Wednesday, April 06, 2005

David Ansen

“Jill Clayburgh was "An Unmarried Woman." She was equally unmarried in "Starting Over"…. The problematic unmarriedness of Jill Clayburgh has become a stereotype, a cliché. "It's My Turn" (exciting title!) is ostensibly the product of a new feminist sensibility…. In fact, [screenwriter Eleanor] Bergstein has said, "I have never seen a film which honestly deals with a contemporary woman trying to put her life together. They are usually fantasies."

“In Bergstein's screenplay, Clayburgh plays Kate Gunzinger, a laser-brained professor who teaches post-Einsteinian mathematics at the University of Chicago. Just your typical contemporary woman….

“…. Weill allows the film to stumble into pointless, undelightful little scenes: Clayburgh hurting her finger on a thorny rose, Clayburgh trying to give a haircut to her about-to-be-married father (Steven Hill), whose hair looks perfectly marriageable….

“There are some laughs, especially from Charles Grodin in his patented smooth-schlump role. As for Clayburgh, of course she's adorable with her brainy vulnerability and jittery-thoroughbred grace, but this persona has become as dangerously perfect as Jane Fonda's ruefully earned righteousness….”

David Ansen
Newsweek, November 3, 1980

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