"Used People"
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
                  On "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM
                        January 23, 1993

     Earlier this week I went to see a preview of "Used People" the
new Shirley MacLaine/Marcello Mastroianni film which has been the
object of a major Hollywood hype campaign.  I wish I liked the film
more than I do.  It has lots of things you'd think I'd like: it was
directed by Beeban Kidron, a very talented young woman director who
previously did "Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit" and "Antonia &
Jane," and it's got more women's roles and good women actors in it
than all the other films that opened this week put together.  It
focuses on relationships and deals with some issues such as late
middle-age sexuality that don't often turn up in films.

   Briefly it is about a 60ish Jewish widow Pearl Berman in
Sunnyside, Queens (Shirley MacLaine) who is courted by an Italian
American Joe Meledandri (Marcello Mastroiani) starting at the
gathering in Pearl's apartment the day of her husband's funeral.
Much to the astonishment of her relatives (not to mention her own
astonishment) she spontaneously agrees to go out for coffee with
this stranger.  When the date comes Pearl has reverted to the
pinched, guarded, and life-denying demeanor that is her usual
personality.  What Joe tells her is that in 1946 he was tending
bar in his brother's bar and grill when Pearl's husband came in and
told him he was planning to walk out on her and their two small
daughters.  The reason is never made explicit but there are hints
that he was impotent and was pained by what this situation was
doing to Pearl.  Joe advised him not leave to but to go home and be
affectionate with Pearl--dance with her--which, we know from the
opening sequence, he did.  What we also learn is that that night
Joe stood looking up at the window and watched as his advice was
taken and the marriage saved.  And that he fell in love with Pearl.

Now it's 1969, 23 years later, and Pearl's a widow, so he feels he
has no time to lose in starting his courtship.   Surrounding Pearl
are her two grown, divorced, troubled daughters (played by Kathy
Bates and Marcia Gay Harden) and their various kids, her mother
(Jessica Tandy), her mother's best friend Becky (Sylvia Sidney) and
a bevy of other noisy relatives.  Joe has a similar entourage
including an old Sicilian mother and modern American children,
grandchildren and in-laws.  Neither side thinks much of this
budding romance and the tensions come to a head at a hilarious
Italian feast Joe cooks for both families that ends in a shouting
match.  There are side plots involving Pearl's family members and
you never doubt that all will be happily resoved as Joe's (make
that Marcello's) enormous charm works on Pearl and brings her out
of her decades-long denial of her own desires.  There is one
wonderful scene when she blows up at her daughter Bibby's constant
complaining and tells her what the depth of her own rage would be
at the life she has had to endure if she ever once let that rage
emerge; it would be so enormous as to blow Sunnyside, to blow
Queens, right off the map.

    So the actors are good, the relationships portrayed with care
and understanding.  (MacLaine has been quoted as saying that as a
director Kidron was "more emotionally available" than any male
director she'd ever worked with.)  So why don't I like this film
more?  I think the problem is Todd Graff's screenplay and the
strong sense I have that the producers set about to make this
another "Moonstruck" and to make a lot of money.  It's not Carroll
Gardens in Brooklyn, it's Sunnyside in Queens; there are not just
Italian ethnic characters but Jewish as well (and I never for a
minute found either MacLaine or Tandy convincing as Jewish
mothers); there is looney but endearing behavior all around; there
are big luminous shots of the full moon.  It's just all too
derivative and calculated for my taste.  It's mildly fun, mildly
insightful, but not nearly as interesting as Beeban Kidron's
earlier, non-Hollywood films.  If you see it you'll be entertained
but if you don't you haven't missed a cinematic landmark.

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