The closing night selection of the New York Film Festival, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s “Persepolis,” caps a notable lineup this year of independent women embattled by many things, including class, love, and war. And if the French feature’s distinctive monochrome animation defines its spunky girl’s coming-of-age in repressive Iran, the possibilities for female characters at this year’s festival often seem inseparable from the proclivities of the filmmaker in question.

French New Wave lion Claude Chabrol, who certainly feels like the most prolific of his colleagues, provides a case in point with “A Girl Cut in Two.” Mr. Chabrol divides his fresh-faced weathergirl protagonist Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier) between the attentions of a smooth-operating married author (François Berléand) and a preening, psychotic popinjay (Benoît Magimel). Young Gabrielle, who diligently works her way up in television, undergoes several degrees of betrayal at the hands of her suitors (who are, respectively, rich and obscenely rich).

Mr. Chabrol’s frequent, ultrasmooth blend of social satire, venal entanglement, and mordant twists has always reminded me of those rabbit-duck optical illusions that somehow have it both ways. “A Girl Cut in Two” takes Mr. Chabrol’s male power plays and weak female foils to the point of bourgeois satire without quite satisfying. As Gabrielle buffets about like a compressed 18thcentury heroine of class-crossing fortunes and misfortunes, Mr. Chabrol’s stance on gender feels cynical, but in a dispiritingly complacent way.

A better (and — never hurts — hotter) take on sexuality and class comes from Catherine Breillat’s “The Last Mistress.” The investigative director here delegates her show to the flesh-and-blood performance of the inimitable Asia Argento as Spanish courtesan La Vellini (arguably another in a line of Ms. Breillat’s Latin Others). She grapples with respectable young aristo Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Ait Aattou, as softly pretty as a glam-rocker), who’s bound to wife Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida, the arresting Breillat protégé of “Fat Girl” and “Sex Is Comedy”).

As Ryno and Vellini spar over their mutual obsession and consumption, Ms. Breillat implicitly refracts the push-pull through her characters’ varied sensibilities, not least Ryno’s candid mother-in-law, the Marquise de Flers (Claude Sarraute). Ryno recounts his experiences to the Marquise, to her evident vicarious enjoyment, and you have to love any movie in which someone makes the distinction, as does the Marquise, that she’s a 17th-century gal in a tame 18th-century world (and where La Vellini sports a curlet sculpted into the shape of a woman’s bottom). Not incidentally a stylishly mounted affair, “The Last Mistress” viscerally integrates bodies and costume drama, gazes, and thrusts.

Alexander Sokurov’s “Alexandra” is anchored by a different sort of leading lady, the indomitable Galina Vishnevskaya (a former opera diva) as a Russian soldier’s grandmother. The sole visitor to her grandson’s oddly hermetic encampment, Alexandra wanders as she pleases, secure in the stature of her years, eventually visiting the nearby Chechen market, walking by ravaged apartment blocks, and striking up a conversation with a lady stall owner. The director’s typically open-ended “story,” often rendered in weathered, sepia-dusty tones, sees Alexandra casually broaching boundaries in the male military surroundings and, with her grandson, ultimately giving voice to a Russian brand of sentiment and stoic wisdom.

Lee Chang-dong’s “Secret Sunshine” also centers on a newly arrived outsider: a widowed piano teacher (Jeon Do-yeon) who moves with her young son to her late husband’s small hometown. The comic chronicle of her growing pains to fit in, relentlessly courted by a guy (Song Kang-ho of “The Host”) who can’t take a hint, soon takes bewildering, exhausting turns best not revealed. “Secret Sunshine” feels uneasily like several movies in one, spanning tragedies of suffering and epiphanies of recovery and even messier states, but in retrospect the tones and strategies feel attuned to the woman’s overwhelming experience.

Most of these films have already run their course at the festival (except “Persepolis” and “Girl Cut in Two”). But don’t miss two more offerings centering on women facing professional challenging societal circumstances playing this weekend: “Useless,” a documentary by Jia Zhangke (“The World”) about a Chinese fashion designer and her industry, and “Actresses,” a lively semi-autobiographical film by the actress-director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi.