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Just Between Friends
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A
substitute gym teacher, Holly (Mary Tyler Moore), leads an aerobics class. One
of the students, Sandy (Christine Lahti), catches her eye, smiling and winking
as the lesson proceeds.
This
happens not to be a film about
lesbian relationships in the manner of John Sayles’ rightly forgotten Lianna (1983), or the wonderfully
intense Personal Best (1982).
Nonetheless,
the extraordinarily intense charge of even this innocent exchange reveals how
rarely and (usually) badly the topic of female friendship is handled in
mainstream cinema.
This
disarming, little-known movie is in the tradition of Terms of Endearment (1983) and Say
Anything … (1989). Focusing on the problem of how to square marriage, work
and emotional restlessness, it avoids a misogynistic emphasis on the supposed
neuroses of career women (unlike Broadcast News [1987]), and replaces it with an
exploration of the strengths and tensions of female bonding.
In
a gently Utopian way, writer-director Allan Burns (died January 2021, best
known for his contribution to TV series including The Munsters, Lou Grant, Rhoda and The Mary Tyler Moore Show) eschews the grosser complications that
the plot (both women are in love with the same man, Chip played by Ted Danson)
would usually entail.
It
imagines instead a world in which both female and male sensitivities overcome
the inevitable entanglements of the heart.
Moore
and Lahti are terrific, and the film is full of telling, truthful moments.
© Adrian Martin October 1990 |
