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The Heidi Chronicles
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by Turner Home Entertainment
Sales Rank: 17091
Price: $14.98
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Jamie Lee Curtis stars in this adaptation of Wendy Wasserstein's hit play <I>The Heidi Chronicles</I>. A lecture about ignored female painters by art historian Heidi Holland (Curtis) frames the decade-by-decade story of her life, starting with a high school dance in the mid-'60s and working its way through political rallies, feminist consciousness raising, gay rights, AIDS, the excess of the 1980s--it's a bit like <I>Forrest Gump</I>, but with a smart, self-deprecating woman instead of a dumb cheerful guy. Wasserstein traces a well-intentioned (if glib) arc of female experience through this time period, articulating the costs of independence as well as the glories. The important personal realizations come fast and thick, but Curtis, Tom Hulce, Kim Cattrall (in a wealth of era-appropriate wigs), and Peter Friedman do their best to keep <I>The Heidi Chronicles</I> from being a baby-boomer pop-up book. <I>--Bret Fetzer</I>
Viewer Reviews
Heidi Holland, with her degrees from Vassar and Yale and a Fulbright in England under her belt, opens this film lecturing on art history, showing fine portraits of women, painted by women artists who are virtually unknown, though their work is as good as that of the male painters who dominated their ages. Using the art history "hook" into the question of women and their roles--as they see their roles, as men see women's roles, and as women search for happiness within these roles--director Paul Bogart gives life to Wendy Wasserstein's teleplay, adapted from her Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play of the same name. Introducing each change of time period through the changing slides of the art history lecture, the film explores women trying to find meaning in their lives from the late 1960s through the 1990s.
Jamie Lee Curtis as Heidi Holland, Tom Hulce as her best friend Peter Patrone, and Peter Friedman as Scoop Rosenbaum, her sometime lover, take us from Heidi's high school and college days, as she grows in her thinking and view of her role in life, to her experiences with women's lib focus groups, the Eugene McCarthy campaign, the death of John Lennon, the campaign of Geraldine Ferraro, the rise of AIDS, the gay movement, and ultimately Heidi's realization of what is important to her, not just professionally and philosophically, but personally and emotionally.
High humor and absurdity are nicely balanced with sentiment and sorrowful revelation. Though the film treats significant social movements in a relatively brief time, it offers much food for thought without hitting the viewer over the head with polemics. Fine acting, much of it low key, note-perfect period details (the hairstyles for both men and women are priceless), and excellent pacing create a film that is simultaneously charming and enlightening. "Meatier" than most films created for the neighborhood theater, this teleplay represents one of the finest moments in television production, bringing to the home screen a production which both engages the mind and amuses the spirit. Mary Whipple
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The Heidi Chronicles
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