Retail Therapy

Monday night, home from SF early, but not yet on our way to Tahoe, I decided to watch the third movie in what I like to call the neuroses trilogy, Going Shopping. The director, Henry Jaglom, has made two other films using very similar style…a storyline that outlines the neuroses affecting some women, interspersed with little snippets of women telling their real feelings on the matter, with much more honesty than you would likely see in real life. The first film in this ‘trilogy’ was Eating, which came out in 1990. I remember liking that film quite a bit, and thinking that the women in it were all pretty much insane and obsessed with food. But they were kind of real, too, and I’m sorry to say, I don’t know many women who don’t have a somewhat screwed up relationship with food, though I do know many who are trying for a healthier one.

The second film was called Babyfever, which came out in 1994, and was about women who are coming up against their biological clocks, and the neuroses that can come from that desperate desire to have children.  I didn’t see it then, though I netflixed it last year, and reviewed it here.  I remember thinking that the women in the film were somewhat shrill.

In this third film, Going Shopping, the drama is the story of a shopkeeper in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood, Holly, who owns a boutique. Her boyfriend has embezzled funds from her, and hasn’t paid the rent in three months, and she is in danger of being evicted from her shop. She naively borrows money from a loan shark, but when she realizes the terms of the deal and how usurious they are, she realizes that her only hope of staying afloat is to have a HUGE, very successful sale over mothers day weekend, and raise enough money to get current on her rent.

The acting in the film is fine, and it was over all OK, but I think my least favorite of the three.  The snippets, or confessions, by various women were a bit much to take…I thought they were off their collective nut. I think that many people, especially women, get emotional satisfaction from buying an outfit that makes them feel great, or from getting a really great deal on something they usually wouldn’t be able to afford. But it was like putting those feelings up in front of a fun house mirror, and seeing them mirrored back at you, all out of depth and proportion. Women with 50+ bras, women who can’t pay their rent because they spend the money on clothes, women with over 100 pairs of shoes, women who have to transfer balances from one credit card to another every month, just to stay ahead of the creditors.

I’m going to say that while the women in the movie were bugging me, because they had lost all touch with how to cope with stress and depression and even joy and happiness in their lives, I would still recommend this film to almost any woman. You will all see someone you know in this film…a family member, a dear friend, someone you once knew…hopefully not yourself, because if you are one of these women, as extreme as they are? It may be time for an intervention. I’m just sayin’.

Side notes: There is a love interest for Holly, played by Rob Morrow…earlier in the film he breaks up with his girlfriend, who is played by Jennifer Grant, who it turns out is the daughter of Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon. Also, the loan shark is played by Robert Romanus, who I recognized from his role as Mike Damon in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Remember, he got Jennifer Jason Leigh pregnant? Hmm. It was his voice I recognized more than anything else, after all of these years.