As a guy, I had not much interest in this movie, but I watched it on streaming with my wife. Even she was not too impressed. Aside from Kidman's prosthetic nose, I was puzzled by Laura's story. Her character is the type of woman who could turn every man into a misogynist. Described as a shy kid by her husband Dan, who was smitten with her from an early age, Laura seems like an enigma.
Dan fought in WWII, dreaming of returning home to a happy family life, so he marries Laura. He's a good provider, they live in a nice house, and have enough cash to afford a comfortable lifestyle, yet Laura is not "happy." In fact, she's so unhappy she's planning to end her life, even while heavily pregnant (questionable, though it's her own right). The problem is, what makes her life so miserable? Having plenty of cash? A loving husband? A cute, adoring child? The hint is she was probably a closet lesbian. Fine, feel free to come out, but to describe her life as "Death" (at the end) is ungrateful at best, crazily self-centered and hyperbolically untrue at worst.
It doesn't help that Moore plays Laura like a spaced-out zombie. Her actions throughout the day make little sense and certainly elicited no sympathy from me. The rest of the film, focusing on Clarissa, an out-of-the-closet lesbian, and Ms. Woolf, whose sexual orientation is ambiguous, is tedious. The women move at a snail's pace, are suitably aggravated for reasons impossible to understand, cry a little, and then calm down. That's it, all set to a glacial score by Philip Glass.
Dan fought in WWII, dreaming of returning home to a happy family life, so he marries Laura. He's a good provider, they live in a nice house, and have enough cash to afford a comfortable lifestyle, yet Laura is not "happy." In fact, she's so unhappy she's planning to end her life, even while heavily pregnant (questionable, though it's her own right). The problem is, what makes her life so miserable? Having plenty of cash? A loving husband? A cute, adoring child? The hint is she was probably a closet lesbian. Fine, feel free to come out, but to describe her life as "Death" (at the end) is ungrateful at best, crazily self-centered and hyperbolically untrue at worst.
It doesn't help that Moore plays Laura like a spaced-out zombie. Her actions throughout the day make little sense and certainly elicited no sympathy from me. The rest of the film, focusing on Clarissa, an out-of-the-closet lesbian, and Ms. Woolf, whose sexual orientation is ambiguous, is tedious. The women move at a snail's pace, are suitably aggravated for reasons impossible to understand, cry a little, and then calm down. That's it, all set to a glacial score by Philip Glass.
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