Thelma and Louise
                 Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
              For The Women's Show, WMNF-FM, Tampa, FL

   Feminists!  If you don't go see another film all year, you're
going to want to see "Thelma and Louise."  It is, wonder of
wonders, a genuine Hollywood feminist film.  Don't be fooled as I
was, by the previews into expecting a mindless car chase
comedy--a sort of Bert Reynolds buddy film with women instead of
men.  "Thelma and Louise" is a very entertaining female buddy film,
it is one long car chase, and it does have delicious moments of
humor, but it's much more than that.  It's also a philosophical
film, one that existentialist feminist Simone de Beauvoir would
love, for it depicts two ordinary women living under patriarchal
domination in small-town Arkansas who actually succeed in
achieving their liberation.  I don't know anything about
screenwriter Callie Khouri but she and with director Ridley Scott
have created a remarkable existentialist feminist film from, of
all places, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

      That this is not just a mindless comedy becomes very clear
early in the film.  On their way to a weekend in the mountains,
Thelma, a middle-class housewife, and Louise, her waitress
friend, stop at a Western bar to have a little fun. Thelma is
nearly raped and Louise, in rescuing her, shoots and kills the
man who did it.  Instinctively they run while they try to
comprehend what happened and figure out what to do.  One of the
things they know they can't do is turn themselves in and expect
fair treatment from the criminal justice system, since Thelma had
been flirting and dancing with the guy all evening.  They know
that nearly everyone would say that what happened to her is her
own fault.  Even Louise is tempted to think that for a minute,
but she thinks about it and she knows better.  One of the many
glories of this film is the skill with which both Susan Sarandon
who plays Louise and Geena Davis who plays Thelma home in
unerringly on the emotional truth of these women.  Both
characters are fully realized, totally believable human beings
with all the weaknesses and quirks and strengths and beauty they
embody.

        As their situation vis-a-vis the law gets progressively
worse and their plans for getting money and crossing the Mexican
border go awry, both women, but especially Thelma, undergo
enormous change.  As they become outlaws they are outside not
only the civil laws but the Laws of the Father as well and they
begin to discover and to express their own potential, their own
feelings, their own strength, and to appreciate and support one
another.  Thelma has a fling with another cowboy (this time
consensual) and she discovers real sexual pleasure for the first
time. She also discovers she has a knack for armed robbery and
she does a nifty job of locking a policeman in his trunk
(thoughtfully having Louise shoot out the radio and shoot in a
few air holes so he can breathe).
          When they have nothing at all left to lose, when they
realize that they not only cannot but do not want to go back to
their earlier lives, they are freed to speak with their own
voices. Several times in the film they encounter a trucker who
plagues them with gross gestures and obscene comments.  Finally
they decide to confront him.  Every woman who has ever had to
endure such treatment (and what woman hasn't?) will simply love
Louise and Thelma's revenge on this pig.
        Can such overt flaunting of patriarchal values be
tolerated in a Hollywood film?  Will they be allowed to live
happily ever after in Mexico?  No, but to have done so would have
been to trivialize the character and the film.  What happens is
even more extraordinary for a mainstream American film. These
two ordinary women who have turned out to be so very remarkable
achieve liberation of a much more profound sort. They achieve
what the existentialist philosophers call transcendence. Having
once experienced what it is to make their own choices, speak with
their own voices, and take responsibility for their own actions,
they are unwilling to relinquish that freedom. And they choose
freely and with full awareness of the meaning of their choice not
to relinquish it.  It is an extraordinary resolution that
ennobles Thelma and Louise--the characters and the film.  And it
is a stinging indictment of this society that the choice they
make is the sane and reasonable one.

         For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister
on Women and Film.