divorce

Partir (Leaving)

annette — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

David McKenzie’s Asylum is a flawed but breathtakingly compelling portrait of violent sexual obsession, deception, and mental illness. Unremittingly dark, this film also presents us with a woman who rails against the constraints placed on women in 1950s middle class Britain.

Stella (Natasha Richardson) is a bored housewife who makes her home on the grounds of a mental hospital outside London. She’s married to Max (Hugh Bonneville), a pompous overbearing psychiatrist who makes it clear that she is expected to devote all of her energies to helping him rise to the top of the hospital hierarchy. The servants who cook meals, clean the house, and care for Stella’s son guarantee that Stella never has anything productive to do.

Stella has a chance encounter with Edgar (Marton Csokas), an inmate who is repairing the gazebo in her garden. They are both instantly attracted and begin having steamy trysts. Edgar, who has been institutionalized after having murdered his wife, is denied release from the asylum. Frustrated, he escapes and re-establishes contact with Stella once he is safely ensconced in a squalid cold-water flat in London.

Meanwhile, Max’s rival, Dr. Peter Cleave (Sir Ian McKellen) puts two and two together and confronts Stella, demanding to know where Edgar is. When Stella refuses, he reminds her that Max, as her husband, can have her committed to the asylum. Stella, trapped and caught in the full grip of hybristophilia, runs to Edgar.

Why did I choose to start off this review of Partir (Leaving) with a synopsis of a completely different film? Quite frankly, the plot of Partir is startlingly similar to Asylum. Although Partir is set in twenty-first century France, both films are keenly rendered character portraits of strong-willed British women who’ve grown tired of sacrificing their happiness for their families’ sake and decide to follow their hearts to tragic results.

Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an Englishwoman who’s called France home for more than two decades. She is a stay-at-home mother who decides to go back to work after fifteen years out of the paid labor force. She is completing her training as a physiotherapist, something she’d planned to do before having children. Suzanne is married to Samuel (Yvan Attal), a pompous overbearing doctor, who reluctantly sinks a small fortune into fixing up a shed for her home office.

The man in charge of fixing up the space is Ivan (Sergi Lopez), a Spaniard who went to prison for “kid’s stuff.” When Suzanne causes an accident that causes Ivan to break his ankle, the guilt-ridden Suzanne to offer him a ride to Spain so that Ivan can visit his young daughter. The two, who already feel attracted, embark on a passionate affair.

Suzanne leaves her husband after confessing the affair and unsuccessfully trying to end it. Samuel, who seems to view Suzanne as more of a possession than an equal partner, resorts to blacklisting the couple to the point of starvation and freezing the bank accounts, not at all willing to give Suzanne a quick divorce.

Despite its derivativeness, Partir still managed to absorb me. This is in no small part due to Kristen Scott Thomas’ subtly commanding performance. Scott Thomas effortlessly conveys Suzanne’s conflicting emotions through her eyes and nearly imperceptible gestures.

I also like the fact that Corsini doesn’t feel the need to tell us everything. Many of the films climactic scenes end rather abruptly, requiring the audience to draw its own conclusions and Partir’s lean eighty-five minute run time guarantees that the film’s pacing doesn’t lag.

Partir doesn’t shy away from its feminist subtext, exploring the invisibility and frustrations of homemakers at length. Partir, in brutally honest scenes, depicts how easy it is for a vindictive husband to use his financial clout to punish an errant wife.

Given the date of its release and its serious subject matter, I anticipate Partir becoming a contender for Best Foreign Language Film. (It’s in French with English subtitles). Nominations for its cast and director are probably in short order, too.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, October 26th 2010

Falling Apart In One Piece: One Optimist’s Journey Through the Hell of Divorce

admin — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Stacy Morrison

Simon and Schuster

I’m one of the many women who have been through divorce so I picked up Stacy Morrison’s memoir Falling Apart in One Piece, about her divorce, with interest. Because few of my friends and family members have experienced divorce, it’s been one long lonely road for me. How do people deal with the guilt? I’ve wondered. How do they stop worrying about their ex—even after they’ve fallen in love with somebody else?

