Film & Video

Cher's page at the Internet Movie Database

1965
"Wild on the Beach" (aka "Beach House Party")

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College students Randall and Jackson get their wires crossed and both descend on a beach house with their friends to spend the weekend. They agree to share and share alike, tossing a wild beach party complete with wild beach party music, chaperoned, of course, by "spies" from their college. Notable only for an appearance by Sonny and Cher. Songs: "It's Gonna Rain" (Sonny Bono), "Snap It" (Jimmie Haskell), "House on the Beach," "Gods of Love," "Run Away from Him" ("By" Dunham, Bobby Beverly), "Yellow Haired Woman (Tic-a-tic-a-tac)," "Rock the World," "Winter Nocturne" (Dunham, E. Davis), "Pyramid Stomp" (Dunham, Haskell), and "Drum Dance" (Frank Warren, Joe Saracino).

1967

"Good Times"

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Pop musical starring 1960s singing sensations Sonny and Cher as themselves. Movie producer Sanders offers the duo a chance to star in pictures. The film then becomes a series of Sonny's fantasies in which he imagines himself and Cher in a variety of film genres (western, gangster, Tarzan), with Sanders as the villain in each. Sonny snaps back to reality, decides he no longer trusts Sanders and turns down his offer. Songs include: "I Got You Babe," "It's The Little Things," "Good Times," "Trust Me," "Don't Talk To Strangers," "I'm Gonna Love You" and "Just A Name." Trivial, but imaginative, this was the first feature film directed by William Freidkin (THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE EXORCIST).

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1969

"Chastity"

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Cher takes to the road in this highway drama written and produced by her then-husband Bono. Playing a woman with the title virtue, she shows the first glimmers of the acting ability that would become so apparent in the 1980s.

1970

"The Sonny & Cher Nitty Gritty Hour"

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1982
"Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean"

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Five women who grew up together in a small Texas town idolizing James Dean reunite 20 years later at a local dime store and discuss their lives and loves, illusion and reality. The most touching moment comes when Sandy Dennis, who has deluded herself for years, finally accepts that Dean was not the father of her illegitimate child. Director Robert Altman, turning Super 16mm cameras on the cast that he directed on Broadway in Ed Graczyck's play, captures the vitality of live performances from each of his actors. Using much technical invention, Altman does his best to invest his uncinematic material with a cinematic feel, but if COME BACK TO THE 5 & DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN still looks like a filmed play, it is nonetheless presented with great sensitivity. Karen Black, Cher, and Dennis contribute especially fine performances to this insightful film that was shot in just 19 days.

1983

"Silkwood"

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Karen Silkwood, a worker at the Kerr-McGee plant in Cimarron, Oklahoma, died in a suspicious auto accident in 1974 as she was on her way to meet a reporter from the New York Times to blow the whistle on some alleged improprieties at her factory. The autopsy showed a small amount of alcohol and a tranquilizer in her blood. An examination of the auto indicated that she may have been bumped from behind as she drove along the lonely, desolate road. Several years later, Silkwood's family successfully sued the Kerr-McGee Corporation, proving that it was negligent in providing safeguards for its workers. Silkwood had been heavily contaminated by radiation and was suffering the effects when she died. Kerr-McGee paid her estate more than $10 million. Streep is the title character of this sensational expose, a hard-drinking, tough woman who works for Kerr-McGee in a job that is as dangerous as it is dull. She resides with her boy friend, Russell, and Cher, a lesbian friend. They smoke, drink, and live for the moment. Streep's three children are with her common law husband, whom she has left for Russell. Scarwid, a lesbian beautician who applies cosmetics to the dead so that they are fit for viewing before burial, moves in with Cher. She comments that the bodies of workers who were in the employ of the corporation "all look as though they died before they died." Streep is briefly contaminated and has to be scrubbed down. She discovers that her boss, Nelson, is retouching photographic negatives to hide a deficiencies in K-M products and in safety precautions. Streep and some of the other union members go to Washington, D.C., where she tells the chiefs of the union what is going on. At first, the leaders don't pay much attention, but, when Streep says that she can get proof, their ears perk up. The fuel rods at K-M are below par, and the x-rays have been tampered to show they are in good order. Streep undertakes her own undercover work and gathers a pile of evidence that she intends to give to the reporter. She becomes totally consumed by her mission, paying so little attention to Russell that he leaves her. Armed with a folder that contains all the material, Streep leaves for the meeting that never takes place. Although no one is accused of the death of Streep, the implication that she was silenced to save the plant is clear. As it is, the plant was shuttered a scant year after Silkwood died.

