WOMEN (ELLES)
Reviewed by Harvey Karten WinStar Cinema/Samsa Film Director: Luis Galvao Teles Writer: Don Bohlinger, Luis Galvao Teles Cast: Miou-Miou, Carmen Maura, Marthe Keller, Marisa Berenson, Guesch Patti, Joaquim de Almeida
One of the most popular shows on American TV is "Friends," about the loves and lives of a group of 20- something pals. If the same performers played the same roles twenty years from now, how celebrated would "Friends" continue to be? Not very. Why not? Simply because Americans are notoriously age-conscious, a youth oriented society from the get-go. The idea that older people, or even those in their forties and fifties have love lives or exist for any reason other than to nurture their offspring is alien to each generation of pre- and post-pubescent youngsters.
Things are different in Europe. Age seems to matter less to those who live on the continent. A relationship between a 45-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man might attract just a few stares, though gray-haired European men are probably not unlike Americans in their ardor for rosy-cheeked women in college.
Exploiting the cultural affinities of a few people on the Eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Portuguese writer- director Luis Galvao Teles composed a story a decade ago about a group of women in their 40s and 50s who are friends, who give emotional support to one another particularly in matters of amour. Utilizing a mix of cultures, Galvao photographed in his home city of Lisbon, but the dialogue is in French and the principal actors are of French, Spanish, American and German backgrounds.
"Women" is an ensemble film that skirts from one individual to another, generally showing them either with their lovers or with buddies of their own sex as they express their desires-- or in some forlorn cases a lack of desire--to Linda (Carmen Maura "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown"), who has a successful TV interview program. Her regular format consists of asking women on the street for their three wishes. She is intent on finding one person who has given up wishing, apparently reflecting the view of many women in their middle years who believe that they have already lived their lives. Linda would make a good subject for her own program, as she is conflicted about her lover, Gigi (Joaquim de Almeida), who also has a young mistress, a situation which is partially her fault as she has the habit of throwing him out at 3 a.m. because she cannot sleep with a man in her bed.
Branca (Guesch Patti) is the one obnoxious member of these friends, a lusty actress and night-club singer who refuses to acknowledge that she is aging, beds down a different guy every night, and has a heroin-addicted daughter. Chloe (Marisa Berenson), the owner an upscale beauty salon, is a bisexual who is the least developed of the characters, and comes to a crisis when she makes an overture to Branca--thus acknowledging her previously hidden sexual orientation. Barbara (Marthe Keller) is a sad case of a woman who is diagnosed by her ex-husband, an ophthalmologist, with a fatal disease, while the most adorable of the group, the slim and youthful college professor Eva (Miou-Miou), becomes involved with a student who is not only twenty-five years her junior but is the son of her best friend.
Galvao succeeds admirably in compressing all five of these stories into a standard film length. "Elles," as the movie is called in French, might recall Pedro Almodovar's "All About My Mother," except that Galvao's film is more accessible, dealing with reasonably conventional, professionally successful people who are walking a thin line between independence and romance. The movie has a feel-good ending without seeming contrived in the slightest, as these women balance professional identities with sexual involvements, however neurotic and unstable the latter may be. To my eyes, Miou-Miou is the most pleasant on the eyes and has the most heartening personality, so that her affair with young Luis (Morgan Perez) is the most absorbing. The one scene depicting a fairly overt sexual encounter between them is the most believable and heartwarming, particularly when contrasted with the promiscuous Branca's fully clothed, sordid-looking liaison with a fellow actor (where she is caught by her flustered, drug-addicted daughter Rita).
"Women" will benefit the young in the audience by showing them there really isn't all that much difference between the loves their experience in their own time and what they might come to expect two decades later. For those in their middle years who may have lost hope for real change, "Women" offers confidence and conviction. I wish only that Galvao, a Portuguese writer-director filming in Lisbon, could have taken advantage of actors in his own country, using his own language, rather than fall back on a dependence on the usual Francophile audiences.
Not Rated. Running Time: 97 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews