Couch Festival
Chicks Who Need A Lot of Therapy
By Jennifer Hearne

This month I'm gearing up for the inevitable New Year's A.D.D. - after loads of false starts and good intentions, there's sure to be very little real change.  I've had the strange premonition that come February 15th, I'll have misplaced my expensive new workout gear and slipped back into my old ways, parked on the couch in a Motorhead shirt, bottle of Newcastle ale in hand, still trying to properly sync up classic heavy metal albums with scenes from The Return of the King. 

Nope, I'm not an alcoholic or a manic depressive but I do seem to have a problem with fucked up women in film - I say I'll give them up but I just can't! 

Last month's resolution should have been to cross over to the sunnier side of the street. But when you're more interested in Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under The Influence than Clean Sweep or the STYLE channel, something's got to give. So this February I invite you to join me on the couch for a Valentine's indulgence: Chicks Who Need A Lot Of Therapy.  Check your self help books at the door; trade in your popcorn for booze, cigarettes, stilettos and all those Psych 101 textbooks you've never thrown out, and thrill vicariously through a host of hotties so haunted they'll make your vices look like quirks.
 
We begin with the woman who utters the woefully cryptic lines "Damaged people are dangerous.  They know they can survive."  And with that, director Louis Malle foreshadows the ruin of any man who gets too close to Anna Barton, one of the most stylish femme fatales of all time, in Damage.  After her brother's suicide, Anna is damned to her fate (as a danger to the men she loves), nevertheless it doesn't stop her reckless involvement with the father of her fiancé.  The fallout in Damage makes for one of the clearest citings of inevitable doom in film history.

Next, we leave Audrey Hepburn (and her slender simplicity) to the lightweights.  Literally.  Heavyweights who like their women curvy and complicated will love Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 and Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits, two features famous for their own emotional baggage.  Butterfield 8 is the service you dial when you need to reach Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wondrous, a brick house of a bad girl who doesn't realize that her love of the night life is fueled by a repressed childhood violation. Taylor's disdain for this character (she called her "trashy") led her to play Gloria with a seething disgust so electric it won her a nomination for Best Actress at the 1960 Academy Awards. Taylor won the Oscar that year but because she had recently been hospitalized, the award was later derided as "the sympathy Oscar."  Taylor's personal life was also on trial when she became the catalyst for the split between Eddie Fisher and Hollywood good girl Debbie Reynolds. Adding insult to injury, Fisher's character in Butterfield 8 has to defend his friendship with Gloria to his Debbie Reynolds look-alike girlfriend.  The notoriety of Butterfield 8 both onscreen and off make it a must-have for fans who can't get enough legendary Liz drama.      

1961's The Misfits has a legacy all its own.  Arthur Miller penned The Misfits to help his wife shed her sex symbol status and blossom into a legitimate dramatic artist.  Surrounding herself with director John Huston and A-List co-stars Montgomery Clift (drawing upon his real life disfigurement to play an addled rodeo rider) and Clark Gable (powerful in his final film role - he died less than two weeks after filming), all playing misfit losers at the end of their rope, the role of Roslyn Tabor, a lonely divorcee who tires of always ending up "right back where I started," should have garnered Monroe an Oscar nomination; today however, it stands as an eerie premonition that most of it's cast were not long for this world. Upon reaching her breaking point, Monroe's character is required to have a screaming fit in the desert, a film moment that caused Huston to speculate that Monroe had crossed the line into her own reality.  Marilyn was furious with Miller for penning a role that hit so close to home and what should have been Miller's valentine to his wife became the final act in a marriage that had disintegrated long before the film wrapped. A strange divergence now separates the hardcore music crowd sporting Misfits band shirts (many unaware that front man and Marilyn Monroe fan Glen Danzig owes a debt of gratitude to Miller for inspiring this legendary band name) and the film buffs so taken with Monroe's final film.  
 
