"Everything Relative" A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL June 14, 1997 A film that was first shown in the Tampa Bay area last fall at the Pride Film Festival--Sharon Pollack's debut feature film called "Everything's Relative"--has come back at both the Beach Theater and at the Pridefest Film Festival that's going on all this week in Sarasota. The first time I saw this film, at the Festival, it didn't make much of an impression on me. In fact a couple of months ago when the film opened in Atlanta, someone who reads my reviews on the Internet sent me an e-mail to ask what I thought about it, because it had gotten a bad review from an Atlanta film critic. At first I didn't remember that I'd even seen this film until I was reminded of the plot line. And when I recalled it, my lingering impression was that it was unexceptional. However, in order to do this review, I saw the film again, and enjoyed it the second time immensely. Maybe in October I was just tired, or overdosed on lesbian films, or maybe it's because this time I knew what to expect and enjoyed the subtilties of the filmmaking rather than hoping for any great dramatic moments. This is a very leisurely, slow-paced film that gives itself the task of developing seven rather complex character studies and plot lines in less than two hours. It's kind of a combination of "The Big Chill" and "The Group" with the difference that all of the characters except one are lesbians. The seven featured characters had been close friends when they were students at Smith College in Northampton, MA, one of the most lesbian-friendly towns anywhere. Actually there had originally been eight of them but one died in an automobile accident in which her lover was at the wheel back in 1980. While many of them had formerly been lovers or had at least slept with one another in the old days, by the present time when they're in their thirties, only one couple remains from the original group. The others have gone their separate ways; one is a writer/performer, one a movie stuntwoman, one works at Planned Parenthood, one works for Lambda. The couple who has remained in Northampton are a therapist and a stockbroker who have just had a baby via artificial insemination. They decide to invite the whole group of friends back to celebrate their baby boy's bris and then spend a weekend together at a house on a lake where they used to go. During this weekend, their stories are revealed, old animosities and hurts come out, the ways in which adulthood has changed them and their lives and the differences in the political climate since the 1970s and early 1980s are explored. Everyone gets pretty much equal time, but the one relationship that seems to stand out is that between Maria and Kate (I think that's her name--it's a bit difficult to keep track and I didn't take notes) who had been lovers in college, but Kate was then an alcoholic and Maria, from a traditional Mexican American family, when she couldn't take it anymore, walked away from the relationship, got married and had children who she subsequently lost in a court battle with her husband when he found out she was having a lesbian affair with another woman. Both of them come to the weekend but with great misgivings about seeing one another again. Much of the film deals with how they react to seeing one another after all these years and how the issues between them get resolved. There's no point to giving a plot summary because the plot is not really the point here, the relationships are. The film seems to me to have been well cast, it's brimming with feminist ideas since the group members had been radical feminist activists and street theater performers in college and have retained their political views, if not so much their activism, after college. Even the rabbi who officiates at the bris is a woman (though Harvey Fierstein does a cameo as the one who actually does the cutting). The weekend seems to do them all a world of good and solidify their friendships and sense of being family for one another, so it's a kind of a low-key, realistic, feel good film with some nudity and some well-done love scenes. It should be entertaining for thirtysomething and above lesbians who can relate to these women and for younger generation lesbians who are interested in knowing what it was like to have been a lesbian a decade or more before their time. Other younger lesbians, however, may relate more to Candy, the 23-year-old municipal bond dealer whom Luce brings to the weekend as her date, but who goes back to New York by Saturday morning because she's so out of place in this company and doesn't understand what it was like to be a lesbian/feminist activist at the height of the Women's Liberation Movement. For the WMNF Women's Show, this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1997. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or reproduce this review without permission of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu.