"Leaving Normal"
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
                  On "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM
                        October 24, 1992

The new theatrical releases this week don't offer anything that
seems to be of special interest to feminists, so I've turned once
again to the video store to catch up on one that I missed earlier
in the year, "Leaving Normal."  This one got blown off by critics
as an inferior "Thelma and Louise" copycat (which it isn't) and
died at the box office.  I found it, on the other hand, a really
interesting psychological study of two women with horrible pasts
and big problems and one of the most decidedly woman-loving films
ever to come out of mainstream Hollywood.  It really does leave
normal Hollywood plotting behind in the sense that the happy ending
comes not when the sensitive young truck driver tracks down and
comes to take Marianne away, but when she declines to go with him
and is reunited with her friend Darcy.  Decidedly not normal in
Hollywood, but great news for feminists or anyone who doesn't make
the knee-jerk presumption that heterosexual romance always takes
priority over female friendship.
    
The two main characters in this film Marianne (played by Meg
Tilly) and Darch (played by Christine Lahti) are really interesting
people with complex and difficult histories that we as viewers of
the film gradually learn.  We first encounter Marianne on her way
to Normal (Normal, Wyoming, that is) to marry Curtis Johnson,
someone she hardly knows, but we know from the scenes under the
credits that she has had an unhappy and rootless childhood going
from place to place and this seems to be just another chapter in
her anchorless life.  It is, as it turns out, a brief chapter
because when Curtis slugs her in the mouth for no good reason she
at least has the ego strength to get out of there immediately if
only to wander around the town at midnight wondering what to do.
    
Darcy is a cocktail waitress at a bar in Normal who's managed
to have an affair with her best friend's husband thereby blowing
that friendship and her last reason for staying in Normal.  So
she's off to Alaska from whence she came 18 years before when she
abandoned her husband and infant daughter.  The husband is dead and
she is the owner (or so she thinks) of a house there, though her
real motivation for going back is to try to find the daughter she
left behind when she was 20.  On her way to her car she encounters
the distraught Marianne, asks her what's wrong, comforts her when
she dissolves into sobs, and ends up starting her trip to Alaska
with an little detour to take Marianne to her sister's in Portland.
When the life that her sister and brother-in-law proffer seems too
impossibly restrictive she signs on for Alaska with Darcy and
they're on their way.
   
Needless to say they have their difficulties on the way and meet
some pretty interesting characters including another woman called
"66" whom unkind truckers call "266" refering to her weight.  She
joins them briefly on their journey but encounters a Canadian man
who thinks fat is beautiful and stays behind with him.  Marianne
and Darcy inherit 66's car and travel trailer and they continue
their journey gradually discovering one another's demons and
deepening their friendship as they approach their goal.
    
When they arrive things do not turn out at all as expected.  I
won't reveal the rest of the plot but I did think that the
portrayals of these women were especially astute.  Christine Lahti,
in particular, could not have been better as the outwardly tough
and cynical Darcy.
    
So if you want to rent a video that has women and women's
friendship as it main focus, has strong acting, and defies some of
the most hallowed conventions of "normal" Hollywood, I recommend
"Leaving Normal."
    
For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on
Women and Film.