Nichols had not worked in motion pictures since the unfortunate THE FORTUNE in 1975. He seems to have forgotten all the tricks he used in other films and concentrated on extracting performances from the actors, and what performances they were. Streep did an Oscar calibre job, but she'd just won one for SOPHIE'S CHOICE the year before, and there was no way the Academy would give her two in a row. (Although nominated, she lost to Shirley MacLaine for TERMS OF ENDEARMENT.) Cher took a nomination but lost to Linda Hunt in THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. Nichols, the script, and O'Steen's editing were also nominated. It's the kind of movie that Jane Fonda might have starred in and, for a while, her company did own the rights and the research material by Hirsch and Cano. Streep, continues to amaze with her ability to imitate various accents.

1985

"Mask"

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MASK is a true story about a young man with an incurable ailment, "lionitis" or craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, which causes calcium to amass in the head and make it balloon to twice its normal size. Rocky (Eric Stoltz) is the 16-year-old son of Rusty Dennis (Cher), a biker lady who is given to loose morals and controlled substances. Mother and son live in a poor but clean Los Angeles neighborhood where she hangs out with Gar (Sam Elliott) and several other bikers. Rocky is a remarkably radiant young man, cheerful, friendly, able to cope with his painful and life-threatening disease. He has three goals in what he knows will be a short life: he wants to meet a girl who will fall in love with him despite his ugliness, he wants to ride a motorcycle around Europe, and he wants to see his mother kick her drug habit. Rocky manages to deal with his problem, but his pain and suffering cause Rusty to turn to drugs as she becomes increasingly morose. Stoltz's performance is amazing, with the young actor able to show emotion only with his eyes because makeup covers the rest of his face. The makeup by Zoltan Elek and Michael Westmore received an Oscar. The movie is a bit too slick and deliberately sentimental, almost shamelessly so, which removes a great deal of the power of the story. MASK is a good movie that could have been a great one with a little more restraint.

1987

"Suspect"

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This tension-filled courtroom drama set in Washington, DC, opens with the suicide of a Supreme Court justice. Then the young Justice Department employee to whom he had given privileged information is discovered dead in the Potomac River. Her purse is found in the possession of a violent street person, Carl Wayne Anderson (Liam Neeson), who is charged with her murder. Kathleen Riley (Cher), a public defender, is appointed as counsel for Anderson, a deaf-mute Vietnam veteran. When the trial begins, Eddie Sanger (Dennis Quaid), a lobbyist for the dairy industry, is called to serve on the jury. He realizes Riley is overlooking a key fact that could free her client, and he contacts her even though he knows it's illegal to do so. Determined to see justice done and more than a little attracted to Riley, Sanger begins his own investigation, supplying a reluctant Riley with information. SUSPECT is almost a well-made mystery. The pieces of its puzzle are nicely laid out, and the film is punctuated by several tense moments. Despite some plausibility problems, the movie is well handled by director Peter Yates. There is no question that SUSPECT is capable of putting a lump in one's throat; the problem is that it's a little hard to swallow.

