Deux amies

For crying out loud, all the orevious reviewers here are soap opera fans that screem at their television sets obviously. This novel's adaptation, the casting, the cinematography, the rythm of the piece all combine to hit the nail on the head for the time. It spoke to USA women who were considered successful for their generation having to grapple middle-age and a changing world.

I mean no offense to Carol Burnett, but I don't find her an attractive woman, in any way. Obviously, she disagrees with my assessment, otherwise she wouldn't have taken the lead role in Between Friends. In the HBO movie, she plays a single mother who willingly engages in affairs with married men. She's continually referred to as beautiful, sexy, irresistible, and a volcano in the sack-a-roo. If you're confused by that, you will be befuddled when you learn the second lead in the film, a meek woman who wants to marry and be taken care of, is played by Elizabeth Taylor. Did the casting director switch the paperwork? For the life of me, I don't understand why the two women didn't switch roles.

I'm not trying to be mean, but it just didn't work for me. Liz did a very good job in a role that's against type; she's far from calculating, a little stupid, and finds sex with her sweetie-pie repellent. But when watching Carol's scenes, you can practically smell her ego as she announces to the television, "See! I am sexy!" and it just doesn't work. Plus, in the scenes when she's not in the bedroom, her character's personality is pretty lousy. She yells at people and has no sympathy or tolerance for people who don't want to blindly take her orders.

If that type of movie appeals to you, I'll offer one more warning: There is no plot to this movie. It's a movie about two women who meet by chance, and disjointed scenes are strung together to show the audience that they remain friends in the years to come. No plot and no point. No bueno for me.

I liked this movie well enough, but pretty sure I prefer the similarly titled Mary Tyler Moore film from three years later, "Just Between Friends". The characters in that were more likable to me, not that the stories were the same, but close enough that I started comparing them in my mind. Besides that, I just find latter-day Mary more likable than most in general. Nothing against Liz or Carol, but while watching this, I was missing Mary.

As for the storyline itself, meh. It didn't make me laugh, it didn't make me cry, it hardly made me smile. Just meh. I will say that the teen daughter in this was very irritating though, so I guess there's that- irritation. On another, some lines of dialogue from Carol and Liz (the blood sisters talk, the sex talk) were very Joan Jett, and I appreciated that. But otherwise meh. I am quite fond of Carol and Liz though, and this is definitely worth seeing for them- which is why I can't give it any less than 6 stars- and am tempted to give it even more.

BETWEEN FRIENDS was an HBO-TV movie that brought together two show biz legends- Elizabeth Taylor and Carol Burnett, for the first time in this shallow but watchable film about two women who run into each other (literally) and become best friends in the blink of an eye. Burnett's character, if memory serves, is a divorced real estate agent with a daughter, currently having an affair with a married man and who, since her divorce has drifted from one man to another and that suits her fine because "nobody makes her cry" anymore. Elizabeth Taylor is a sheltered woman on the verge of a divorce who has no idea how to live by herself, meet a man, or act on a date. Granted, it is fun watching these two show biz icons share the screen, but the script leaves a lot to be desired...these two women have absolutely nothing in common and their becoming best friends makes no sense and it is definitely stretching credibility to have Burnett playing the aging sex kitten who floats from affair to affair and Taylor as the woman who doesn't know how to even meet a man. But if you're a fan of the two actresses, it's worth a look.

Carol Burnett is Mary Catherine Castelli, a real estate agent who meets a Jewish divorcee Deborah Shapiro (Elizabeth Taylor) when their cars crash outside Mary Catherine's office. Deborah asks Mary Catherine to sell her house, her `Tara', but snowed in on the day of her inspection, Mary Catherine and Deborah bond and become blood sisters. Mary Catherine is fresh from her own divorce where her husband left her for a younger woman and has had a series of affairs with married men.

It seems that director Lou Antonio has Burnett and Taylor switch expected roles, and Burnett is fine as Mary Catherine, a woman uncaring about her greying hair, her sexual candor convincing. She swears with gusto, and is fun when laughing at having her toes sucked, and covering up one of her lovers telephone dirty talk.

The teleplay by Shelley List and Jonathan Estrin, based on List's novel Nobody Makes Me Cry, explains the title by Mary Catherine's promiscuity, where `No man touches me, and nobody makes me cry'. Of course, it is Deborah who makes Mary Catherine cry, breaking through her anger and self-loathing. Mary Catherine's anger allows her to be funny, with `The world, my dear, outrageous as it may seem, does not revolve around you', and reflective after she ends her latest affair `The bad girl stuff doesn't do it for me anymore. No more nuns to shock'. One of the reasons the casting against-type works is that Mary Catherine is the more interesting of the two women, though she is saddled with the ubiquitous whiny teenage daughter Francie (Barbara Bush).

Taylor is believable as a romantic, a woman who is happiest when she has a man, considering how many times she has been married in real life. However the idea of her stooping to advertising in the personal columns is a big ask, and perhaps this is acknowledged by presenting the only respondee as a pathological type.

Antonio's montage of the women talking is full of awkward pauses and much drinking, and if the material finally reveals itself to be lesser than the performers, Burnett and Taylor make a surprising and entertaining team. Taylor is very funny. Hitting a cymbal as she exits her son's room, telling off the `cretinous' customers at a bookshop she works at, the way she pronounces `smooth' for `smooth dancer'. Her feigned innocence when told she is leading when dancing, the darting of her eyes in embarrassment at unwanted advances, and making a drunken scene at her 50th birthday party standing on a coffee table, culminating in `Will somebody get me out of here. I've gotta pee like mad'. Taylor's breathless recital of Walt Whitman at the bookshop is worth enduring for the cretins punchline. Carrying a little weight and the director making us aware of her lack of height, Taylor is still astonishingly beautiful.