BEFORE: You see, I'm now reaping the rewards of re-organizing my proposed February line-up. Because Gena Rowlands carries over from "Hope Floats", and I've managed to put two films with very similar plotlines back-to-back, and this allows for greater compare/contrast possibilities, at least in theory.
THE PLOT: A woman's world is rocked when she discovers her husband is cheating on her.
AFTER: It's not just me, right? This is essentially the same film as "Hope Floats", though perhaps with a different resolution. Husband cheats on wife, wife separates from husband and moves in with parents to raise her precocious daughter. Oh, sure, there are a few subtle differences - like "Hope Floats" is set in Texas, and this one's set in...Georgia, is it? And in "Hope Floats" the central character is a photographer, and here she manages a stable of show-jumping horses. But the key, relationship-driven plot points are more or less the same.
According to this film, when a woman catches her husband cheating, should she:
a) ignore the situation, because you know, that's just how men are
b) violently throw him out of the house
c) try to poison him
d) turn the town's gossip mill against him to shame him into begging for forgiveness
e) open an honest dialogue with him, rationally discuss their future or the possibility of reconciliation, to determine if legal action is required
Trick question, it's all of the above, except for "e" - because how cinematic would THAT be? Seriously, though, I'm paying close attention this week to the way that spouses argue in films, because that's very relevant to the screenplay I'm writing - yeah, I've been there. I'd like to say that when I went through a divorce I took the high road via option "e", but it was a very emotional thing. I remember a lot of slammed doors, non-constructive fighting, name-calling even, plus some couples therapy.
I believe that if you're in a marriage, you should work to save it, fight to save it - but at some point, like after a year or two of fighting, I wondered what I was really fighting for. It turned out I was fighting to save something that no longer existed, at least not in the form that I had come to recognize. Sure, there was a chance that I could keep hanging on to it in some new form, but considering the circumstances and the attractions to other people involved, it would have been some form of open marriage, and that's not really a marriage at all, when you get right down to it - so I stopped fighting for it.
It turns out that time spent apart can really crystallize a situation - but it could go either way. It could make one or both people realize that they want to get back together, or it could make one or both people realize that they'd rather be apart. If both agree on this point, then the next move is clear, but if one wants to separate and one wants to get back together, they're still at an impasse. In this film the time apart does bring about one of the two outcomes, but again, your mileage may vary.
Also starring Julia Roberts (last seen in "August: Osage County"), Dennis Quaid (last seen in "The Words"), Robert Duvall (last seen in "The Paper"), Kyra Sedgwick, Brett Cullen, Muse Watson, Haley Aull, with an uncredited cameo by David Huddleston (last seen in "Smokey and the Bandit II").
RATING: 5 out of 10 cookbook recipes
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