How to Make an American Quilt
May. 20th, 2019 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerHow to Make an American Quilt is less about quilting and more about adultery than I had expected from the title. Our heroine, twenty-six-year-old Finn (Winona Ryder) is spending the summer with her grandmother and her great-aunt, hoping to overcome the commitment-phobia that is blighting both her professional and her romantic life: she’s on her third topic for her master’s thesis, and she can’t quite decide whether she really wants to marry her fiance Sam.
Naturally (or rather, inevitably for a movie of this type), Finn’s process of growth and discovery involves learning the life stories not only of her grandmother and great-aunt but also most of the women in their quilting group, and there is… a lot of adultery. One of the women is married to a philandering painter, who is currently sleeping with another quilting group member, and she complains that the group is mad at her about it: “The hardest part of being a woman is having women friends,” she sulks to Finn.
Yes, Constance, I’m sure that if you were man and you slept with the wife of one of your fishing buddies, he would be super okay with it! If there’s one thing I know about men, it’s that they love it when their friends sleep with their wives.
I feel that I’m being a little unfair to this movie. It’s very much in the tradition of a multigenerational women’s film, like Steel Magnolias or Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood except set in California rather than the South; it isn’t quite as assured as either of those two films, but neither is it badly done. It’s just that the ideal amount of cheating I want in my movies is zero.
And it really could have used a lot more quilt shots.
Naturally (or rather, inevitably for a movie of this type), Finn’s process of growth and discovery involves learning the life stories not only of her grandmother and great-aunt but also most of the women in their quilting group, and there is… a lot of adultery. One of the women is married to a philandering painter, who is currently sleeping with another quilting group member, and she complains that the group is mad at her about it: “The hardest part of being a woman is having women friends,” she sulks to Finn.
Yes, Constance, I’m sure that if you were man and you slept with the wife of one of your fishing buddies, he would be super okay with it! If there’s one thing I know about men, it’s that they love it when their friends sleep with their wives.
I feel that I’m being a little unfair to this movie. It’s very much in the tradition of a multigenerational women’s film, like Steel Magnolias or Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood except set in California rather than the South; it isn’t quite as assured as either of those two films, but neither is it badly done. It’s just that the ideal amount of cheating I want in my movies is zero.
And it really could have used a lot more quilt shots.
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Date: 2019-05-21 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-21 07:33 pm (UTC)(no, that doesn't ring true, either).
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Date: 2019-05-21 09:16 pm (UTC)FYI, I am way behind on Kristin Lavransdatter again; I think this book was probably a poor choice for a chapter-a-night read, because some of the chapters are way too long for that. I'm hoping to finish book 2, part II (Husaby) by tomorrow.