The obligatory prostitutes make their entrance in four fine performances that smack of complex realism.  Jane Fonda won the Best Actress Oscar for Klute, nailing her role as Bree Daniels, a New York call girl trying to get out of the game before she is murdered by a former john who blames her for triggering his wicked imagination.  Unlike Bree, who seeks daytime work as an actress, Elisabeth Shue's Sera is a vulnerable full time street walker losing her rescue fantasy as she realizes she can't buy time for her suicidal lover in Leaving Las Vegas.  In 1987's Nuts, Barbra Streisand is profoundly convincing as a high class call girl fighting to prove her sanity - the revelation of the childhood secret that has driven her "nuts" might seem tame by today's standards but for it's time, Nuts was triumphant.  And as Severine, Catherine Deneuve, the girl of the day or Belle de Jour, delivers a memorable, sensual portrayal of a bored housewife who cannot find sexual satisfaction unless she is paid for it.  
 
Fans who enjoyed Rhett Butler's pursuit of Scarlett O' Hara should hasten to view Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren in Marnie.  Novice zoologist Mark Rutland (Connery) catches "something really wild" when he endeavors to tame and train kleptomaniac Marnie.  Fans of Hitchcock are divided on the merits of Marnie; indeed there are moments so maudlin they make you wince, but this film was emotionally progressive for it's time and fascinating in Hitchcock's insistence that his audience emerge sympathetic to what Mark Rutland discovers about our title character's criminal mind.  
 
Filmdom abounds with chicks in the looney bin and my favorite this month is not Sybil or The Three Faces of Eve.  It is Jean Seberg as Lilith.  While not the best film of its genre, Lilith is worth a peek especially for the sublime Seberg and performances by Warren Beatty as a smitten therapist and Peter Fonda as an interested inmate who will become caught in Lilith's mysterious web.  In keeping loosely with our theme, Gwyneth Paltrow's portrayal of Sylvia Plath in Sylvia also gets a nod this month, but a less than glowing recommendation.
 
In the "chicks with major issues" genre we have a formidable selection.  Leading the toxic mom category, Carrie White makes her debut as a doomed telepathic teenager who might have had a chance if zealot Mom had not stabbed her in the back (literally).  A toxic dad whittles away at his family's self esteem in Muriel’s Wedding until title character Muriel Heslop accepts herself in time to have the last laugh.

Jennifer Jason Leigh was effectively disturbing in Single White Female, but it is her performance as Selena St. George in Dolores Claiborne that requires more analysis.  Chock full of denial and repression, Selena tells Dolores, "Bad patch?  I had a fucking nervous breakdown, Mother!" to which Dolores insists, "You can't have one of those things and still get accepted to Vassar..." 

A woman who might want to trade in her immaculate living room couch for that of her psychiatrists' is Serial Mom, Beverly Sutphin.  One of the more mainstream of John Waters’ anti-heroines, Serial Mom defiles the American dream: she cooks, cleans and compulsively kills only those she deems offensive.
  
Last but not least, Naomi Watts is startling in 21 Grams, a film that showcases a Herculean dramatic achievement by Watts in her portrayal of a former drug addict drowning in grief and vulnerability after the very things that kept her sober, her husband and children, are killed by a hit and run driver.
 

Next, a sobriety test that has nothing to do with drugs or alcohol.  In Frances, Sophie’s Choice and The Magdalene Sisters, we meet women who are completely undeserving of their incarceration.  Based on factual events, these films are more than sobering; they're like buckets of cold water poured over your head.  Why partake of such searing reality?  Because remembering women of the modern world who have lost their freedom tends to put your own problems into immediate perspective.

Finally, in the "chicks who scare the hell out of us" category, Susannah York in Images, Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, and Barbara Hershey in The Entity offer women whose realities are so skewed it's chilling.  These are the entries you definitely must watch with a few friends (real or imaginary, it's up to you...).
 
Compiling a quintessential list of crazy chicks is admittedly a strange way to settle into your new year, but if the post holiday blues have still got you down, you might just need the hair of the dog that bit you.  Besides, crazy people in film can be a thousand times more tolerable than reruns of reality TV (particularly if you're among the very Jung at heart!).

So if you find yourself hung over by failed resolutions and relentless winter weather, my advice is to slip into something Freudian and curl up with your own couch festival. 

Our session comes to an end with the promise to lighten up in March, when Cupid works overtime to bring us some very inspired characters enjoying what feels to them like No Ordinary Love...

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