Directorial debut of screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (The Bridges of Madison County), a slightly fawning women's picture about starting over after the derailment of a sixteen-year marriage and striking up unconventional new relationships with a blues singer and a bereaved elevator operator. In the early going, LaGravenese does some creative things on the soundtrack with novelistic interior monologue ("What am I supposed to do about crack babies?") and creative things visually with the seamless interweaving of fantasies. For some reason, he weans himself off these devices after a while, or at any rate he seems to do so, but a general tendency toward showiness and shtick makes for some uncertainty in sorting out the fantasy and the reality. Surely the lesbian line-dance must have been fantasy, mustn't it? (Even though it is not, like earlier ones, clearly signalled as such by a door-slamming exit from it.) But the muffin-throwing incident in the lawyer's office, to judge from the plausible reactions of onlookers as well as from the nastier aftermath to it in the elevator, does not appear to have been imaginary. And if the heroine was actually going to act on her impulse to dial up an out-call masseur from the classifieds, the materializing reality at her front door could, would, should have been a bit more thorny than the soap-opera dreamboat with the tight buns, chiselled abs, drilled dimples, and magic fingers. LaGravenese, not just on the massage table, gives great play to the sense of touch, the sensuality of touching -- a nice change from the acrobatic erotics we have come to expect from Hollywood. That alone, under the current loosened standards, would qualify his movie as adult. An additional qualification is his casting of the movie with something in mind besides the box-office. Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito, Queen Latifah, Martin Donovan. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.