Les noces de cendres

The story begins in an exclusive clinic in Switzerland. Barbara (Elizabeth Taylor) is there to get 'the works', as she's older and hopes this will invigorate her stale marriage. The film then shows some pretty realistic surgery scenes as well as scenes of the post-surgery Barbara...complete with horrific bruises which come from the surgeries. She looks pretty awful in these scenes and I was impressed that the glamorous Taylor agreed to be made up to look this bad.

Following her discharge, Barbara gets coiffed and buys a new wardrobe and awaits her husband in a nearby hotel...but it will be some time until Mark (Henry Fonda) arrives. And, given her new look and lease on life, Barbara finds herself drifting towards an affair with some younger stud. Clearly the surgery has had an effect on her psyche...but how will it affect Mark and the marriage? After all, he has no idea she was getting plastic surgery and expects an older looking woman to greet him.

The notion of a woman getting plastic surgery and its effect (or lack of effect) on her life and marriage is an interesting one. However, the film managed to make it all very dull with too many scenes of Barbara walking about, eating dinner alone, etcetera...and many could have been eliminated or shortened. To put it bluntly, this portion of the movie is dull and glacially slow and it really shouldn't have been. Sadly, it seems to take forever for anything to happen...and I cannot understand this. Did it get better once the husband eventually arrived? Not especially.

The bottom line is that the set up for the story should have resulted in something interesting but it didn't. I think the script and direction were major problems with "Ash Wednesday"....and I can understand why Taylor's husband at the time, Richard Burton, thought this was a poor film.

I lost track of this film after they pulled Elizabeth Taylor's face off, so I can't possibly divulge any plot points. (Okay, so it wasn't Elizabeth getting her face torn off, but it was somebody and it was SICK.)

The whole point to this film, as I understood it, was that Elizabeth Taylor's character Barbara is a superficial women who thinks everyone else is superficial also. Her marriage is on the rocks, so she automatically assumes she's getting ugly. Appearance isn't everything, Barbara dear. She is understandably shocked when her husband lets her in on that fact. He doesn't care if she looks like a troll named Brunhilde (which is how she starts off the film)--he just doesn't love her anymore. I thought he was a real twit, as he acts as if he couldn't care less about her and never did.

I get aggravated when Elizabeth Taylor's face is the centerpiece of a movie. The woman can act, but I have yet to meet anyone who realizes that. Movies like this mirror her real life to me. She has to look beautiful, and if she doesn't, she isn't a whole person. She doesn't function properly. (Small wonder she's had so many personal problems. Being a beautiful goddess all the time has to be difficult.) To me, Barbara Sawyer is a bit like Elizabeth Taylor. Her face seems to be her fortune, and she gets quite distressed if something happens to it. It seems unfortunate that Barbara (and possibly Ms. Taylor) place so much store by looking good. "My husband's leaving me. I'm not surprised, my hair looked awful today." That sounds unreal, but that is how Barbara acts. Even more unfortunate is how my whole review here is based on how she looks. Now I'm doing it. It just makes for a very pathetic individual, and maybe Barbara is supposed to be.

"Ash Wednesday" opens with a series of sepia-toned, fabricated photographs putting a young, glamorous Elizabeth Taylor together with a lean, dark-haired Henry Fonda; it's a great credits-sequence, well pulled off, until we find out that all this fancy living has taken its toll on poor Liz, portraying a lawyer's wife from Detroit (couldn't they aim higher than that?). Figuring plastic surgery is the only way to win back her estranged husband's love, Taylor checks into a Swiss medical resort and receives a full-body lift, later trading in her gauze and bandages for Valentino wraps and elaborate fur ensembles for a vacation at the local chalet. There's nothing remotely engaging about this scenario, except to see La Liz in a series of delectable wardrobe changes. We know that when Fonda arrives and sees her, nothing will be different (this is telegraphed far in advance). The picture was probably ahead of its time in depicting the vanity in men as well as in women, but Taylor and Fonda have a tough time creating actual characters (the writing being hardly more than a sketch). Liz has a nice moment asking Fonda to sing with her as they walk home, also a strong scene arguing with her daughter (Margaret Blye, who is well-cast; her eyes are almost as beautiful as Taylor's). But this fairy-tale-that-isn't hasn't much to offer aside from its surface attributes, which are photographed in a maddening series of subdued colors. ** from ****

Obviously, this sight recommends "Breast Men" as a suitable companion piece to this because of the cosmetic surgery angle. (I don't watch similar films together anyway.) To me, it is much more akin in spirit to "Shirley Valentine." Woman estranged from her husband in foreign country amidst beautiful scenery, a change of life, etc. For once, a woman having a co-star old enough to be her father actually works with the script! Taylor's acting here is more subtle than it had been in the previous decade, and it works. I could not relate to a woman who goes to such lengths for her husbands affection, but she is playing a woman of a bygone era, and almost twenty years older than she was at the time (the woman playing her daughter could easily have played her sister in another film). This is a very slowly paced film, but by golly you can't help but root for Taylor to find some solace, just like Shirley V. All of this leads up to an inevitable confrontation with her husband, and the movie keeps you guessing to the end what will happen between them. Was it worth it? I won't tell. Knowing what we now know about the kind of father and husband Henry Fonda was in real life can't help but taint the viewing of him in this role. But hey, they could've gotten Bing Crosby. All in all, I saw this movie on video about nine years ago, and as you can see it has stayed with me. So check it out, it beats the heck out of anything on Lifetime.

The start of Ash Wednesday might put some people off, but do what I did and just fast-forward about ten minutes. There's an actual filmed procedure of massive plastic surgery, to show what Elizabeth Taylor's character goes through. We first see her with gray hair, jowls, bags, sags, and extra fat. Next, she's bandaged up and recovering in a European hospital, until finally she's revealed to be the beautiful star we all know her to be.

Why does she have such extensive surgery? Because, as we see through a series of photographs in the opening credits, she has grown old with her husband, Henry Fonda. In order to please him and rekindle their love, she thinks turning back time will help. While recuperating and waiting for him to see her anew, she spends time in a beautiful Swiss ski lodge and meets new people - including the much younger, handsome Helmut Berger (who thinks they're the same age). One of my favorite scenes in when she rebuffs his initial advances. He encroaches on her solitary dinner at their hotel, and at the end of the meal he doesn't object when she is brought the bill. She leans in close and seductively asks for his room number. Then, she triumphantly writes the number down on the bill to force him to act like a gentleman!

You might not have heard of this 1970s drama, but if you're a Liz fan, try and find a copy. You'll find a very endearing performance from Ms. Taylor. This isn't her usual role, for even though she looks exquisitely gorgeous, she doesn't feel that way on the inside. She feels old, frumpy, and afraid of not being good enough. When she's confronted by her deepest fears and Henry Fonda is as cold as he usually is on the screen, she crumbles to pieces. It's a very strong piece of acting, and Liz, her costumes, and her snowy surroundings are lovely to look at.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to due to a graphic plastic surgery sequence, I wouldn't let my kids watch the beginning portion.