Jill Eikenberry | Through the Shattered Lens

A large group of people gather together one weekend for a fraternity/sorority reunion. Since college, some of them have become rich and powerful. Some of them are now famous. Some of them are now seedy and disreputable. They all have college memories, though there’s such a wide variety of age groups represented that it’s hard to believe that any of them actually went to college together. After the men spend the day playing practical jokes and touch football and the women spend the night talking about their hopes and dreams, they wake up the next morning to discover the someone has murdered Treat Williams. A pony-tailed sheriff (Robert Wagner) shows up to question everyone.

Parallel Lives was made for Showtime with the help of the Sundance Institute. Today, it’s a forgotten film but, for some reason, it was very popular with American Airlines during the summer of 1997. That summer, when I flew to the UK, Parallel Lives was one of the movies that we were shown. (It was the second feature. The first feature was Down Periscope, a submarine comedy starring Kelsey Grammar. Fourteen year-old me enjoyed Down Periscope but, in retrospect, it wasn’t much of a flight.) A month and a half later, when I flew back to the U.S., Parallel Lives was again one of the films shown on the flight! For that reason, I may be the only person on the planet who has not forgotten that a film called Parallel Lives exists.

Parallel Lives, I later learned, was an entirely improvised film. The huge cast were all given their characters and a brief outline of the film’s story and they were then allowed to come up with their own dialogue. Unfortunately, no one did a very good job of it and the men were reduced to bro-ing it up while the women spent most of the movie having extended group therapy. The story doesn’t add up too much and, even when I rewatched it from an adult’s perspective, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to get out of everyone talking about how different the real world was from college. Technically, the film’s a murder mystery but you can’t improvise a successful murder mystery. This film proves that point.

Of course, it doesn’t help that there are 26 characters, all trying to get a word in at the same time. Some of the roles don’t make much sense. Dudley Moore shows up, playing an imaginary friend. (How do you improvise being a figment of someone’s imagination?) James Brolin introduces himself to everyone as being, “Professor Doctor Spencer Jones” and that appears to be as far as he got with his improv. Ben Gazzara is a gambler and Mira Sorvino is the prostitute that he brings to the reunion while Mira’s father, Paul Sorvino, moons the camera several times. Jack Klugman is a senator with Alzheimer’s and Patricia Wettig is his daughter. The majority of the movie centers around Jim Belushi, playing a reporter and falling in love with JoBeth Williams. Liza Minnelli, Helen Slater, Levar Burton, Lindsay Crouse, Matthew Perry, Ally Sheedy, and Gena Rowlands all have small roles. How did so many talented people come together to make such a forgettable movie and why did American Airlines decide it was the movie to show people on their way to another country? That’s the true mystery of Parallel Lives.

I have mixed feelings about the 1978 best picture nominee An Unmarried Woman and I really wish I didn’t because this is one of those films that I really want to love.

Erica (Jill Clayburgh, who did not win the Oscar that she deserved for this film) appears to have the perfect life. She works at an art gallery in New York. She has smart, sophisticated friends. She has an accomplished teenager daughter (Lisa Lucas). She has a beautiful apartment. Early on in the film, she wakes up and literally dances from her bedroom to the living room and back again.

And, of course, she has a husband. His name is Martin and he’s a successful stock broker. Of course, there are hints that everything might not be perfect. She and Martin are a cute couple but they’re not exactly passionate. One need only watch Erica carefully wash dogshit off of Martin’s expensive running shoes to tell who is getting the most out of the marriage. Add to that, Martin is played by Michael Murphy and, as anyone familiar with 70s cinema knows, Murphy specialized in playing well-dressed, outwardly friendly heels. And, of course, the film is called An Unmarried Woman and the title can’t be true as long as Erica’s married.

So, you’re not exactly surprised when Martin suddenly breaks down in tears and tells Erica that he’s fallen in love with a younger woman and that he’s leaving her.

The rest of the film deals with Erica’s attempts to adjust to suddenly being an unmarried woman and a single mom. We follow as she struggles to get back her confidence. The scenes of Erica dealing with her suddenly rebellious daughter really struck home to me, largely because I’m a rebellious daughter of divorce myself. There’s a few great scenes of Erica turning to her girlfriends for support. (Importantly, one of Erica’s friends is happily married, as if the film wants to make sure that we understand that not all marriages are as bad as Erica and Martin’s.) We watch as Erica starts dating again, having a memorable one-night stand with the obnoxious but oddly likable Charlie (Cliff Gorman). Finally, she ends up dating a rugged, bearded artist (Alan Bates) and she has to decide whether she wants to remain independent or not.

And it’s all amazingly well-acted and fun to watch but I have to admit that I was a little bit disappointed the first time that I saw An Unmarried Woman. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to like it as much as I wanted. The more I thought about it, the more clear my issue with it became.

As a character, Eric was simply too wealthy.

As I watched Erica struggle with being an unmarried woman, it was hard for me not to compare her struggles with the struggles that my own mom had to deal with after her divorce. The film, and specifically Clayburgh’s lead performance, got so much right. But there’s a difference — a huge difference — between an unmarried woman who has an apartment in Manhattan and a dream job at an art gallery and a woman like my mom who worked multiple jobs, spent hours worrying about how to pay the bills, and who had to do all of this while dealing with four stubborn daughters. And so, whenever I saw Erica talking to her therapist about how upset she was over suddenly being single, there was a part of me that wanted to say, “Try doing it while living in South Dallas and having to deal with a brat like me.”

The second time that I watched An Unmarried Woman, I was able to better appreciate the film. Now that I knew that Erica’s experiences were not going to be universal, I could focus on Jill Clayburgh’s great performance in the lead role. I could marvel at how marvelously wimpy Michael Murphy was in the role of Martin. I could laugh at Cliff Gorman’s comedic performance. As for Alan Bates as that bearded artist — well, sorry, that still didn’t work for me. Eventually, I could accept Erica’s perfect apartment and her perfect job but suddenly introducing a perfect boyfriend who also happened to be a passionate and financially successful painter; it all felt like a bit too much.

But, in the end, An Unmarried Woman is a good film and a valuable historical document of its time. If for no other reason, see it for Jill Clayburgh’s lead performance.