The Ithacan: "The Women" Review

Here's another one of my pieces from this semester. It appeared in the same issue as the Raiders: The Adaptation front did, so that was an exciting week. 

Stereotypes trump the truths of ‘The Women’

Mediocrity overtook a film with Hollywood alumnae and serious potential

By Anne Gould Northgraves Contributing Writer | September 18th, 2008

It is rare enough for a high-profile Hollywood film to be directed by a woman. It is rarer still for that same film to be written by a woman. And it is unheard of for such a film to feature a cast made up entirely of women. Yet the hat trick that is “The Women,” the recently released update of a 1930s classic about four friends, does not quite deliver, given the big names involved and the time it took to return to the big screen.

Take, for example, what should have been star Meg Ryan’s triumphant return to Hollywood glory. The role of protagonist Mary Haines is a mature and complex one. Mary is a woman who has to pick up the pieces of her life after she learns of her husband’s affair and deals with a friend’s equally painful betrayal. The role has potential for real depth, and it is plain Ryan is trying to evoke real pathos with every crinkle of her brow.

But overall Ryan portrays Mary as little more than the slightly quirky and pained romantic comedy character Ryan played to death in the 1990s. Somehow Ryan’s voice has gotten higher pitched since her last stint in the spotlight, which makes even Mary’s most meaningful comments feel almost too tartly sweet to be true. Her overly voluminous hair, clearly meant to emphasize her harried state, ends up looking strikingly similar to a certain Ms. Bradshaw of “Sex and the City.”

Mary’s best friend Sylvia is an equally well-conceived character: a successful, tough-as-nails magazine editor who is also dealing with self-doubt and questions of loyalty. But what makes Sylvia a fuller character than Mary is the masterful performance by Annette Bening. She is as capable of portraying serene and supreme confidence when declaring, “This is my face. Deal with it,” as she is able to contort that face into a taut and pained mask when hiding potentially friendship-breaking secrets.

While writer and director Diane English (who wrote the ’90s sitcom “Murphy Brown”) adapted Mary and Sylvia into modern and complex enough characters, the same cannot be said for the supporting roles of Alex Fischer (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Edie Cohen (Debra Messing), a pair of purely two-dimensional characters. Though hints of personality and character keep the audience interested, hardly any screen time is devoted to the duo, making it clear Alex and Edie are mere fillers.

Pinkett Smith scowls and growls her way through the peripheral role of Alex. The character, a writer who has been coasting for six years off the success of her first novel, has the potential for incredible drama. However, Alex is merely the little slice of sass in the group, both in terms of her tell-it-like-it-is attitude and the sexual and racial diversity she brings to the group.

Messing, meanwhile, does the best she can as the perpetual, and perpetually happy, mom of the group of friends. Her radiance provides a necessary levity in the film, but Edie lacks sufficient back story and emotional connections to the other three friends. If only Edie’s complexity was revealed before the last three minutes of the film, then the hilarious and climactic final scene — the only shining

moment for both Messing and Pinkett Smith — would not have felt overloaded.

A greater disservice has been done to Mary’s nemesis, Eva Mendes’ scheming, gold-digging character, Crystal Allen. One would hope every character in a film about complex, real women would have some measure of depth. But all Crystal provides is a tired stereotype — a scheming, money-obsessed cutthroat — and nothing more.

“The Women” could have featured fewer women and still expressed the truth of the story. All the high-profile names additionally flung about in the cast — Candice Bergen, Bette Midler, Cloris Leachman and Carrie Fisher — feel more like a ploy to entice ticket-buyers than a full cast of characters.

“The Women” is a promising story with some genuinely funny and truthful moments.

Unfortunately that aspect does not completely redeem the overabundance of meaningless, two-dimensional characters.

 

“The Women” was written and directed by Diane English.