November 14, 2001 Home Back Issues free e-newsletter!       Feminist Film Takes "Riding in Cars with Boys" By Laura J. Weinstock     "Riding in Cars with Boys." Directed by Penny Marshall. Starring Drew Barrymore. Compassionate, complex look at how women - particularly mothers - suffer in a restrictive, sexist world. A feminist film that portrays reality from a woman's perspective but doesn't go far enough. Worth seeing anyhow. After viewing "Riding in Cars with Boys," my partner and I discussed it for four hours. Having this much to chew on might signal my whole-hearted recommendation. This movie, however, falls into that gray, hybrid category - better than typical Hollywood but not as hard-hitting or honest as an independent film might have been. I've felt this way about Marshall's films before, particularly "A League of Their Own." She could have named it "A League of Our Own," thus identifying, as a female Hollywood director in an almost all male profession, with the women in her film who became baseball players in an all male profession (to bolster morale during World War II). By her choice of title, she implied a need to back-pedal the feminist (threatening?) message of the movie. (She does the same within the film: the best player in the league quits mid-season when her husband returns from war.) It's as if Marshall feels the precariousness of her position and fears strong statements might alienate those who allow her to occupy this token role. From such directors, we rarely get groundbreaking work. But we do get films that are closer to what we'd like to see than others in Hollywood currently create. In "Riding in Cars," Beverly D'Onofrio (Drew Barrymore) is a 15-year-old girl with big dreams. Although it is the mid-1960's and she comes from a working class family in Connecticut, Bev wants to go to college and graduate school and become a writer. Her relationship with her mother is hardly explored (a failing of most films. The heterosexual mandate in movies means that, almost universally, girls avoid Moms, except when they need domestic help, but have a profound friendship with dads). Bev's relationship with her father, a cop, (James Woods) is closer and more developed. He supports her educational aspirations and knows she's the smartest in the family. But as soon as she expresses interest in boys, he withdraws his love. He doesn't listen to her angst, just orders her to stick to the books. Something seems inappropriate in their relationship - father and daughter sing together "Dream, dream, dream, whenever I want you…" -- but we never learn exactly what. At a party when she's 15, Bev hooks up with a guy named Ray who tells Bev he's no darn good. Bev should have heeded his warning. But sitting in the front seat of a car with the first guy that's ever been nice to her, while best friend, Fay, and beau are vigorously engaged in the back seat, and the temptation is too much. The next thing you know Bev is knocked up and devastated. If there is any true love in the story it is shared by Bev and Fay (Brittany Murphy). Fay tells her to try falling down the stairs. (Abortion is illegal except in Puerto Rico and Bev has no money.) Bev practices telling her parents with Fay. Eventually, she writes them a poignantly poetic letter. They don't notice her well-crafted sentences or listen to what Bev wants to do. Instead, Bev's father denounces her. To help him save face in the community, he wants Bev married. Unable to bear her father's condemnation, Bev agrees, though she knows it spells the end of her dreams. Only Fay speaks to her or on her behalf at the wedding. We have seen this before. A girl's life ruined because of a moment of bad judgment. No information about sex or birth control. No access to abortion. Biology is destiny, no matter how smart or talented you are. But this movie goes a bit farther. It shows us what this desolation looks like, from the point of view of the young mother who continues to need to fulfill her destiny as an artist. She didn't want to have a child. She is not content caring for child, home and husband. This is unacceptable ground for a mother. Mothers are supposed to take to motherhood, love their children, toil endlessly for them, perpetually sacrifice their own needs and not mind. Take the recent hit movie, "The Deep End," (which I deplored). That mother is willing to do anything --expose herself to dangerous men who attack her physically, commit criminal behavior that might land her in jail for life-- in order to protect her son. What she is not willing to do is evaluate her life and make changes. She is not willing to make her husband take responsibility in the family crisis. She is not willing to set limits with her son or even talk to him. She is not willing to admit what she truly wants and go after it. She is the paragon of motherhood, threatening no one. The critics raved. Not so for "Riding in Cars." Edward Guthmann wrote a review for the SF Chronicle which my partner and I agreed was shrill. (Yes, men can be shrill and bitchy too). He decries Beverly for being "whiny, willful and self-absorbed," says she exhibits no "emotional growth" as she ages from 15 to 35. He lambastes Marshall for using comedy to entice the audience into liking Beverly despite her "selfishness and poor mothering." And he concludes that "sunny, buoyant" Barrymore is the wrong actress to play a dark part such as this. I couldn't disagree more. (But then male critics dissed Julia Ormond as shrill in "Smilla's Sense of Snow." Not surprisingly, the film turned out to be extremely feminist. Ormond played one of the strongest women's roles I'd ever seen.) Anyone who knows Barrymore's tragic history might think she was perfect for the part of long-suffering Bev. She did, in fact, perform the role admirably. Let's look at the movie I saw (so different from the one Mr. Guthmann viewed). Beverly's life is a series of disappointments. She wants a girl and gets a boy. (Entire nations abandon, murder, sell into prostitution their girl children, but heaven forbid one teenage mom should express, shortly after giving birth, some dismay at the sex of her child.) She lives in a pit. Her husband is supremely unreliable. Beverly perseveres with her dreams as best she can. Her mother helps out sometimes with the child, but is unsympathetic when he pees in Bev's mouth, or when Bev complains that she can't get a moment's peace to study. No child wants to be ignored by Mom. And yet, if Beverly had been the father, anxiously trying to better herself and her family, her behavior would not be condemned. Fathers routinely work, study and stay away from