Cast: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith; Director: Diane English; Producers: Diane English, Mick Jagger, Bill Johnson, Victoria Pearman; Screenwriters: Diane English, Clare Boothe Luce; Music: Mark Isham; Editor: Tia Nolan; Genre: Comedy/ Drama; Cinematography: Anastas N. Michos; Distributor: Picturehouse Entertainment; Location: Massachusetts, USA; Running Time: 114 min.;Technical Assessment: 3
Moral Assessment: 2.5
CINEMA Rating: For mature viewers 18 and above
Friends Mary Haines (Meg Ryan), Sylvie Fowler (Annette Benning), Edie Cohen (Debra Messing) and Alex Fisher (Jada Pinkett Smith) are there for one another. Mary is a mother of one and seems in a perfect marriage. Sylvie, single, is a high profile woman’s magazine editor. Edie I a mother of three girls who won’t stop getting pregnant until she gets a son. Alex is an avowed, incorrigible lesbian. Two things they have in common: long-standing friendship and a passion for shopping, preferably at Saks Fifth Avenue. When Sylvie learns from a manicurist Tanya (Debi Mazar) at Saks that Mary’s husband Stephen is the lover of the store’s perfume sales girl Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), the trio tries to find a way to tell Mary ever-so-gently. But Mary also discovers it from the same gossipy manicurist, and decides for divorce. The four friends conspire to break the affair, but despite Stephen’s attempt to reconcile with Mary, she cannot be moved.
The dramedy The Women is inspired by the Clare Booth Luce play of the same title, and like the latter’s 1939 film adaptation by George Cukor, it also does not show males on the screen. There are two males, however—two husbands and a boss—but they are only heard on the phone with the women. It has a strong all-star cast including Candice Bergen (as Mary’s mother Catherine), Chloris Leachman (as Maggie, the Haines’ housekeeper), Carrie Fisher (as a gossip columnist), and Bette Midler (as Hollywood agent Leah Miller), which gives the movie a “chick flick” flavor. The script is also adapted from both the play and the 1939 screeenplay, using a story that is almost the same as the original although with a contemporary backdrop relying on the power combination of fashion and publishing. Gimmicky additions are the use of split screen, an entire fashion show, and a prolonged childbirth scene.
We can’t help thinking that The Women is but a small part of the trend to highlight female-bonding in cybermedia. Circulating lately via internet and email are Power Point presentations stressing how the world becomes a better place to live in when women –sisters, friends, mothers and daughters, grandmothers—are there for each other. In fact, Jada Pinkett’s line on the glories of lesbianism is a rather blunt statement for the advantages of female bonding—albeit sexually perversive. The movie’s main theme, marital infidelity, is very much adult but its comedic approach may lighten the impact of adultery in the viewer’s mind. The Women has been compared to the recent movie version of Sex in the City, featuring another quartet of female friends, but The Women covers more ground in terms of women’s issues such as the inevitable betrayal between close friends, the desire to have sons, the impact of divorce on children, society’s apparent tolerance of extra-marital affairs, the reasons behind a husband’s infidelity, etc. Because of its adult themes, CINEMA rates The Women as a movie for adults 18 and above.
