Ultimately, the Women Decide
A Personal Reflection on The First Wives Club (1996)
[CW: Discussion of suicide and spoilers]
The First Wives Club (1996) – Personal Reflection
To all my lovely readers, this week we are going to do something slightly different from my normal reviews. You may (or may not) have noticed that the last review I posted was two weeks ago. There are several reasons for this: firstly, I have had a few flare ups of chronic illnesses; secondly, my scheduling got messed up over Christmas and I had wanted to correct it by publishing mid-week, but; thirdly, I had a very difficult week emotionally.
I watched Hugh Wilson’s The First Wives Club (1996) this week and the Review Roulette wheel turned out Formalist as our approach. While I was watching it, as I always do, I was taking notes and thinking about how to frame a formalist review of this film and, truly, I came up with quite shallow or obvious observations. The film is about three women (Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler) whose husbands have left them for younger women and who, when prompted by the suicide of their mutual friend from college (Stockard Channing) after her own husband did the same, decide to take revenge on their husbands. Ultimately, the women decide that personal revenge would make them no better than their former husbands and choose instead to blackmail them into funding a women’s crisis shelter in honour of their late friend.
There are definitely things to comment on the form in the film. At the end, the colour scheme and especially choices for the women’s clothing suggest connections to the Suffragettes and women’s liberation with white pantsuits. There are certain camera movements throughout the film that act as foreshadowing devices, e.g. a long, slow pan across the thigh of Keaton’s character’s therapist, sexualising this woman and suggesting her later revealed affair. There are mirrors placed strategically in the film allowing quick glimpses of the women to stop for a moment and gaze into their reflections at key points in the film. These moments in the mirrors invite a larger reflection on their actions, for example, when they have broken into Midler’s character’s office trying to find evidence to use against him. They mount to a scene in Hawn’s character’s house, the penthouse of a former starlet, aging as a Norma Desmond type (Sunset Boulevard, 1950). Here we would expect mirrors as a symbol of vanity, but instead there are only framed portraits of her as a younger woman where a mirror would likely go. Hawn’s character has an alcohol problem she is only forced to confront when Midler steps in, and the lack of mirrors in her home space seems to suggest that she was unwilling to reflect on her own actions in favour of living in a museum of her own past as a star.
Now, I have been stuck for days on how to write from this approach largely because of my difficult week emotionally. Those readings of the film are fine, but I think the far more interesting thing that happened with this film and me this week, the thing that is leading me to write this review on Sunday morning, is that this film affected me, and I didn’t realise it until now.
Self-reflection is a very powerful tool and I think a necessary one to be able to have relationships with others. It is a requirement that we look inwards and have a deeply honest conversation with ourselves about our priorities and needs and desires. I have spent the majority of my 20s working on this relationship with myself and reflecting on these important aspects of myself, but every once in a while, we can slip up and allow other people’s priorities to become our own, influenced by their desires over our needs.
While I was in the process of reading about psychological theories on the emotional situation I am in and speaking to a therapist about it, I watched this film. I watched this film about women so hurt by other people in their lives that they prioritised reciprocal pain in whatever ways they deemed painful enough, ultimately waking up to their own pain in the process and choosing to react better. I watched a friendship encourage Hawn’s character to reflect on her own self-destructive behaviour that prompted deeper reflection for all three friends to make those better choices of allowing the abusive people in their lives to face the consequences of their own actions while making the world a better place for victims of other abusive people.
And I needed that more than I thought.
I study films for work. I am dedicating my life to understanding films from history and how they fit into their moments. But one thing I am realising even more powerfully in working on this Review Roulette project is the power of films over time. This film from 1996 has been playing on my mind all week. I had seen it about 15 years before and I was drawn to it for some reason, not quite remembering exactly the plot, but I wanted to watch this movie this week specifically. Maybe that’s a coincidence, or maybe it’s a powerful subconscious connection I had between women supporting women in the face of abuse and in response to suicide-related traumas, but either way, the film affected me deeply enough and subconsciously enough that I am only realising 6 days later that I was affected by it. That’s the power of cinema, and sometimes I think I forget just how important this medium is in showing people living through scenarios and playing out scenes that we ourselves as the audience can connect to in a way that is different from reading or viewing still images, etc.
So, hopefully this week I am through the writer’s block having realised the more important value this film had personally for me behind what I was noticing as I took my notes. I also want to choose liberation and connection with a chosen family and deeper self-reflection in pursuit of prioritising my priorities over someone else’s desires. I hope that you can connect on a personal level with whatever films or media or cultural consumption you engage with this week and allow yourself some time for self-reflection afterwards.
Thank you for your patience as I worked through my block. I hope to have a new review up by the end of the week.
Because I’m Never Done When I Say I Am
Genre
It struck me while watching that The First Wives Club is one of many films I had never really connected before. It is obviously a genre to itself and one many audiences do identify with, but I personally had never given much thought to the fact that there is a collection of films about women forming a sisterhood of revenge: Mean Girls (2004), John Tucker Must Die (2006), The Other Woman (2014) to name a few. Just an interesting observation that deserves more thought.
Suicide Prevention Resources
UK – NHS
US – National Institute of Mental Health or the CDC
Thank you for the review and I hope you are getting better, in various ways.
Do you think The Women (1939) is part of the same genre as The First Wives Club?