She-Devil
                Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister
            For The Women's Show, WMNF-FM, Tampa, FL

     Film reviewing is kind of a side-line for me; in real life
I'm a feminist philosopher, and I edit a journal called, Hypatia:
A Journal of Feminist Philosophy.  This week, those two
activities came together and, thanks to my editorial work, I was
alerted to the fact that I had almost missed that rarest of all
species--a Hollywood-produced feminist film.  Two articles were
submitted to the journal recently that make reference to a book
that I didn't know, Fay Weldon's 1983 feminist novel The Lives
and Loves of a She-devil.  It dawned on me that the Roseanne Barr
film She-devil that was released, panned, and sank without a
trace a few months back, must be a film version of that novel.
Its feminist outlook, along with the press's clear antipathy
toward Roseanne Barr, could explain why the ^?mostly male| critics
hated this film so.  I decided it was worth a look and I'm glad I
did.

   Not only is She-Devil based on a feminist satirical novel, it
has a first rate cast of mostly women, including Linda Hunt and
Meryl Streep (who can choose what films she wants to be a part of
and frequently chooses well).  And, most importantly, it was co-
produced and directed by a feminist filmmaker, Susan Seidelman,
whose work you may know from such earlier films as Desperately
Seeking Susan and Making Mr. Right.  What this collaboration has
produced is a work of devastating social satire of the sexual
mores of mainstream America.   This is, in fact, one of the most
subversive mainstream Hollywood films I've ever seen.  It's the
story of a woman (Ruth Padgett) whose husband (Bob) has an affair
with another woman (the famous and glamorous Romance novel writer
Mary Fisher). When found out, Bob screams at Ruth that he has
four assets--his home, his family, his career and his freedom--
and one liability--his fat, unattractive, wife, whom he's
leaving.  In a way, Bob is right, because that liability, Ruth,
sits down and makes a list of those assets, and systematically
sets out to destroy them one by one.  And, what makes this such
an extraordinary story for Hollywood is that she succeeds!  With
the help of a network of ordinary women whom, as she puts it, the
world has forgotten, she wins.  This is a woman's revenge fantasy
par excellence.  No wonder it makes men squirm.  And its hard to
imagine a woman who has ever been "done wrong" by a man not
taking a certain amount of vicarious pleasure in seeing him get
his.   I won't tell you just how Ruth accomplishes the
destruction of Bob's house, family, career and freedom--that's
part of the fun of this movie.  It does differ somewhat from the
novel because the film medium imposes a limitation on the story
line; in the novel Ruth has herself entirely made over through
cosmetic surgery, so she can later seduce Bob.  Since Roseanne
Barr doesn't suffer for her art to that extent, that aspect of
the novel is almost entirely lost, but much else remains.

    As is characteristic of Susan Seidelman's direction there is
a great deal of visual humor in this film (including a wicked
jump cut from a passionate love making scene between Bob and Mary
to Ruth chopping a cucumber in half!).  And I loved Meryl
Streep's send up of the Bronx butcher's daughter who becomes the
queen of the Romance novelists and passes herself off a royalty,
but whose romantic facade starts to slip badly when she trades
the role of mistress for that of stepmother.  It's a great comic
tour de force for her.

    In short, I think "She-Devil" is one wickedly funny feminist
comedy.  I don't know anyone who saw it during its brief stay in
the movie houses, but I bet you'll enjoy it in your living room
with a bunch of your women friends.