Two stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity, sexual candor and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.08
Buy DVD: The Women
• Buy Blu-Ray: The Women [Blu-ray]
Sometimes, even with top-quality talent, everything goes wrong.
Bad casting decisions. Inconsistent tone. Inexperienced and tin-eared directorial decisions.
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| Having just learned that her husband is having a rather public affair, Mary Haines (Meg Ryan, center) flees with her daughter (India Ennenga, left) to her mother's (Candice Bergen) "summer cabin," while trying to determine her next move. Sadly, the one thing Mary won't get is good advice or rock-solid support from her three best friends, because they're too frequently AWOL in writer/ director Diane English's clumsy modern remake of The Women. |
Let's begin with the first mistake: the extremely ill-advised decision to remake a play that first hit the big screen in 1939, when director George Cukor guided Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine and Paulette Goddard — among others — in his snarky film adaptation of Clare Booth Luce's The Women
.Luce's play emerged at a time when women — even rich society women — had far fewer options. This isn't mere historical observation; it's crucial to the nature of Luce's play, because a woman of that era risked everything if she chose to divorce her husband, even if the philandering swine deserved it.
Arguing for calm reflection — insisting that the betrayed wife carefully weigh her options, and give serious consideration to forgiving the cad — might have made more sense on the eve of World War II.
In today's world, however, we cannot for a second imagine why all her friends — and even her mother! — would keep insisting that Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) grant a second chance to the off-camera lout who has stepped out on her with a tarted-up perfume counter babe employed at Saks.
Or why Mary would seriously consider such advice.
It's particularly difficult because we never meet her husband, and therefore have no emotional investment in his point of view. That's the gimmick here, as it was in Cukor's film: The cast is entirely female. Whether at home, at work or striding down New York City sidewalks, these characters never encounter — nor do we ever see — any men.
The word "contrived" leaps to mind, which also pretty well covers writer/director Diane English's script.
Cukor, even though he did operate at a time when the central storyline "read" well, had the good sense to retain Luce's wonderfully nasty tone. Her play is a verbal slugfest, with even the central core friends behaving quite badly at times; all her characters deliver caustic, often barbed comments with the skill of a Jane Austen heroine.
Even today, Cukor's film remains a howl, its rarefied cattiness just as deliciously arch as the rat-a-tat tough guy (and gal) talk in the best 1940s and '50s noir thrillers. Point being, we're not intended to take anything all that seriously; Luce's women are deliberated exaggerated archetypes who take merciless glee while chewing up the scenery ... and each other.
