The Women begins with Sylvia (Annette Bening) walking into Saks Fifth Avenue with her poodle, cooing, "Puppy, we have five minutes to shop on the first floor." After her five minutes shopping are up, she gets her nails done by manicurist Tanya.
Tanya immediately begins telling Sylvia a story about how she put her personal brand of nail polish on perfume spritzer girl, Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), and shortly afterwards Crystal began an affair with a wealthy married man. Sylvia doesn't pay much attention to the story until Tanya remembers the married man's name, who is her best friend Mary's husband, Stephen.
When Mary ends up with the same manicurist, she hears the story about her husband’s new girlfriend. Stunned, she tells her mother, Catherine (Candice Bergman) at lunch, and is alternately angry then surprised when her mother tells her to ignore the discretion, then informs Mary that she knows exactly how she's feeling. In one humorous moment, Mary says to her mom, "What do you think this is, some 1930's movie?"
The Women's All-Star Cast Includes Annette Bening, Candice Bergman, Meg Ryan
Mary decides to take her advice, so she takes a two-week vacation with her daughter, Molly, and Catherine, to give Stephen time to grow tired of Crystal. While he misses his Mary in her absence, his affair hasn’t ended, and a chance run-in at a lingerie store where Crystal is charging teddies to Stephen’s account rudely alerts Mary to this fact.
Up until this point, the 1939 and the updated The Women were still closely connected in plot direction. Their paths now clearly move in diverging courses, as the 2008 film turns towards a happy, politically correct direction, a course the original would’ve raised an unabashedly catty eye at and turned haughtily away.
1939 was a different time politically and socially for women. The Depression had hurt everyone, and many people were struggling to make ends meet. Women like Amelia Earhart and Babe Didrikson, though much admired for their pursuits in a “man’s” world, were not common. Most ordinary women turned to films to escape the difficulties they faced in their day-to-day lives.
The Women All About Escapism
The Women was one of those films ordinary women turned to for a diversion. The characters had everything that women of 1939 longed for - fabulous clothing, servants, leisurely trips and vacations to the Bahamas and Reno. During the Depression, most women dreamed about having money or at the least, being comfortable. The Women would’ve been the ideal film in which to escape.
Eva Mendes is beautiful and alluring, but she doesn’t have the bitchy sex appeal that made Joan Crawford so perfect as Crystal Allen. Meg Ryan’s Mary is sweet, but she lacks the determined and vulnerable nature that made Norma Shearing so likable. She was easier to relate to - a woman who had overcome her cross-eyed stare and physical flaws to become one of the biggest stars of the 30’s.
The Women is too similar to Sex and the City, the movie version of which had been released three months prior to The Women. Film-goers already have their fashionable, independent, love-challenged circle of friends in Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. The new and improved, female-empowered The Women, was just not original enough for anyone to care, despite the star-studded cast. The Women isn’t a terrible movie, by any means, but up against the original it never stood a chance.
Jennifer L Mashuga - I'm a Chicago-based freelance writer with a bachelor's degree in journalism. I've had my work published at www.StumpedMagazine.com, ...
