Some films are very much the product of a particular time. They reflect the sensibilities, the anxieties, and the dreams of that time and of no other. The remake of THE WOMEN is that kind of film. Unfortunately the zeitgeist it represents is that of the early 1970s, attempts at snappy dialogue hearkening back to its 1930s pedigree notwithstanding, when women were first making a stand for a life outside the kitchen if they wanted it, and dealing with the guilt of wanting to go and “find themselves.” In THE WOMEN, one finds all the uncertainty, the residual self-loathing of that time as well as the curious bifurcation of texts, sub and super.
The supertext is about Mary (Meg Ryan). She’s the slightly frumpy Martha Stewart clone with a picture perfect and very big house in Connecticut. She does her own cooking. She does her own re-tiling. She hosts elegant fundraisers where champagne is served in glasses with very wide gold rims. She also has a husband who has strayed, which is bad enough, but has strayed with a member of the working class. That would be Crystal (Eve Mendes), who wears tight dreses as she plies her trade, and works her charm, at the perfume counter at Saks. Mary suspects nothing, not even when hubby buys cowboy boots and starts to work extra hours nights and weekends in the city. No, it takes a casual conversation by the manicurist doing the nails of Mary’s best friend, the chic magazine editor Sylvie (Annette Benning), to blow the lid off this kettle of fish. First, though, and in order to keep the momentum going with endless conversations about if Mary should be told and by whom, Sylvie tells Edie (Debra Messing), the brood mare with funky taste in clothes and an inability to stick with any creative outlet other than child production, and Alex (Jada Pinkett-Smith), the edgy writer with a block and a thing for girls who are stunning but mindless. Of course Mary finds out. Of course her friends all tell her what she should do. Of course Mary, a modern woman of the 21st century, retreats into wearing a bathrobe all day and color coordinating her bags of M&Ms before eating them. Her other comfort food, involving a stick of butter, a bowl of sugar, and a tin of cocoa powder is best left to the imagination.
There is some calculated window dressing of the story to make it seem more modern than its roots. Mary’s list about what her husband will be missing now that they are divorcing includes the fact that she can suck nails out of a board. There is the token lesbian pal. The skirts are shorter, the heels are higher, and there are self-referential bits such as one character telling another that they’re not in a 1930s movie, after all. That’s about it for updating.
Ryan spends most of the film looking sulky with hair that isn’t just tousled, it’s tangled, and that’s before her life takes a nosedive. Benning struggles valiantly with a role that is essentially one of desperation and impotence that is painful to watch. Messing and Pinkett-Smith are little more than grace notes as the fertile bohemian tied to husband, home, hearth, and growing brood, and a slinky lesbian on the prowl for a good time before moving on quickly to the next conquest. That Edie is in a state of perpetual pregnancy until she gets a son would seem to be at odds with a film in which no male of any species appears. Not in a street scene, not in a store scene, not in a restaurant scene, not even in family pictures. It’s a point that cuts to the heart of why THE WOMEN is the complete antithesis of an empowering woman’s film. Every woman in this film revolves her life around men. For Edie, it’s trying for that boy and keeping her body captive until she does. For Alex it’s the way she explains that her choice of bedmate has more to do with disliking men than enjoying the carnal side of women. For Sylvie, it’s pleasing a boss while remaining free of emotional attachments. For Mary, it’s about falling apart when the one she’s married to strays. Even for Mary’s mother (Candace Bergen biting off lines of dialogue in a way that makes them crisper than they are),it’s all about getting the upper hand with her son-in-law the way she has with her husband. These women are not liberated, they are in thrall. The one exception is Mary’s housekeeper, played by the inimitable Cloris Leachman, a starchy woman without sentiment with a wickedly unclouded view of human relations and when, exactly one of them needs to be kicked in the pants. She is, alas, meant to be the comic relief of a comedy.
The subtext of THE WOMEN is deeply disquieting. This is a film that begins by mocking fashion models and ends by glorifying the industry that spawned them. It delivers the palliative smack at media that offer up impossible standards for women and girls to live up to before offering up a facelift as a logical step in a woman’s journey through life. It tells women that they can have it all, as long as they don’t want too much. It tells women to be selfish in the sense of taking care of their own needs so that they can then take care of others, but puts the message in the mouth of a woman who is a train wreck. Good performances and stylish direction can’t disguise what THE WOMEN really is: a throwback to a simpler time when women were simple and everyone was happy about it.
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