Blog Option #1

         The Women is a movie featuring a very prominent all female cast. The movie came out in 2008 and is an adaptation of a play set in the 1930’s by Clare Booth. The main character is Mary Heins played by Meg Ryan. Mary seemed to have the perfect life. She was married to a renowned Wall Street businessman, she balanced her job as a designer at her father’s company and she was mom to a thirteen-year-old girl. Mary had a core group of best friends (Annette Bening as Sylvie Fowler, Debra Messing as Edie Cohen and Jada Pinkett Smith as Alex Fisher), who were considered high society women that filled their time gossiping and partaking in a very luxurious dress and lifestyle. Everything seemed to going great for Mary until she finds out that her husband is cheating on her with Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), a promiscuous woman who works the perfume counter at a department store. This surprising discovery is what the rest of the film is centered around. Sylvie is Meg’s best friend since college and is the person that finds out first that Mary’s husband is cheating on her. She hesitates to tell Mary and so confides in her manicurist who ultimately ends up telling Mary one day after getting a manicure herself. Like all good friends they ban together to help Mary. However things get messy when in fear of losing her job as a top fashion editor, Sylvie tells a celebrity gossip columnist about Mary’s failing marriage in exchange for favor that will help her magazine. Upon finding out about Sylive’s betrayal Mary decides to end her relationship with Sylvie. At this point of the movie Mary decides to take control of her life. She gets a makeover, starts her own clothing design firm, and makes an effort to bond with her daughter more. She starts figuring out what she wants in life, how she can make things happen for herself, and ultimately learns from the parts she played in the cause of her own problems. By the end of the movie Mary is in the process of mending her relationship back together with Sylvie who has quit her job and potentially repairing her marriage with her husband but as a strong new woman.

           I had a hard time deciding if this movie passed the Bechdel Test. It wasn't surprising to me The Women did not to pass the test on the grounds it did fail to meet the main requirements that there is suppose to be a focus on something other than men and in a visual sense they dressed to represent their role (i.e sexualized home wrecker, flashy fashion mogul etc). And while the movie did start out as just another melodramatic comedy about a group of stereotypical gossipy women, I was surprised that in some aspects it did come very close to passing the test.  I realized as the movie continued you cannot help but become intrigued by each of these women’s lives. Although the movie does focus on Mary and her marriage problems each women has a very relatable storyline and they are all portrayed as having very successful careers, being wise, funny, and articulate. They also all seem to respond to situations and have feelings that I would characterize as "normal" for an average woman. This film is meant to be humorous and brutally honest, and while most of the time the women are planning revenge against each other and their conversations are centered around men it is not in a whining or desperate way. Overall I came to the conclusion that this movie did not did pass the Bechdel Test but it did a great job of showing the heartache and uniquely special triumphs of being a woman, proving that a movie can be entertaining and empowering without having men appear much in a film.