"Moonstruck"

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This delightful romantic comedy directed by Norman Jewison and deftly scripted by John Patrick Shanley features excellent ensemble performances, including an acting tour de force from Cher. The 38-year-old widow of a man who was run over by a bus, Cher works as a bookkeeper and lives in Brooklyn with her Italian-American family: her father, Gardenia, a prosperous plumber; her mother, Dukakis; and her grandfather, Chaliapin. At a quaint Italian restaurant, Aiello, her longtime boy friend, proposes to her. She is anything but passionately in love with him, but after he drops to his knees (at her prompting) she accepts. However, before the wedding can take place, Aiello must travel to his mother's deathbed in Sicily. Meanwhile, Cher is to contact Aiello's brother, Cage, to whom Aiello hasn't spoken in five years. Cher calls to invite Cage to the ceremony, but he hangs up on her. She visits the bakery Cage operates; when she tries to learn the reason for Cage's hostility, he bursts into an emotional torrent. It seems he was to have been married himself, but he was distracted by Aiello while working with a slicer one day and cut off one of his own hands. As a result his marriage was called off and his hand replaced by a wooden one. Cage has refused to forgive Aiello and is still consumed by anger and self-pity. Cher goes with Cage to his apartment atop the bakery, and over a bottle they discover they understand each other. Overcome with passion, they sleep together. The next day, full of guilt and remorse, Cher tells Cage their affair must end. He says he loves her, but he will be satisfied if she will simply go to the opera with him that night so he might indulge in the two things he loves most. Cher prepares for her date with Cage by transforming her dowdy appearance: she gets her gray-streaked hair colored and styled and buys a sleek dress and fancy shoes. Cage greets her in a tuxedo. They see Puccini's "La Boheme" at the Met, and Cher is tremendously moved by it. In the lobby afterward Cher runs into Gardenia and is shocked to discover that he is there with his mistress, Gillette. Meanwhile, Dukakis dines alone at the Italian restaurant. Mahoney, a college professor, is at another table with an attractive young woman who throws water in his face and storms out. He joins Dukakis, who asks why men fool around. He tells her that it is because they are afraid of death. As he walks Dukakis home, Mahoney comes on to her, but she remains faithful to Gardenia. En route Chaliapin sees them together. Aiello returns from abroad later that night and comes to the house, but Cher has not returned home; she is spending the night with Cage. Cher returns the next morning, followed by Cage, who is determined to marry her. At the breakfast table, Dukakis gives Gardenia an ultimatum, and he promises to remain faithful. Aiello arrives, and Cher and Cage prepare to tell him they want to marry. Before they can, Aiello announces that the wedding is off because a miracle has saved his mother and there is no reason for him to get married now. Cher then says she and Cage will be married, and they use the same pinky ring Aiello had used as an ersatz engagement ring.

