Paul Mazursky has covered the sad and happy sides of sex before in such films as Blume in Love and Bill and Carol and Ted and Alice, both movies that are classics in their own right, but they never quite reach the depths of emotion as An Unmarried Woman. This is in large part due to the daring and vulnerable performance by Jill Clayburgh as Erica, the titular unmarried woman. But Erika doesn’t start the film out that way, and that is the beginning of a personal drama that was timely in the 70s as divorce rates were skyrocketing in the world. It’s even more relevant today as the world looks at marriage in a whole different way than it has in the past.
We get some semblance of Erika’s marriage right there in the opening credits. An upbeat melody, composed by Bill Conti, plays over views of New York City, eventually zooming in on a couple jogging along the East River. They look like a happy and content couple, and to some degree, they are. At one point, the man, Martin (Michael Murphy), steps in dog poop and throws a tantrum, even accusing Erika of wishing it on him before he throws his shoe into the river behind him. He’s swift to shake it off, but that moment of anger hints at problems below the surface. She is content in the relationship, but is she really happy? They go home and have a little morning romance before he leaves for work as a stockbroker. Later that evening, he tries to reignite the flames of passion again but finds her not in the mood and throws another tantrum, sulking for not getting his way.
Some days later, through fake tears, he confesses to her that he loves another, younger woman and is leaving her. Suddenly, Erika is single again, raising a teenage daughter who is experimenting with romance herself. Erika, at first, falls back on her three girlfriends for support, then a therapist. She spends one night of casual sex with a man she doesn’t love, just to satisfy some carnal need within her. Eventually, she meets another man, an artist she can connect with, even though it, too, begins with a bout of casual sex. But even as things feel like they may be serious between them, she is not sure if she is ready to be in a serious relationship again.
An Unmarried Woman is one of the most realistic depictions of married life I have ever seen on the screen. There is a sense of sameness to Erika and Martin’s relationship that anyone who has been married for any real length of time can understand. From the casualness of their conversations to the climbing into bed with the television on displaying the stock prices, we get a sense of the routine of their lives together. We get a real sense of who Erika is in these moments, too. Memorably, we see her dancing in her T-shirt and panties to Swan Lake on the FM Radio. There is nothing sensual about the scene, just a woman feeling a little joy in her life.
That joy ends cruelly and abruptly with her husband’s confession, and for the next hour, she will have little to be happy about. This portion of the film is inundated with vignettes, illustrating just how upended and miserable Erika has become. She has been married for seventeen years to Martin, and now that whole part of her life, something she has identified herself with for so long, is gone. She feels lost and angry. She has conversations with her girlfriends about their various romances, their divorces, and their own personal fears about the life ahead of them, but up until now, she couldn’t really relate to it. Now she can. She takes her anger out on her daughter, Patti (Lisa Lucas), when she comes home one day to find her making out with her boyfriend. Though she is quick to recover and apologize, it’s obvious she needs some help pulling her life back together.
This brings her to her therapist, Tanya (Penelope Russianoff). Penelope was an actual therapist and helped shape the psychology of what Erika was going through and how she would respond to this sudden and traumatic shift in her life. What she ultimately ends up doing is spurring Erika to get back into life and seek out relationships again. Men are not the enemy, not in general, she opines. But Erika’s first encounters are less than stellar. She goes to a brunch that ends in a cab ride with a man who tries to force his affections on her, not understanding what he has done wrong. Later, she will hook up with Charlie (Cliff Gorman), a chauvinistic co-worker. She does it purely for the sex but finds the hook-up unfulfilling.
At first, it seems like her relationship with Saul (Alan Bates), the artist, is going to be more of the same, a one-night stand with an abstract painter, but that changes. Both value their independence. Patti reacts hostilely when she meets him, viewing Saul as a potential replacement for her father, but Saul doesn’t want to be that. Neither does Erika. A lot has changed for her in the time since Martin left, and while she is enjoying her time with Saul, she doesn’t want it to get too serious.
Jill Clayburgh is as vulnerable in this film as a woman can get and remain honest with the audience. There is no false note in what she is doing here. I get the impression that Paul Mazursky gave her carte blanche to improvise moments and allowed her to be raw and emotional as she saw fit. We see this in the Swan Lake dancing scene as she moves around the apartment. She’s somewhat exposed, yet she is happy. After Martin leaves her, we get this poignant moment when she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and just stops for a moment to stare at herself, examining her face in a way that she probably wouldn’t have done just a few days before.
This is not a movie about happy endings, and to force that onto the narrative would ruin it. Roger Ebert once said that the line “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry” is dumb, and he never needed to say that about a film, at least not until he saw An Unmarried Woman. I can echo those sentiments. I laughed a few times, and I cried more than a few times during this film. I saw moments in Erika and Martin’s marriage that were familiar to me and my twenty-six years of marriage, too. That’s the brilliance of this film and the eerie realism of life in a long-term relationship. There is a complacency that sets in, and it can be brutally uprooting when something happens to change that.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Paul Mazursky and Anthony Ray
Best Actress: Jill Clayburgh
Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen: Paul Mazursky
____________________________________________________
Release Date: March 5, 1978
Running Time: 125 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Jill Clayburgh, Alan Bates, Michael Murphy, and Cliff Gorman
Directed By: Paul Mazursky
Comments
Post a Comment