Musings: Shirley Valentine

I can't remember which female friend advised--nay, DEMANDED--that I watch Shirley Valentine, but apparently it made enough of an impression that I at least added it to the Netflix queue. Shirley arrived this week, and since we're off from school today, I popped it in.

Well, anonymous friend was right. This was a treat. The film is based on a play of the same name by Willy Russell. Pauline Collins, who plays Shirley, won a Tony for the stage version and was nominated for an Oscar for the film.

If you're not familiar with the film, Shirley is a fortysomething Liverpool housewife whose life is so strictured she cooks the same thing for tea every day (chips and egg on Tuesdays, steak on Thursdays, etc.) and hasn't thought of anything beyond housework and drudgery for a while. When her divorced friend Jane wins a two-week holiday in Greece and invites Shirley to come, she refuses--until her boring life and equally lifeless husband prod her into going.

On Mykonos, Shirley remembers what is was like to be her younger self: Shirley Valentine, who took risks, rolled her school skirts up, and laughed. She's been trapped so long in the roles of "wife" and "mother" that the Shirley inside has practically entered the Witness Protection Plan. She drinks wine by the beach. She sunbathes. She meets a charming Greek man named Costas who...you probably ought to rent it yourself. Needless to say, she becomes a very different woman than the one who leaves Liverpool's pouring rain behind and embraces warm Greek sands and depthless seas.

Willy Russell, like American playwright Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias) has certainly been listening to women. It's amazing how true-to-life the dialogue is, along with the not-uncommon observation that women in their forties have so subsumed themselves into roles, they forget their essential selves. The book I wrote for last year's NaNoWriMo, Life After Little League, actually explores some of these themes, but not in the same way. Makes me want to go back to the book, actually, and see what I can do myself.