"Now and Then" A film review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL October 28, 1995 Women filmmakers seem to be working a lot in Hollywood these days, and are turning out a number of films with virtually all-women casts. Two weeksks ago I reviewed with disappointment one such '90s women's film, "How to Make an American Quilt.' Today's film, "Now and Then" was directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, written by Marlene King, and produced by Suzanne Todd and Demi Moore. (This is the second vaguely feminist film Demi Moore has had a hand in producing, the first was 'Mortal Thoughts" of a few years back. Though her feminism doesn't stop her from acting in misogynist junk like "Disclosure.") Not only does this film have women in key executive positions, it has the largest number of women I've ever seen on the production crew of a mainstream Hollywood film. Clearly a conscious effort has been made to employ women filmmakers. The result, "Now and Then," I liked considerably better than I liked "American Quilt." It, too, is a film that relies on the flashback to an earlier time to tell its story, which is essentially a coming-of-age tale of four girls who were twelve years old in Shelby, IN. in 1970. During the titles the identities of the characters "then and now" are made clear as the camera pans an old photograph and the current tools of the trades of the four adult women. And this time the actors chosen to play the roles looked enough alike that we can almost believe they had grown up to become the people they did (though no one ever seems to pull that trick off as well as Jane Campion did in "Angel at My Table.") This is a film with a fairly simple (you might even say contrived) plot that stands or falls on the writer/director/actors' abilities to create believable and emotionally truthful character studies of these people. In 1970 the four girls had sworn a pact to be there for each other their whole lives, no matter what. Now, Chrissy (Rita Wilson) is about to have her first child. Roberta, her gynecologist (Rosie O'Donnell) still lives in Shelby but the other two friends, Hollywood star Tina Terrell (Melanie Griffith) and writer Samantha Albertson (Demi Moore) have to travel to Indiana to be there for the event. It is Samantha, the writer, who narrates the flashback to the summer of 1970, when they were just on the brink of the changes that adolescence brings and when they provided a much needed support network for oneanother. What hooked me into this film was the sense I remember from my own twelfth year of preteen adventurousness and invention, the thrill of trying to solve a mystery and of being sufficiently capable and intelligent to pursue your goals until you got what you were after. It's the last moment before you end up trimming your sails to conform to teenage gender norms and it's an exhilarating time. All that is captured beautifully by the young actors who play these parts. Roberta (Christina Ricci) has been raised by her father and three older brothers since her mother died a few years earlier and she's fearless in taking on anyone who tells her she can't do something "because she's a girl" but she is still grieving the loss of her mother; Samantha (Gaby Hoffman) is going through her parents' separation and divorce; Teeny (Thora Birch) is a lonely only-child of socialite parents who pay little attention to her; and Chrissy (Ashleigh Aston More) is, then as now, the most conventional and least sophisticated one of the bunch, but a good enough sort. Their adventures over the summer involve them in projects to raise money to build a tree house; trying to identify the "Dear Johnny" of a headstone they find in the cemetary and find out how he died; fighting with "the Wormers" a group of brothers as antagonistic to girls as they are to boys; and making the the declaration of eternal friendship that is already being subjected to the strains of growing up when summer ends. The best thing about this film is the superb performances of the four young actors; they are quite a bit better than those of the adult stars whose story we return to only at the very end of the film and who are hampered by the fact that we've spent to much time learningto know them as twelve-year-olds that there's no time left in a standard length movie to get to know them as adults. Still, this will be is an enjoyable bit of nostalgia for some whether you were twelve in the '70s or the '50s (there seems to have been a time warp in Shelby, IN) and it would probably be a nice film to take your preteen children to (it's PG-13). And welcome Lesli Linka Glatter to the ranks of women directors entrusted with the direction of a mainstream Hollywood film. For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1995 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author.