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Blindness' is a well-acted look at sex and a city in New Jersey The
Boston Globe |
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Carrie
Bradshaw and her "Sex and the City" girls are looking for love
in Manhattan. But until they find it, there are foolish men to laugh at,
friends to meet over breakfast, and, most important, particularly during
the hard times, very fabulous purses to clutch. Sunday
night at 9:30, right after "Sex and the City," HBO is premiering
a beautifully acted movie whose view of lonely women is far less glamorized.
Called "Hysterical Blindness," it crosses over to working-class
New Jersey and the lives of women who will never cram their feet into
a pair of Manolo Blahniks. Set in the late 1980s - cue the Bruce - it's
an unblinking look at the sort of bar-stool desperation for a man that's
never a pretty sight, even on the face of a beauty such as Uma Thurman.
"Hysterical Blindness" is based on the play by Laura Cahill,
who wrote this adaptation. You can tell it was originally a theater piece,
in the script's home-decoration metaphors and the way the camera gazes
steadily at the characters, letting their contradictions emerge through
the performances. It's not a static or claustrophobic movie, as it tours
blue-collar Bayonne, but it's more interested in set pieces and revelatory
dialogue than plot twists. The
story revolves around Thurman's Debby, who is approaching 30 and wants
to be engaged like the girls she knew in high school. She and single-mother
friend Beth (Juliette Lewis) are regulars at Ollie's, a bar where they
seem to have had one-night-stands with all of the guys hanging at the
pool table. One night, Debby's imagination fastens onto a quiet newcomer
with "Patrick Swayze eyes," as she puts it. She's shy, and her
efforts to lure him into a date, exclaiming "I'm exactly like that"
at everything he says, are painfully obvious. But she has her way, they
sleep together, and soon she mistakenly believes she's in the middle of
a blossoming love affair. His home is unkempt and bare, but she can only
see its design possibilities. Thurman
is remarkable. She makes every ache of Debby's heart palpable, without
ever resorting to sentimentality. Her Debby is in an impossible position
- overwhelmed by the wish for a man, and yet completely terrified of men.
It's a universal conflict, one that Carrie on "Sex and the City"
lives out with more self-awareness, and Thurman captures it perfectly.
Her performance is physical, too, as the drunken Debby dances alone in
front of the pool table, trying to convince herself she's comfortable
in her own skin. Watching her writhe, you realize that Debby has a long
journey of self-discovery ahead of her. Obviously,
pathos runs throughout "Hysterical Blindness," but director
Mira Nair ("Monsoon Wedding") does an expert job of adding needed
comic flourishes. The scenes between Lewis and Thurman are priceless,
as they yell "Oh, my God!" and make a pact about their drink
orders before sitting at the bar. Visually, they are amusing specimens
of bad taste circa 1987: tacky makeup, oversized earrings, massive hair,
butterfly clips, and an addiction to hairspray. And their exaggerated
New Jersey accents top it all off. The actresses are a great team as women
growing impatient with their high-school-level knowledge of each other
- best friends forever until a cute guy walks by. In
an important subplot, Debby's misery is compounded when her mother (Gena
Rowlands) falls in love with a man (Ben Gazzara) she met at the diner
where she waitresses. As the older couple, Rowlands and Gazzara(both John
Cassavetes faces) provide a still center around which Debby flounders.
They project compassion and dignity, qualities Debby is only just beginning
to recognize. Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com
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