home, ignoring their children for decades. Perhaps if her husband had been more dependable, her son would have had more consistent attention from at least one parent. The epitome of tragedy occurs after Bev attains her GED and has applied for a college scholarship. Beverly is determined to be the one girl out of the seven finalists who wins the award. But at the hour of her all-important interview, Ray, who had agreed to watch the boy, has disappeared. Bev has no choice but to bring her three-year-old to the interview. He wiggles, he whines, she glares, she shushes. It is impossible to convince the male interviewer that Bev is committed and won't be distracted. Even today, women with children are penalized. Naturally, Bev isn't selected. And where was Ray? Out drinking with his boss. He is sorry, he tells her over and over. Bev goes back to flipping burgers. Sorry doesn't make it better. If life truly consists in four crucial days, as Bev later writes, one of these is the day her son, Jason, almost drowns. Bev and Fay are going to spend a rare, child-free day together. Fay's mother has agreed to take Fay's daughter, Amelia, and Jason to the movies. Before they leave, Bev and Fay pop a drug. In her chemically-enhanced torpor, Bev says too much to Fay's (cold-hearted) mother, who leaves in a huff without Jason. Bev, incapable of parenting, tells Jason to go play. But when Jason falls into a pool, Bev snaps out of her stupor. She is determined, from that point on, to be a better mom. We soon see her singing with Jason, making him birthday parties, loving him. When Bev gets an unexpected offer to bring her family to California where the state pays for education, Ray discloses (just before they're about to leave) that he is not only a drunk, he is also a heroin junkie. Bev tries to help Ray detox, running all night from husband to son, cleaning vomit-laden sheets, distracting her son with cheerful music. Ray goes off, first thing in the morning for more smack. He tells Bev he cannot quit. With the utmost tenderness (showing, in my opinion, tremendous emotional maturity and growth) she tells Ray she believes that he cannot quit, but if that is so, it will only continue to bring them down. He agrees to go. He tells a tear-stricken Jason that Bev feels it's for the best. But what neither of them says is why. Thus, Jason is left with the parent he feels ignored him and loses the one who played with him. He doesn't understand that his mother is actually putting his welfare first, something his father is incapable of doing. Guthmann clearly identifies with Jason who, at 20 - after complaining to his mother throughout the movie -- is still angry at her. After his seventh birthday party, Jason wakes up and finds Beverly in front of the house circling the tiny cul-de-sac, talking. He screams at her for abandoning him though she hasn't done anything wrong and Ray is in the house. At 11, Jason narcs on his Mom to his grandfather-cop, (she's drying pot with Fay, so they can make some money and escape from Connecticut). Bev spends the night in jail and Fay goes to live in Arizona with her brother. Perhaps Bev is selfish not to see that Jason will miss his good friend, Amelia, too. But it is understandable that, having been betrayed by her father and her son, she is not in the best place to offer condolences. If anyone is whining in this film, it is Jason. He grumbles to Mom that his childhood was spent getting groceries and taking care of her at his own expense. I don't buy it. Where is the evidence that he was the main caretaker? Or that Bev was so selfish and did such a bad job? By sending his junkie Dad away, by raising Jason alone, by eventually leaving Connecticut for a newspaper job in New York, Bev took care of Jason, not the reverse. All kids of single parents need to help out. Maybe it feels more unfair to the boys. As the story ends, Bev has written, finally, her book, about to be distributed by a small publishing house. The movie has consisted of compassionate exposes of how she has suffered repeatedly for her one mistaken night of (dubious) pleasure. She pays for this error through her association with Ray. That she has, through sheer will, managed to realize some of her dreams is miraculous. Despite everything, she has made a good life for herself and her son (who is now at NYU, the very college she always wanted to attend). At 35 (twenty years later), she is still not released from her tortuous connection to Ray. Jason is driving her to see him, one last time, to ask Ray to sign an agreement not to sue for how he is depicted in her book. Ray lives in a trailer in squalor. His teeth are rotting; beer bottles roll into every crevice. His girlfriend (Rosie Perez) is also a junkie. Ray doesn't recognize his son. But always affable, he agrees to sign. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Bev will finally have paid her debt to society. At the eleventh hour, junkie girlfriend forbids Ray to sign unless Bev agrees to give them $100,000 (more money than Bev will ever own). Defeated, she leaves and walks out on the nearby docks. Unbeknownst to Bev, Ray comes out with the trash and surreptitiously (his girlfriend is watching) slips the signed paper into Jason's pocket as he hugs him goodbye. Then he imparts some sexist piece of wisdom and tells him that the best thing he ever did in his whole life was to stay away from Jason. Marshall tries too hard, in the final scene, to remake Beverly into a "more acceptable mother." Both Mr. Guthmann and I agree that this rings false. But, where he saw an "immature and unpleasant" character throughout, I saw an already acceptable mother who should have been allowed to stay in character. Jason finds Bev and delivers the document. Then he calls her a terrible mother --who can't even see it was an emotional encounter for him too. In that moment, the movie cops out. Bev no longer cares about her book. She helps Jason catch a plane to start a new life with his lover and agrees to be left behind in the snow and ice. She calls her Dad; they reconcile, driving off into the sunset singing the words to "dream, dream, dream." Why doesn't Bev defend herself? Anyone in Bev's situation would have been devastated by this latest tragic event with Ray. Jason had a right to be overwrought as well, but someone should have called a spade a spade and spoken the truth: that Bev saved Jason from a terrible life. Maybe a little filial gratitude was in order. The movie was about Bev and from her point of view. It should have stayed there, not shifted to that of the poor, suffering male for the sake of appeasing the audience.