Easy Virtue (spoilers & personal angst content)
As part of my day off today (another post) we went to see "Easy Virtue". Now I don't know the original play and I don't know how far this screen version matches it or not. I'm not interested in that.
I went to see it because it was a costume drama, had pretty scenery and the trailers made me laugh. It started off well but by the end of it I was fairly fuming.
I hadn't expected to identify so strongly with the Jessica Biel character of Larita. Points of connection are as follows:
*girl marries into overly-close family and is expected to assimilate and not to have any hopes, desires or indeed, personality of her own but to quietly play the dutiful daughter-in-law and not make a fuss about anything [that would be my in-laws, oh yes]
*her MIL is very much the matriarch [even X has said that his mother is the matriarch of the family, used those very words]
*MIL disapproves of said girl and did expect the son to 'do better'
*SILs also in turns approve and disapprove of girl (it is easier to blame her than to blame themselves when things go wrong)
*MIL is racist [in the film it is the English disapproval of all things American but my MIL was wont to ask, if I did something that she wasn't used to, "Is that an Asian thing?". Ugh. I also remember when she went to visit some of my relatives in Singapore and cme home talking delightedly about seeing "real Asians in real HDB flats", if she'd used the word 'darkies' she couldn't have made her meaning more clear...]
*MIL hints that her son's previous girlfriend would have been more suitable [my MIL actually came to me the week after we got engaged and talked to me about X's previous girlfriend and what a loving religious girl she was and how X and girlfriend used to go to church together; this was to get me to marry in the church; she'd completely my idea of a civil ceremony in an outside venue and suggested that X wouldn't want to have anything to do with me if I wasn't a churchgoer - this lead to years of hypocrisy which I am not at all proud of and which I hold my MIL directly responsible for]
*the son sides with the family and does nothing to stand up for or assist his new wife until it is too late
I think the point where the movie turned for me and it all fell into place is when the character of the son said "But they're my family". Believe me, there's nothing more upsetting when your husband talks about 'his family' and he doesn't mean you.
So my fluffy indulgent day-off-work costume drama ended up stirring up all kinds of emotions that I would rather not have dealt with. By the end, when Larita has finally had it, when her husband fails to take her side and stand up for her and her evil MIL was ordering her out of the house (and I too have been ordered out of my MIL's house once, that'll be a Xmas that I'll never forget...) I was having to hold myself back from shouting at the screen. Especially at the husband who was letting her go to fall in line with his miserable, manipulating mother.
I can completely understand why she went, why she couldn't stay around them any more; the only difference is that she left her husband when she left them. I've simply tried to leave my in-laws and X claims that he cannot understand it. Perhsps now that he's seen the movie, he'll have a better understanding of how I feel.
Rant over.
I went to see it because it was a costume drama, had pretty scenery and the trailers made me laugh. It started off well but by the end of it I was fairly fuming.
I hadn't expected to identify so strongly with the Jessica Biel character of Larita. Points of connection are as follows:
*girl marries into overly-close family and is expected to assimilate and not to have any hopes, desires or indeed, personality of her own but to quietly play the dutiful daughter-in-law and not make a fuss about anything [that would be my in-laws, oh yes]
*her MIL is very much the matriarch [even X has said that his mother is the matriarch of the family, used those very words]
*MIL disapproves of said girl and did expect the son to 'do better'
*SILs also in turns approve and disapprove of girl (it is easier to blame her than to blame themselves when things go wrong)
*MIL is racist [in the film it is the English disapproval of all things American but my MIL was wont to ask, if I did something that she wasn't used to, "Is that an Asian thing?". Ugh. I also remember when she went to visit some of my relatives in Singapore and cme home talking delightedly about seeing "real Asians in real HDB flats", if she'd used the word 'darkies' she couldn't have made her meaning more clear...]
*MIL hints that her son's previous girlfriend would have been more suitable [my MIL actually came to me the week after we got engaged and talked to me about X's previous girlfriend and what a loving religious girl she was and how X and girlfriend used to go to church together; this was to get me to marry in the church; she'd completely my idea of a civil ceremony in an outside venue and suggested that X wouldn't want to have anything to do with me if I wasn't a churchgoer - this lead to years of hypocrisy which I am not at all proud of and which I hold my MIL directly responsible for]
*the son sides with the family and does nothing to stand up for or assist his new wife until it is too late
I think the point where the movie turned for me and it all fell into place is when the character of the son said "But they're my family". Believe me, there's nothing more upsetting when your husband talks about 'his family' and he doesn't mean you.
So my fluffy indulgent day-off-work costume drama ended up stirring up all kinds of emotions that I would rather not have dealt with. By the end, when Larita has finally had it, when her husband fails to take her side and stand up for her and her evil MIL was ordering her out of the house (and I too have been ordered out of my MIL's house once, that'll be a Xmas that I'll never forget...) I was having to hold myself back from shouting at the screen. Especially at the husband who was letting her go to fall in line with his miserable, manipulating mother.
I can completely understand why she went, why she couldn't stay around them any more; the only difference is that she left her husband when she left them. I've simply tried to leave my in-laws and X claims that he cannot understand it. Perhsps now that he's seen the movie, he'll have a better understanding of how I feel.
Rant over.