Less literary and more chatty-confessional style—in vogue with the women’s magazines that Morrison has edited all these years (Mirabella and Marie Claire, for example, or, most recently, Redbook)—Morrison relates her tale like a woman sitting down over a cup of tea with a friend. Her story takes us to the heart of despair in the wake of divorce. Though Morrison’s husband didn’t abandon their son, he left her holding the bag for a house that was falling apart around her. Morrison soon realized that she was literally living a metaphor, the house a perfect symbol of her crumbling marriage.

What did I do wrong? Morrison wonders. How could I have believed in marriage, only to be fooled? How could marriage have been just the thing I needed, while my husband felt like it was sucking his soul dry? And, most importantly, How am I ever going to be a single mom? How am I going to afford it? How am I going to get rid of this damned house? Even as she takes a new job as Editor-in-Chief of Redbook Magazine, Morrison wonders if she’s a fraud. Can she promote marriage and family when her own has disintegrated?

Through all her financial struggles, loneliness, self-doubt, and desolation, Morrison works hard not to become bitter or angry, so that she and her former husband can be good parents to their son. She comes through it with hope for the future and a new-found respect for her own abilities to make it through anything.

Falling Apart in One Piece is neither a literary masterpiece nor a self-help manual, but it is another genre somewhere in between those two—a personal story of heartache, loss, and hope, told honestly and thoughtfully. Definitely worth reading for those who have been through divorce and want to understand their own muddled emotions.

Written by: Jessica Powers, June 6th 2010

How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage

admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sascha Rothchild

Plume

It’s not like someone would seek out this book looking to find advice on how to damage their marriage, but it definitely piques the curiosity of anyone trying to understand how easily a marriage can go awry. How to Get Divorced by 30 is Sascha Rothchild’s personal tale of her short-lived marriage. Surprisingly, it’s not a man-bashing book picking on her ex-husband (some of his faults are mentioned, but not focused upon). Instead, Sascha tells her story by explaining how the various events, influences, and personal insecurities in her own life led to her choosing a relationship that seemed to fill her needs, but resulted in feeding her flaws.

Sascha’s unabashed honesty about herself, especially exposing her quirky personal demons, is highly admirable. Regardless of whether you agree with her viewpoints, you can’t help but revere her accurate self-assessment and the courage it took to write this book. You also can’t help but relate to her inner struggles with self-perception, including weight, looks, and identity. It’s normal for women to have insecurities in these areas, but Sascha takes the exploration further by discovering how her insecurities led to poor relationship choices. Looking to resolve her issues, she’d try to find a sense of security through relationships.

We all tend to choose a partner who counteracts our shortcomings in some way or another, which is why you can’t help but relate to the author. However, what is most interesting about the book is how she focused on the fact that her unhealthy relationship with herself was not only the root cause of her divorce, but also the cause of her marriage (and other failed relationships) in the first place.

By the end of the book you feel like you know Sascha personally. Her influence will cause you to stop and reflect on your own life, the relationships you’ve had, and how your own insecurities may have caused problems in ways you never before realized. I assure you this is a good thing. If we could all look at ourselves with blatant honesty (not harshness nor kindness, just what is) then we would all be better people. We spend too much time pretending to be what others think we should be, lying to ourselves, and trying so hard to measure up that we lose sight of our own needs and happiness. That’s what happened to Sascha.

By sharing her journey of self-discovery (and divorce) Sascha helps readers to more truthfully look at their own lives. Meanwhile, the read is an excitingly entertaining journey. Be prepared to finish the book in one sitting. It’s a fast read, but mostly because you can’t put it down until you've finished it.

Written by: Sarah Eve Nichols-Fulghum, April 2nd 2010

Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:02:00 +0000

By Melissa Hart

Seal Press

When Melissa Hart was eight years old, her mother fell in love with Patricia, the woman who drove the school bus. Soon, Hart’s mother left her husband and moved in with Patricia, taking her children with her. Within months, however, Hart learned a heart-wrenching lesson when she discovered that the family courts of the 1970s didn’t regard a woman involved in a same-sex relationship as a fit mother. Hart's dad was given custody, and her mom was left to see her children every other weekend and a few weeks in the summer.

