"This is My Life"
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
                  On "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM
                        August 29, 1992

   "This is My Life" is a film that came and went in and out of
theaters so fast you probably missed it; I know I did.  It was
the victim of poor newspaper reviews and indifferent to
nonexistent promotion.  But my antennae told me that the problem
was not so much with the film but with the women filmmakers and
the male reviewers being on different wave lengths. Now that I've
seen it my suspicions have been confirmed.
   "This is My Life" is the work almost entirely of women
filmmakers--practically unheard of with a mainstream Hollywood
production.  It is based on a novel by a woman; it has a
screenplay by Nora and Delia Ephron; it was Nora Ephron's first
directorial effort; Carly Simon did the music, and it is about a
woman--er, well, whom it's about is a central issue of the film.
    Interspersed among the opening titles are some sequences with
voice over narration by a teenage girl who wants to make sure we
know that this film is about HER life (and maybe to a lesser
extent her little sister's) NOT her mother's.  Hence the title of
the film "This is my life."  But soon the voice of her mother
takes over the narration and she proclaims that no "This is MY
life."  And this tug-of-war over who is in the subject position
in this family, in this story, in this film is the heart of the
dramatic conflict; does a single divorced mother have to devote
herself to her children to the exclusion of striving for her own
dreams, ambitions, personal life?  Do children in such a family
have the right to the attention and care they think they
need/want from their mother even if providing that level of care
disadvantages the mother?  These are serious issues that probably
all single mothers go through; the film treats these issues in a
warm, funny, caring, and respectful way.
   Dottie Engel (played by Julie Kavner) is the mother in
question, raising her two daughters on the salary of a department
store cosmetics demonstrator who wields her microphone and her
New York Jewish wit to snare the customers.  Her routine had me
in stitches before the credits were through.  At night her two
daughters coach her by pretending to be tv talk show hosts.  When
she inherits a house she promptly sells it and moves the family
to Manhattan.  There she plays the stand-up comedy clubs and hits
paydirt when the number one agent (played oddly by Dan Akroyd)
sees her, likes her, and gets involved romantically with her.
She goes off to Hollywood and then to Las Vegas leaving the kids
at home with a string of less successful stand-up comics serving
as baby-sitters.  While Mother is pursuing her dream their lives
are changing too.  They go to meet their father who can barely
remember their names and the older daughter has her first
experience of love.
   Parts of the film don't work very well--the goofy baby-sitters
and the lumpen, kleenix-eating Dan Akroyd among them.  But other
characters and sequences are just wonderful: I was especially
tickled by the teenage boyfriend whose raging hormones
transfigure his face with adolescent longing and by a funny,
funny scene of the awkward first sexual encounter.
   Aha, maybe that's why the critics didn't like this film.  This
sex scene may provide us with a corollary to McAlister's Law
(which, in case you don't know, is that male critics pan every
film where a man gets hit in the groin).  The corollary is that
they also pan films in which a male inadvertently snaps himself
with a condom he's trying inexpertly to put on.  Both situations
have a high sympathetic ouch factor that leads to unsympathetic
reviews, perhaps.
    Anyway, those who aren't so bothered will probably enjoy this
film quite a lot.  Julie Kavner is a very gifted and funny woman
and this is a role perfectly suited to her talents.  If you can
find "This is My Life" at your video store (and be patient
because they don't have many copies) you'll want to rent it and
see what a good film Nora Ephron and company have made.

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