MovieTime

Review

by Julie Rigg

This is a remake of Clare Booth Luce's 1936 stage play about a group of wealthy women who try to support one of their number who loses her husband to a scheming young woman selling perfume at Saks.

Booth Luce, who was a journalist and a feminist as well as marrying Time Life publisher Henry Luce, was satirising the lives of the wealthy ladies who lunch she saw around her.

The play was notable for its bitchy dialogue, for its settings in beauty salons and restaurants, and for the fact that no men at all were seen, though discussion revolved around absent or straying husbands.

It's been a great favourite down the years, revived many times on stage, and there's a sparkling l939 version directed by George Cukor as a screwball comedy. But I fear contemporary feminism has changed too many values, and the latest attempts to update the screenplay comes across as phoney and synthetic.

Meg Ryan, lips so swollen with collagen she seems to have some kind of allergic affliction, plays Mary, a woman who is mother, wife and fashion designer. Annette Bening plays her career-driven best friend, Sylvie, and Eva Mendez plays Crystal, the perfume counter girl on the make.

I'm afraid I could neither laugh at, nor take seriously, most of this movie. The exchanges which seemed sparkling back in l939 now seem just brittle, and don't seem to mesh with the women's magazine post-feminist updates about getting on with life, valuing yourself and bonding with your sisters. I must say, though, Eva Mendez is splendidly venal and voluptuous in a teddy. I guess she was in some other movie.

Director: Diane English
Cast: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Bette Midler and Candice Bergen
Producer: Diane English, Mick Jagger, Bill Johnson, Victoria Pearman
Script: Diane English (play by Clare Boothe Luce)
Cinematographer: Anastas N. Michos
Editor: Tia Nolan
Music: Mark Isham
Running time: 114
Australian distributor: Hopscotch
Language: English
Classification: PG