Living in the upscale Manhattan Beach with her upper class father and, after a short interlude, her new stepmother, the author longed for her too-seldom visits to her mother in Oxnard—a place not only geographically distant, but as culturally dissimilar as two places in Southern California could be. This split in her reality left the young Hart understandably confused about her own identity. In Oxnard, she was attracted to the culture of the predominantly Latino neighbors: their lively parties, delicious food, and the warmth that she perceived to be missing from her Manhattan Beach home. As she grew older, Hart longed to emulate her mother’s sexuality. But much to her chagrin, Hart discovered she was attracted to boys, and as much as she yearned to belong to the Latino culture, she was an outsider there as well.

While the writing is skilled and evocative, and the scenes are vivid, Hart gives us a book that doesn’t quite deliver a satisfying, cohesive story. Despite the themes that she revisits (one of the major themes of Gringa is the search for belonging by a girl whose mother was cruelly ostracized from her children by the legal system), her account lacks a defining arc. In some ways, this is not surprising. After all, this is a memoir, and real life is, by nature, episodic. What marks a skilled memoirist is her ability to sift through the events of her life and distill the story. Unless this is accomplished, her readers will ask themselves, “Why should I read this?”

While I was keenly interested in the problems Hart encounters as a result of her mother’s absence, her experiences as the daughter of a woman in a lesbian relationship, and the challenges she faced living with her often angry father and her new stepmother. I was far less interested in her account of getting a new car, her brief high school acting career, or her interlude as a student in Santa Barbara. A more judicious editor would likely have advised taking much of this material out because, while the writing is competent, it fails to overcome the problems in these chapters: a lack of narrative momentum, a clear relationship with the central story of the memoir, and a compelling conflict that makes the reader care.

Hart’s memoir is important in that it adds to our understanding of the impact of anti-gay prejudice and the bitter price children of lesbian and gay parents have been forced to pay; this is evoked with great emotional resonance in the book. Unfortunately, the strength of the memoir is diluted by the inclusion of material that seems extraneous.

Written by: Elaine Beale, February 25th 2010

How Perfect Is That

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:02:00 +0000

By Sarah Bird

Pocket Books

How Perfect Is That is a story of becoming. When Blythe Young begins her tale, her world is in the process of crashing down around her. Though she married into a wealthy Texas family, her mother-in-law was one step ahead of her and insisted upon a prenuptial agreement—an agreement which carefully stipulated no provisions for Blythe in case of a divorce. Without any cash, Blythe tries to make ends meet by cutting (slashing) corners in her catering company, serving discount liver sausage as gourmet pâté and drugging her clients so they won't notice the difference. Everyone is after her—her clients, her staff (whom she can't afford to pay), the IRS—except for her family, her ex-husband, and her friends (apparently you really can't buy those). With the IRS literally dogging her heels, Blythe turns up at the doorstep of her college roommate and collapses, utterly exhausted.

What follows feels somewhat predictable. However, by this time, the reader might be curious to know how author Sarah Bird will subject Blythe to the consequences of her actions. At least, that is what happened to me. Blythe is cynical and irritating during the first third of the book. When it becomes clear to her that something's got to give and that she has to both appraise and change her life (her friends, her outlook, her direction, her drug habits, her values), she grows more interesting. It is entirely a testament to Bird's writing skill that Blythe's reorientation never feels sudden, clumsy, or didactic.

Blythe continues to make mistakes, but becomes a sympathetic character by the end of the book. She reinvents herself again, realizing that there is more than one way to escape an upbringing of which one is not proud. Perhaps this is not the next great novel, but it's not too bad either. It's perfect for a lazy weekend afternoon, as a traveling companion, or for the bathtub.

Written by: kristina grob, November 19th 2009

The Richest Season

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:28:00 +0000

By Maryann McFadden

Hyperion

The Richest Season is a familiar tale to any romance reader, occasional or obsessive: a wife and mother, disillusioned with her compressed, tepid worldview and identity, flees to an exotic locale in order to find herself. In this case, the wife and mother in question is Joanna Harrison. An empty nester with a distant corporate husband, she spontaneously decides to run away to a new life on Pawleys Island. She becomes a caretaker of an ailing older woman, Grace, meets some colorful local characters and begins to get in touch with—well, the story unfolds predictably from there.

