100 Kick-Ass Female Characters: #85
85. Birdee Calvert, as seen in the film Hope Floats, portrayed by Sandra Bullock
I am a person who unashamedly loves romantic comedies, but I also love what could be labeled "romantic dramas" more. As much as I love a good rom-com, I think movies that explore all the aspects of a woman's life beyond her romantic relationships are much more important, and Hope Floats is a perfect example of how to do that.
Hope Floats tells the story of Birdee Calvert, a Chicago housewife who finds out her husband is cheating o her with her best friend on a daytime talk show. Humiliated and now in the process of divorcing her high school sweetheart-turned-husband, Birdee and her daughter Bernice move back to Texas to live with eccentric mother and her nephew, whom was abandoned by Birdee's sister while she pursues an acting career. What Birdee quickly learns is that the hometown she remembers in not the same one she returns to; having been a popular cheerleader and Homecoming queen, Birdee learns she treated people pretty terribly and they are reveling in her car crash of a life. Having been a housewife following school, Birdee has no job skills and, as a result, ends up a clerk at a photo place. Her relationship with her mother, which has always been strained, continues to be such as her mother berates her for wallowing in self-pity, and her relationship with her daughter Bernice suffers as Bernice hates Texas, hates being away from her father, and blames Birdee for everything. The only friend Birdee has is a man named Justin, whom she knew as a child and who is obviously romantically interested in her. Birdee learns to navigate her new life, her relationships, and comes to terms with who she really is without her husband there to define her.
What I love about Birdee is she literally has to rebuild her life from the ground up. Birdee has lived her life being defined by other people: she became pleasing in high school to make up for her parents' eccentricities, she followed her husband wherever he went to make him happy, and she let everyone else tell her who she was. With the divorce, Birdee has to do what most people have to do after high school: figure out who she is when stripped of everyone else. Birdee isn't necessarily the most likable person at the start of the film; even though she is obviously the wronged party, she is also someone who languishes in her pain and is blind to what it's doing to Bernice. But Birdee begins to pick herself up and cobble together a new life for herself and her daughter. Birdee can be an idiot (as her mother is quick to point out) and she can do things which hurt people (particularly Justin), but the story of her evolution is wonderful to watch. Birdee literally transforms from a Stepford Wife who is always carefully put together and eager to please into a woman who begins to eschew the superficial trappings of her former life and embrace a more grounded way of living. By the film's end, she is not just Bernice's mother but her nephew Travis's as well, and she is doing her best to raise them alongside Justin, a man who appreciates who she is and doesn't try to change her. The deeply unhappy woman we meet in the beginning of the film is worlds away from the happy, satisfied woman at the film's end.
And that's delightfully kick-ass.
I am a person who unashamedly loves romantic comedies, but I also love what could be labeled "romantic dramas" more. As much as I love a good rom-com, I think movies that explore all the aspects of a woman's life beyond her romantic relationships are much more important, and Hope Floats is a perfect example of how to do that.
Hope Floats tells the story of Birdee Calvert, a Chicago housewife who finds out her husband is cheating o her with her best friend on a daytime talk show. Humiliated and now in the process of divorcing her high school sweetheart-turned-husband, Birdee and her daughter Bernice move back to Texas to live with eccentric mother and her nephew, whom was abandoned by Birdee's sister while she pursues an acting career. What Birdee quickly learns is that the hometown she remembers in not the same one she returns to; having been a popular cheerleader and Homecoming queen, Birdee learns she treated people pretty terribly and they are reveling in her car crash of a life. Having been a housewife following school, Birdee has no job skills and, as a result, ends up a clerk at a photo place. Her relationship with her mother, which has always been strained, continues to be such as her mother berates her for wallowing in self-pity, and her relationship with her daughter Bernice suffers as Bernice hates Texas, hates being away from her father, and blames Birdee for everything. The only friend Birdee has is a man named Justin, whom she knew as a child and who is obviously romantically interested in her. Birdee learns to navigate her new life, her relationships, and comes to terms with who she really is without her husband there to define her.
What I love about Birdee is she literally has to rebuild her life from the ground up. Birdee has lived her life being defined by other people: she became pleasing in high school to make up for her parents' eccentricities, she followed her husband wherever he went to make him happy, and she let everyone else tell her who she was. With the divorce, Birdee has to do what most people have to do after high school: figure out who she is when stripped of everyone else. Birdee isn't necessarily the most likable person at the start of the film; even though she is obviously the wronged party, she is also someone who languishes in her pain and is blind to what it's doing to Bernice. But Birdee begins to pick herself up and cobble together a new life for herself and her daughter. Birdee can be an idiot (as her mother is quick to point out) and she can do things which hurt people (particularly Justin), but the story of her evolution is wonderful to watch. Birdee literally transforms from a Stepford Wife who is always carefully put together and eager to please into a woman who begins to eschew the superficial trappings of her former life and embrace a more grounded way of living. By the film's end, she is not just Bernice's mother but her nephew Travis's as well, and she is doing her best to raise them alongside Justin, a man who appreciates who she is and doesn't try to change her. The deeply unhappy woman we meet in the beginning of the film is worlds away from the happy, satisfied woman at the film's end.
And that's delightfully kick-ass.