From its credit sequence set to Dean Martin's rendition of "That's Amore" (Jack Brooks, Harry Warren) to its kitchen-table climax, MOONSTRUCK brilliantly captures its Italian-American milieu. Director Jewison (AGNES OF GOD; A SOLDIER'S STORY; IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) and screenwriter Shanley have fashioned a charming, funny tale of infidelity and transcendent love whose cultural setting provides both content and context. Shanley, "the Bard from the Bronx," is best known as a playwright ("Danny and the Deep Blue Sea"), but in 1987 he wrote the screenplays for both this and Tony Bill's FIVE CORNERS. Though he is of Irish extraction, Shanley grew up surrounded by Italian-Americans, and his dialog and characters are suffused with authenticity. MOONSTRUCK's storyline is as simple as the film's emotions are complex. Having married for love once and been the victim of exceedingly bad luck, Cher has decided to marry sensibly. Both she and Cage have resigned themselves to the idea that they will never know true love again. When they find it, all rules of morality are called into question. Guss, Dukakis' brother, remembers that when Gardenia was courting his sister, he was awakened one night by a particularly bright full moon. Going to the window, he saw Gardenia (Cosmo) standing outside the house. "Cosmo's moon," as Guss calls it, is back in the sky, pale and luminous, glowing magically over the Manhattan skyline as the events in the picture transpire. A symbol of the undeniable power and unpredictability of passionate love, the moon is there not only for Cher and Cage but also for Gardenia and Dukakis. Essentially a bedroom farce, the movie finds much of its humor in the confrontations between the moonstruck lovers who, because of previous commitments, have no business being with each other. However, as much, if not more, of the film's humor comes in the realization of the characters. Cher, in particular, turns in an outstanding performance. Less emotional though no less expressive than her extraordinary work in MASK (1985), her performance here is technically precise and sincere and won her the Best Actress Oscar. Her excellent Brooklyn accent is just one aspect of a finely shaded portrayal in which this actress of Armenian, French, and Cherokee extraction becomes an Italian-American New Yorker. Cage's performance is more problematic--highly praised in many quarters but faulted in others. Perhaps cowed by the criticism he received for his vocal mannerisms in PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (1986), Cage makes no attempt whatever at "Brooklynese," and his performance suffers for it. In attempting to create a character that is full of contradictions, he is only partly successful. Shanley's original title for his screenplay was "The Bride and the Wolf." Although Cage occasionally slides into a kind of open-mouthed indolence, he effectively conveys Ronny's wolfish qualities--his emotional explosiveness, his sullen vindictiveness, his macho passion. Ronny is largely inarticulate, but he is a devotee of one of the most tragic and touching art forms, opera. He is also allowed moments of sweeping philosophical insight, and here Cage has some trouble in his portrayal. The supporting performances are all superb and wonderfully nuanced. Special praise is due stage veteran Dukakis, who is marvelous as the patient, mature beauty, the calm at the center of the romantic storm stirred up by Cosmo's moon. That moon and the whole of the film are beautifully photographed by Oscar winner David Watkin (OUT OF AFRICA). The evocative score is augmented by Vicki Carr's rendition of "It Must Be Him" (Gilbert Becaud, Mack David), which Gardenia listens to endlessly. Simply stated, it is difficult not to be swept up by this charming picture. Along with Cher, Dukakis and Shanley received Oscars, and the film, Gardenia, and Jewison were nominated.

"The Witches of Eastwick"

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A haphazard and slickly dumb adaptation of John Updike's best-selling novel, THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK is a star-studded special-effects extravaganza about the battle of the sexes. A trio of bored, sexually repressed New England women--Alex (Cher), Jane (Susan Sarandon), and Sukie (Michelle Pfeiffer), each of them left to live without their respective husbands--innocently conjures up a mysterious stranger who, they are convinced, will relieve their frustrations. This mystery man is Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson), the filthy rich, wild-eyed Devil incarnate, who buys a local mansion. Within days, Alex, Jane, and Sukie have all been to bed with the Devil and discovered in themselves the almighty power of the female form. By the finale, the female trinity is pitted against the Devil, a mildly sympathetic misogynist who only wants to be loved and have someone to iron his shirts. While the underlying message of THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK may be of interest, the execution by George (MAD MAX) Miller is downright pathetic. The film plays like a TV sitcom, with an overdose of raunch added to the proceedings; when the Devil spews forth his profanities, one almost expects to hear a diabolical laugh track. Nominated by the Academy for Best Original Score and Best Sound.

1990

"Mermaids"

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This is yet another coming-of-age story, the title referring to the three central characters (a mother and her two daughters) who float like flotsam and jetsam between two worlds as opposed to being anchored in one place. Mrs. Flax (Cher) is a true eccentric; a free-spirited and often irritatingly independent woman who lost any sort of stable homelife when her husband walked out on her and her children years before. She has drifted from man to man and place to place and her latest move to the small Massachusetts coastal town of East Port in 1963 marks her 18th. Not only must Mrs. Flax cope with her own immaturity, she also must try to deal with the problems of her daughters, teenaged Charlotte (Winona Ryder), and nine-year-old Kate (Christina Ricci), a swimming champ who is obsessed with the water. The family relationships are further complicated by the fact that Mrs. Flax is so wrapped up in her latest romance with Lou (Bob Hoskins) that she virtually ignores her children. In the meantime, Charlotte lusts after young Joe (Michael Schoeffling), the groundskeeper at a nearby convent. At the same time, she wrestles with her strong religious convictions--she wants to become a nun, even though she is Jewish. Torn between her conflicting feelings, Charlotte is close to a nervous breakdown, while Kate suffers a near-fatal accident. The inability of her mother to come to grips with any of these realities further enrages and confuses Charlotte, and the relationship between mother and daughter grows steadily more strained. With the help of Lou, the members of the unconventional family try to overcome their difficulties and to reach some sort of a tenuous understanding.

