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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

In "The Horse Whisperer" (1998), the stunningly handsome cowboy Robert Redford heals a horse that was hurt in a road accident but also wants to heal a wife who came to him for help -- who, alas, gets no love or support from her husband but gets it from Robert Redford. In "Waitress," the protagonist Jena is a poor waitress who gets involved with a handsome (but married) doctor. The doctor has soap opera good looks and is played by an actor who has actually been in them. Hubby is paunchy and a sexual dud and depicted as over-the-top abusive.

"Little Children" (2006) featured a character Sarah Pierce, played by the seductive Kate Winset (the starlet of Titanic fame), who was cheating on her Internet-pornography-obsessed geeky husband who no longer found her attractive. The stud she was with was also cheating on his wife, but his caring spouse was gorgeous and only had minor flaws. Sarah joins a book club and discusses "Madame Bovary" (1856), a novel by Gustave Flaubert featuring (you guessed it) a wife who has an adulterous affair. During one of the book club meetings, one of the movies minor characters (Mary Ann) who knows of Sarah's extra-marital affair, criticizes Madame Bovary's adultery as that of a "slut" in a way that makes Mary Ann seem like a simplex suburban shrew; Sarah defends Madam Bovary's adultery in a way that gives Sarah a carpe diem type of urbanity. One of the three academy award nominations for "Little Children" was for its writing, and the movie was based on a best-selling book.

In "Bridges of Madison County" (1995), an alluring Italian War bride played by Meryl Streep falls in love with a photographer played by Clint Eastwood. The husband is a caring guy who "is a good provider" but nothing a woman can get hot about. Not only was the film successful, the movie it was based on was one of the best-selling books of the 20th century, with 50 million copies sold worldwide. Adultery provides women with romantic entertainment.

Apparently this is not an English-speaking phenomenon alone -- regarding "The Bridge" (1999), one reviewer writes, "Nobody does an adultery film quite the way the French do it."

I guess he is right -- "Lady Chatterley" (2006), a French film based on the 1928 DH Lawrence novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover," won all types of French film awards. An aristocrat whose husband is paralyzed during war, Lady Chatterley cheats with a gamekeeper. The trailer describes the film as "a daring story of sexual discovery" in which the protagonist "defied convention." Cheating on your husband is a "powerful story of passion, rebellion and love." It is sophisticated. It is an artistic masterpiece.

It's funny, though. These "movie(s) that leaves you feeling good," as A.O. Scott of The New York Times described "Waitress," never include a handsome but uxorious husband who is brow-beaten by a cold, overweight virago, who is his wife, as he gathers the "courage" to luxuriate in a bubble-filled candlelit bathtub with a gorgeous (but sophisticated) woman who understands his soul. When a guy commits adultery, he is apt to be portrayed as some mid-life crisis lecher chasing high school cheerleaders, as in "American Beauty" (1999).

"Waitress" relied on every stereotype of domestic violence in the book. Although the wife is being physically abused by her husband, she does not have enough money to leave because the husband keeps taking her money. The part that is supposed to make you "feel good" is when she gathers the courage to tell her husband that she wants a divorce, literally seconds after her baby was born. The father, then enraged, gets escorted from the emergency room, never to be seen again. Boy that's a knee slapper.

Jena runs into money as the soon-to-die owner (played by Andy Griffith) bequeaths her money, because women who have the courage to leave their husbands should always become financially better off for it. Jena buys the drab diner where she worked, holding her child and singing beautiful songs to her, with the father out of the picture at last. Jena will not leave for the doctor, who is cheating on his wife, because Jena learns that the doctor's wife is actually loving, trusting and supportive.

What's the message here? Man: bad. Woman: good. Female adultery: romantic, titillating, fulfilling and sophisticated.

Rinaldo Del Gallo III of Pittsfield is a lawyer, columnist and longtime spokesman for the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition.