. Full of winking nods to genre tropes, it’s campy, gleeful, and genuinely fun.

Obviously, there are eight skilled criminals in , played by a stellar and talented cast, but like the film that kicked off the modern franchise, Steven Soderbergh’s Oceans 11, this one is all about the two criminal savants who run the show. Starring Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean (Danny’s sister) and Cate Blanchett as her former partner Lou Miller, Ocean’s 8 plays all the hits audiences have come to expect from these heist movies. Bullock and Blanchett are a formidable team, with charisma and chemistry that pours out of the screen. Debbie is the mastermind, having just been released from prison, where she spent five years working out the details of a bold robbery at the Met Ball. Meanwhile, Lou is the one who makes it all happen. By the end of the film, when the true scope of their operation becomes clear, we’re willing to follow them anywhere.

Continuing with the “anything you can do I can do better” theme of Ocean’s 8, is a remake of the 1988 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in which Michael Caine and Steve Martin compete to see which of them is the best swindler on the French Riviera. This time it’s Anne Hathaway (formerly one of Debbie Ocean’s 8) who’s the master confidence artist and Rebel Wilson who’s the small-time grifter encroaching on her territory. Just like the original, which itself was a remake of the 1964 comedy Bedtime Story, the two of them come to an agreement that the first one to scam a visiting tech billionaire (Alex Sharp) out of $500,000 will get the coastal town of Beaumont-sur-Mer all to herself. As you can imagine, wacky hijinks ensue.

There are serious, high-stakes capers, like stealing millions of dollars worth of diamonds from the Met Ball, and then there’s whatever you call the criminal conspiracy at the heart of . But the interesting thing about this story is that it happens to be true. Well, sort of. The story is loosely based on a criminal case in which the Phoenix Police Department confiscated $40 million worth of counterfeit coupons and assets purchased with the proceeds from selling them to unwitting consumers. Kristen Bell and Kirby Howell-Baptiste play fictional characters based on the women who find their purpose in life by defrauding big corporations in the name of the little guy. Queenpins mixes lighthearted comedy with a dash of social satire, but it’s Bell and Howell-Baptiste who really make it work.

Though much as the student body of Rockbridge Falls High School is willing to believe they’re juvenile delinquents, Josie (Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (Rachel Sennott) don’t set out to commit any crimes in . They just want the chance to get it on with some of their female classmates, through the ruse of a high school self-defense club for girls. How could that possibly go wrong? The film answers that question in spectacular fashion. Their actions spiral out of control and ultimately result in violence, bombings, and even deaths, but it’s all in the pursuit of a bit of harmless fun, and funniness.