BEFORE: Was out at trivia last night - after some disputes with the management of the venue over what constitutes a cover charge, there's now another Manhattan club I'm no longer allowed in. Seems to me that any beers I buy at the bar should be applied to my minimum, but the management disagreed and wanted me to spend another $15 at the table, and I refused. So I'd rather get my beer from a bartender, why should I be penalized for that? I met the cover charge, I just didn't order from the waitress, and she got all hacked off. The manager eventually conceded, but others who ordered from the bar weren't so lucky. Don't you just love arbitrary rules?
Keeping the chain alive - this time Winona Ryder carries over from "The Dilemma". I taped this off cable to put on the DVD with "Little Women".
THE PLOT: A bride-to-be hears tales of romance and sorrow from her elders as they construct a quilt.
AFTER: There's tragedy in every life, so you don't necessarily have to treat these as tales of tragedy, merely tales of life. Since this is a gyno-centric film many of the tales focus on the infidelity of men, which seems only fair since last night's film focused on the infidelity of a woman. Oh wait, the framing tale here concerns female infidelity, but since they imply that her fiancé also might be cheating I guess it's OK. Hmm, no, still not OK.
I can see the obvious metaphor they were going for here - we're all just squares in the grand quilt of life, or something about how all of the different experiences of women come together in the big design. How ironic that the pieces of the story didn't really come together for me to form a coherent whole.
I'm more drawn to the other, less obvious metaphor - Winona Ryder plays a wannabe writer (thankfully not writing the tale that will become this very film) who can't seem to complete her thesis, since she keeps changing her idea. A freak wind gust disperses her pages (because she's some kind of retro technophobe who prefers not to use a computer - this is EXACTLY why computers are better) and she has to decide whether to gather up her old pages and patch together the old thesis, or start a new idea. At the same time, she's trying to decide whether to fix the old relationship, or concentrate on the new one she's started with a hunky farmhand. Newsflash - it's work either way.
The flashback stories all represent some form of surrender - not giving up, exactly, but conceding that some men are cheaters, or are looking for a way out, or in one case, are all too mortal. If there's any proper take-away here, it's that all relationships require work, at least the ones worth fighting for.
Also starring Ellen Burstyn (last seen in "W."), Anne Bancroft (last seen in "Honeymoon in Vegas"), Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "About Schmidt"), Alfre Woodard (last seen in "Blue Chips"), Kate Nelligan, Maya Angelou, Rip Torn (last seen in "Marie Antoinette"), with cameos from Kate Capshaw, Esther Rolle, Jared Leto, Samantha Mathis (last seen in "Little Women"), Claire Danes (ditto), Holland Taylor, Mykelti Williamson.
RATING: 3 out of 10 strawberries
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