McFadden does throw in a few surprising garnishes along the way. Grace, the older woman with a terminal illness, is one; her story has some interesting parallels to Joanna’s as Grace struggles to come to terms with her death and life. Paul, the husband left behind, also plays a surprisingly large role in the book, with his own chapters of narrative that give him some complexity and humanity. There is also a pleasing metaphor centering on the migration habits of mother sea turtles; however, the book doesn’t venture much outside its own comfort zone.

Some books take over your life from the first page. You spend your days either reading them or halfheartedly going through the motions while yearning to be reading them. Then there are books that fit into the cracks of your life, filling it up the days instead of consuming them. These books are read in odd snippets, right before bed or while waiting for toast to pop up or whenever it’s within grabbing distance and the time is right. The Richest Season, is of the second species. It’s entertaining enough to pass the time with while waiting for the sauce to thicken or while brushing your teeth. It won’t keep you breathlessly awake until you read the last word, but you will drift off to sleep with a warm heart and quiet mind, confident in happy endings.

** Sometimes we accidentally duplicate a review. What can we say? Perfection is an illusion. Click here for another Feminist Review writer's vantage point on The Richest Season.**

Written by: Jo Ristow, October 4th 2009

Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States

admin — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:34:00 +0000

By Kristin Celello

University of North Carolina Press

In Making Marriage Work, Kristin Celello outlines the evolution of public perceptions and attitudes about marriage and divorce in the United States throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on magazine articles, films and popular books, she specifically looks at the development of the notion that being married requires a great deal of work and that a happy marriage is something worth working toward. In theory, both partners are expected to sacrifice, but in practice it has been women who have borne the brunt of the responsibility—even to the extent that being a wife has been popularly portrayed as a “full time job” rather than a relationship.

Celello begins with the public perception in the 1930s that the divorce rate was out of control. From there, she covers pre- and post-World War II issues of “war marriages” which, experts warned, required a lot of work and attitude adjustments (on behalf of wives, of course) in order to survive. The book also looks at the rise of “expert” marital advice and the astronomical growth of the marriage counseling/couples therapy industry. Celello cites evidence such as articles from The Ladies’ Home Journal column “Can this Marriage be Saved?”—the answer to which is always a resounding yes, as long as the wife is willing to readjust her attitude and expectations—she also traces the development of the feminist movement and its impact on the national discussion about marriage and family. Not only did the media convince people that marriage is something to work on, Celello cleverly illustrates how counselors and psychologists ensured the growth of their professions by promoting the idea that it was impossible to have a successful marriage without extensive advice and professional help.

Celello moves on to look at the 1960s and ‘70s discourse during which some feminists would push for a more egalitarian notion of marriage, while others would wonder why the institution shouldn’t be abolished altogether. This invariably led to religious and other conservative thinkers reinforcing the idea that a woman’s ideal job is as a wife and mother. To that end, dubious studies were cited “proving” that when women failed to make their marriages work, their children suffered irreparable harm. The divorce rate did reach an all-time high in 1978, but Celello asserts that part of the reason for the declining divorce rate over the final two decades was the increased number of couples who opted to cohabitate (or not) rather than marry in the first place.

Careful attention is paid to race and class issues within the greater discussion. Celello points out that while the emphasis has generally been on ensuring that white middle class couples conform to the marriage-as-a-sacred-political-institution model, movements encouraging African Americans and low-income women to view “traditional” marriage as a ticket out of poverty have also presented themselves over the years. She clearly illustrates that while the idea that “marriage is work” has been a given for decades, the nature of that work and the reasons for performing it have morphed several times, reflecting changing cultural values and expectations.

Overall it’s a lively history, and any fans of Stephanie Coontz’s work will likely appreciate it. Those who lean a little less scholarly, but still like to make fun of Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, and the rest of the good-women-can-and should-keep-a-marriage-alive-forever peddlers will find it pretty accessible and enjoyable too.

Written by: Staci Schoff, May 24th 2009