"Oleanna"
                             A film review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                         WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL
                              April 15, 1995

    I didn't think "Oleanna" was ever going to play the Tampa Bay
area, but it has finally turned up over at the Beach Theater in
St. Petersburg Beach this weekend and it's worth a trip out there
if you want to see this film, David Mamet's serious study of
sexual harassment (as opposed to the bogus one dished up in
"Disclosure" earlier this year).  But there are about four films
playing at the Beach this weekend so "Oleanna"'s only being
screened at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.   It is worth the trip even if
"Oleanna," which started life as a two character stage play, has
not successfully made the trip from stage play to film.  What you
see has the strong and unmistakeable feeling of a play that has
been filmed rather than a film in its own right.  There are, for
example, artificial moments when the emotion of the situation
requires that a character leave the room but finds a reason to
stay so the action of the play can continue, pointing up that
author/director David Mamet did not do an adequate job of turning
his play into a screenplay.  Some conventions that we're willing
to accept on stage ring false on the screen.  To a certain extent
this is also true of the language the characters use--too stilted
and theatrical in some cases (though John, the professor, is
supposed to talk that way)--and at times too "stagey" in delivery,
probably partially a function of the fact that William H. Macy,
who plays the professor, played the role on stage, too.

   Nonetheless, this is an intense and intensely interesting film
divided into three sections, each one a separate visit of a young
college woman to a professor's office in a small, unnamed, elite
New England College.  As we come to know these characters in the
first encounter John is a pompous, arrogant, overbearing, jerk
(in my humble opinion), in love with the sound of his own voice
and wholly absorbed in himself.  He talks almost non-stop at
Carol (played by Debra Eisenstadt), a student who's flunking his
class, and at first almost never lets her even finish a sentence.
Laying down the law to her that her work is inadequate he
justifies his own position and continually demands to know what
it is she wants of him, what does she want him to do.  Her answer
is that she wants him to teach her, to take her and her
aspirations for an education seriously.  She is a working class
woman who has sacrificed to attend this toney college and finds
herself struggling and not understanding what people are saying--
the jargon, the abstractions, the intellectualization of things
that are palpable and real to her.  Telephone interruptions from
secretary, wife, friends, confirm our already negative opinion of
John's character: not a nice guy.  When you find out that people
are giving him a surprise party to celebrate his upcoming
tenure, you may wonder who would want to come.

   At one point he decides to launch into a more personal mode, switch-
ing from the stern taskmaster into the patronizing I-know-all-about-
what's-wrong-with-you-and-I'll-help-you role.  He decides to take
her on as a project and offers to meet with her on a regular basis in
his office to help her.  He promises her that if she does she'll get an
A in the course.  When she gets so upset that she seems to be on
the verge of hysteria he grabs her and physically forces her to
sit down in a chair.

   On the next visit Carol, more confident and in control,
informs him that she and her "group" have filed a complaint of
sexual harassment against him with the tenure committee, and she
reads him accurate, though sometimes out of context, descriptions
of his behavior that constitute sexual harassment--telling sexist
jokes in his class, referring to the women students as "girls,"
asking her to meet him regularly in his office and telling her
she'll get an A if she does, forcing her by grabbing her shoulders
to sit down. He is appalled because he didn't have explicitly
sexual feelings toward her, he was not consciously trying to
trade sexual favors for a grade (it was the power trip that he
was getting off on).  The tables are turned and Carol,
undoubtedly in the right but portrayed as having all the humanity
and sympathy of a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution (complete
with plain dark jacket and lapel pin insignia of her "group"),
offers no mercy to him, asking him, in a bizarre turning of the
tables, what it is he wants from her.

   My lips are sealed as to what happens in the third and final
meeting between the two.  (I know you don't like even this much
plot summary).  Go see "Oleanna' for yourself if you want to
know.  For feminists it is both exhilarating and thought-
provoking to see this subject tackled head-on with characters
that ring pretty true.

   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.