Shirley Valentine Reviewed by Linda Lopez McAlister For The Women's Show, WMNF-FM, Tampa, FL July 6, 1990 Shirley Valentine is a British film that was shown in movie theaters in early 1990 and which received, at best, a lukewarm reception by the film reviewers in the local press. (In fact, it was reading the local reviews of this film that made me so mad I decided I'd start doing reviews from a feminist standpoint myself). Perhaps you believed what they said and gave this film a pass. I hope not, but if you did, it's widely available on video, and it's one that I think virtually every woman will enjoy--especially those of us who have made it to our 40s or beyond. Shirley Valentine (played by Pauline Collins) is a 42 year- old, white, middle-class, English housewife whose kids are grown and whose husband has become a dour, boring, martinet who hardly speaks to Shirley except to give orders or complain. She's reduced to talking to herself or her kitchen wall, and wondering what ever became of Shirley Valentine, the spunky young woman with hopes and dreams that she used to be. When her pseudo-feminist friend Jane wins a trip for two to Greece, Shirley goes along, only to be abandoned as soon as her so-called friend meets a man and takes off. On her own on a Greek Island, Shirley falls in love--not with Costas, the Greek man she meets--but with life, and she learns to be her own person once again. Looking at this film, you'd think it had been made by women, but it wasn't. It was produced and directed by Lewis Gilbert and written by Willy Russell. Perhaps it isn't an accident that they are British filmmakers. One of the most important feminist writers about film is an Englishwoman named Laura Mulvey, who pointed out that much of the pleasure we get from going to Hollywood-type movies is a kind of voyeuristic pleasure; it's sort of like we in the audience are Peeping Toms looking, through they eye of the camera, into the lives of people who don't know they're being looked at and don't acknowledge that we're there. Of course psychoanalytic data shows us that voyeurism is overwhelmingly a male phenomenon; it's mainly guys who get pleasure from looking in windows--or looking, period. So Mulvey suggests that women may find more pleasure in films that don't rely on the voyeuristic relationship between us in the audience and the characters in the film. Lewis Gilbert is no doubt familiar with Mulvey's views, and what he has done is to make a film that alters that relationship. He uses an old theatrical device, the aside--almost never used in films, except lately by some feminist filmmakers. An aside is when a character breaks out of the fictional world, from time to time, and talk directly to the audience. Shirley Valentine does this--she knows we're there and tells us directly what she's thinking and feeling. One of the most hilarious asides in the film is when, in the midst of a passionate sex scene complete with full orchestra and waves pounding on the shore in a parody of the sex-on-the-beach scene in "From Here to Eternity," she turns to us and comments, "Now where did that orchestra came from?" In this film, we're not Peeping Toms, we're Shirley's confidantes and cheering section. I think Mulvey's right; it's a lot more fun this way. Finally, what makes this, I think, a landmark film for women is the ending. The convention is now and always has been in Hollywood films that any woman who has transgressed the patriarchal rules in the film either has to die, or pay some price, or she has to be, as they say, "recuperated" back to her rightful place in a man's world. In this film--and I believe it's the first time I've ever seen this in a mainstream film-- it's the husband who is "recuperated." We are left knowing, in that final fade, that even though she's the one who ran off to Greece and wouldn't come back, old Joe's the one who has to change. Having found life again, Shirley's only going to live it on her terms, from now on. For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film.