Shirley Valentine
Product Description
In the role that won her Broadway’s acclaimed Tony Award, Pauline Collins is the hilariously endearing Shirley Valentine, a wisecracking, completely unpredictable English housewife who proves it’s never too late to recapture your dreams. Bored with her suburban life, Shirley takes a chance on adventure when a friend invites her on a vacation to Greece. Within no time she’s back to her rebellious teenage roots, saying yes to a wild fling with a handsome rogue (Tom Conti) and the life she’s always wanted.Amazon.com
As movie midlife crises go, Shirley Valentine’s is a doozy. A bored Northern England housewife, wondering what her life is about and how to navigate around her clueless husband, Shirley would be at her wits’ end–except that she knows how to dream big. As played by the incomparable Pauline Collins (who created the role on Broadway, and won a Tony for it), Shirley embraces not only her own constricted life, but the dreams of the big, beautiful world beyond it.
Directed by Lewis Gilbert (Educating Rita), Shirley Valentine is an anthem to the freedom of the soul–with a generous dose of salt of the earth. As she assesses her life, Shirley’s humor never fails her: “I think sex is like supermarkets, you know, overrated. Just a lot of pushing and shoving and you still come out with very little at the end.” Yet Collins’ Shirley gets as much out of defending her right to her dream (a sunny holiday in Greece) as she does realizing it, and that makes for much of the glow of the film. For while Shirley has a cinematic romance on her vacation (Tom Conti plays the dreamboat), the affair is more of a metaphor for what Shirley insists on having in her real daily life. Watch for Joanna Lumley in a delicious cameo, pre-Ab Fab. And embrace this Valentine, and share it with those you love, all year round. –A.T. Hurley
Stills from Shirley Valentine (click for larger image)
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This could have been a very good movie; the under-appreciated housewife daring to go off to Greece without her husband, having a brief and refreshing fling with a sexy Greek man, and an ultimate reconciliation with her husband. The problem with the wife character is that she tells the viewer everything, every single thing that she is feeling, how she is reacting, posing questions to the audience, etc. So much of what she told the audience could have been brought out with non-verbal gestures, facial expressions, and good acting. The viewer is not trusted to be able to tell what is going on with the main character; the viewer is told how to feel, with whom to sympathize, and is actually lectured on middle age angst; really, we are smarter and more perceptive than that. It’s like putting a sign on a tree that says “This is a tree.” This story’s approach might work on stage, but, on the screen, it is annoying.
Rating: 2 / 5
Shirley Valentine
This is a feminist flick filled with stereotypes: the grunt, unfeeling husband; the awful, insensitive kids; the nosy neighbor; the kitchen slavery that is all there is of housewifery. Suddenly our heroine goes to Greece on a trip, gets laid, and is now filled with “personal meaning.” It’s all quite crude and spiritually and emotionally empty. (Moreover, pudgy, 49-year-old Pauline shouldn’t be shown nude.) Still, there is much good humor in the movie, which is filmed and directed brilliantly. Collins and Conti are excellent, as are the bit actors.
Rating: 4 / 5
Shirley Valentine
Shirley Valentine (Pauline Collins) is a 42-year-old Englishwoman, married to a dullard, whose kids are grown and on their own, who feels Life is slipping by her. She goes to Greece on a two-week holiday with a friend, has a brief fling with a Greek man (Tom Conti), and decides not to come home again. (“Will anyone really miss me?” she asks herself.)
The original play this is based on was a monologue, so there’s lots of talk in the movie, much of it directed straight at the camera (us). There are some good funny one-liners along the way, but for a woman who’s supposed to have learned something about the simple pleasures life can offer, she doesn’t seem very happy by the end (her husband comes to Greece for her). It’s a good movie, though, and keeps us engaged, but it could’ve been great with just a little more oomph to it.
Rating: 4 / 5
Shirley Valentine
This is about a wife/mother who has lost her own wild self in the reponsibilities of marriage and motherhood. She gets a trip to Greece and returns to a state of making her own choices. A Greek chases her middle-aged, postpartum body. I forgot to say that this is hysterically funny. I bought the video so that I could get all the English accent jokes, and to share with all my women friends.
Rating: 5 / 5
Shirley Valentine
Hard to find anywhere but Amazon, excellent movie, especially if you are British!
Rating: 5 / 5
Shirley Valentine