by Frank Calvillo
Ever since Sally Field screamed and cried with mournful rage at Julia Roberts’ funeral, it seems that every female-driven film has sought to showcase the power and strength of female relationships in ways both humorous and heartfelt. Case in point, the quickly forgotten 1995 all-star female dramedy Moonlight and Valentino, a film with its own slight charms and aspirations of a Steel Magnolias level of pathos, which are both apparent from the time the opening credits have finished.
In Moonlight and Valentino, poetry professor Rebecca (Elizabeth Perkins) has just discovered that her husband has been hit and killed while out for his morning jog. In complete shock, her three closest confidants, best friend Sylvie (Whoopi Goldberg), younger sister Lucy (Gwyneth Paltrow), and stepmother Alberta (Kathleen Turner) have immediately rushed to her side. Throughout the following months, the four will count on one another as they try and help Rebecca move on, all the while trying to sort out the complications of their own lives.
At the heart of Moonlight and Valentino are four women in different stages of life. In no real order, Lucy is the feistiest, Sylvie is the most cynical, Alberta is the flashiest, and Rebecca is the one who is most lost, with or without her recently deceased husband. The first scene featuring all four leads is great, with each of them standing outside Rebecca’s master bedroom immediately following her husband’s death. Their opposing reactions to grief and loss are certainly notable, if a bit TOO opposing. Their differing natures can certainly be attributed to their various statuses in life, as pointed out by Rebecca while the four have lunch at a restaurant. Lucy is single, Sylvie is married, Alberta is divorced, and she herself is widowed. It’s Alberta who quickly dismisses these labels by proclaiming that they don’t define who each woman is. However, with the death of her husband, Rebecca’s ultimate dilemma is DISCOVERING who she truly is.
Written by Ellen Simon, daughter of Neil who also wrote the charming Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle One Fine Day, Moonlight and Valentino is one of those movies with interesting musings about how to approach life as seen through a varied assortment of women who have all experienced different shades of life. Based on the writer’s stage play, the film beautifully works as one of the few examples of a story that has the right kind of functionality as both a play and a film. There are the handfuls of scenes featuring lengthy dialogue, which fit equally at home with the quieter character moments such as the one in the bathtub where Rebecca notices a stain on the wall and furiously begins scrubbing, and eventually the scrubs the entire wall within an inch of its life.
Moonlight and Valentino offers up four different characters, which in turn gives four different actresses the kinds of parts to sink their teeth into, even if the material doesn’t explore any of the characters to their fullest. Turner and Paltrow turn in some of the film’s most dynamic scenes, revealing great versatility and insight as actresses. Sadly Goldberg is just the opposite, mainly due to the fact that the audience is never clued in on why the character is unhappy, short of her dropping a casual mention. The standout of the bunch however is Perkins, who never found a role that allowed her to show how emotive and deep of an actress she really is before or since. The actress is brilliant at bringing her character’s struggles to the surface, whether it be through tearful yelling or silent moments by herself.
In a way I found it rather surprising that director David Anspaugh could make such a female-centric film like this after helming the likes of Hosiers and Rudy. And yet in a way, it also isn’t surprising at all since each of the three films explores the intricacies of human life in one way or another. And although there are certainly a number of fragmented moments in the plot of Moonlight and Valentino, even those elements contain undeniable flashes of poetry and life. While there’s nothing all that revelatory in the material, there is a strong reminder of life lessons once learned that were perhaps forgotten about along the way.
Moonlight and Valentino is now available on Blu-ray from Olive Films.
