In Walter Salles's "Central Station," a hit at Sundance and the winner of top honors at this year's Berlin Film Festival, a cynical, joyless woman crosses paths with a lonely young boy.

In this play within a play (or "theatrical exploration," as Ms. Kron calls it), Ms. Kirk (third from left) is a joyless woman named Joy, adopting a concave posture and hooded eyelids, the picture of ill health.

And Megan had been left to the care of Frances Clay, the joyless, washed-out woman who cleaned the church.

In this quiet, luminous Brazilian gem, a joyless older woman crosses paths with an orphaned young boy.

Marchetto, a contributor to The New Yorker, usually specializes in droll depictions of joyless, emaciated women in four-figure outfits.

But of course she was also writing herself out of her marriage and the missionary world, which she had come to despise as joyless and narrow, patronizing both to the Chinese people and to women.