A hefty blow for cavegirls' lib is struck by this film of Jean M Auel's monster bestseller. And, even as you giggle at some of the subtitles imposed on the Neanderthal dialogue, you'll be rooting for tall blonde Daryl Hannah to come through in the end. She's one of the 'Others', a blond Cro-Magnon orphan adopted by the regressive Neanderthals, and a pretty wimpish six-year-old who grows up rather unbelievably to be tall and leggy Daryl. Forced to submit by the tribe's embryo leader Broud, who likes nothing if not his own way, Daryl bears his child but at the same time secretly learns the hunting arts forbidden to women - which gets her expelled even after her slingshot saves a child from the jaws of a wolf. Resourcefully surviving the winter to the astonishment of the tribe, she is granted the title 'Woman Who Hunts'. This, as you can imagine, goes down like a lead balloon with Broud, and you know that a day of reckoning will have to come. Nicely pitched between erotic fantasy of One Million Years BC and the ultra-realism of Quest for Fire, it's thoroughly enjoyable.

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