This is an intermittently entertaining human relationship story, it's strongest points being its actors. Cher, Ryder, and Ricci combine their ample talents to deliver a uniformly bang-up job of delineating the vagabond mom and her two at-loose-ends daughters. Since Ryder has the most complicated role she tends to steal all the scenes in which she appears. Hoskins is fine as Mrs. Flax's shoe salesman love interest, while young Schoeffling is quite impressive. Actor-turned-director Richard Benjamin (MY FAVORITE YEAR, MY STEPMOTHER IS AN ALIEN), however, struggles with story structure, allowing the film to meander along at a too-leisurely pace. Character motivation is sometimes muddled, and Benjamin never seems to decide whose story he is telling. Moreover, the film features many mood swings (melancholy, comic, pathos, sweet), but the swings are so abrupt that it gives an uneven feel to the overall effort. Still, the picture's strong characters and acting carry it to at least a partial success. Sadly, the film had all the elements to be a very captivating experience, but it fails to bring those elements together into a strong whole.

1990

"The Player"

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After the scathingly satirical eye he trained on NASHVILLE, and the righteous rage he expressed on behalf of an artist wronged in VINCENT AND THEO, Robert Altman brings a surprisingly benign gaze to bear on the world he knows and loves/hates best in THE PLAYER. A funny, fast-moving adaptation of Michael Tolkin's satirical novel about a Hollywood executive, THE PLAYER underscores its lethally accurate observations with more regret and sadness than genuine scorn.

Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is under attack on two fronts. In danger of being run out of his job by aggressive, up-and-coming rival Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher), he has also begun to receive a series of threatening postcards at the studio where he works. (We never learn the name of the studio, only its idiotic motto: "Movies...now more than ever.") Tending to the more potentially lethal problem first, Mill settles on spurned screenwriter David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio) as the prime suspect behind the postcards. One evening, after learning Kahane's whereabouts from the writer's beautiful live-in girlfriend, painter June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi), Mill travels out to a Pasadena movie theater to confront him. Mill plans to placate Kahane by purchasing his screenplay. Kahane, however, taunts Mill about the executive's professional problems, and Mill impulsively kills him in a parking lot.

Despite the dogged efforts of laid-back Pasadena detectives Avery and DeLongpre (Whoopi Goldberg and Lyle Lovett), Mill gets off scot-free. (The sole witness picks DeLongpre, rather than Mill, from a police lineup.) Piling irony upon irony, the postcards continue to arrive--Kahane was not the culprit.

Meanwhile, Mill gets a major professional boost thanks to a series of ironic reversals. He had schemed to oust Levy by persuading him to take on a must-fail project devoid of star talent. But the project eventually metamorphoses into a smash Bruce Willis-Julia Roberts vehicle, earning kudos for Levy and boosting Mill to head of the studio. The only loser here is Mill's former assistant-girlfriend, Bonnie Sherow (Cynthia Stevenson), who loses Mill to Gudmundsdottir and is fired by Levy for protesting his crass commercialism. The conclusion finds Mill taking a car-phone call from the presumed author of the postcards, now pitching a screenplay idea for a film which sounds a lot like THE PLAYER ...

Altman begins his film with a stylistic homage to the glory days of Hollywood--a bravura single-shot sequence that systematically introduces all the major characters and plot elements, recalling Orson Welles's celebrated opening to TOUCH OF EVIL. In case we miss the point, Altman includes a character in the sequence mourning the loss of filmmakers of Welles's calibre. The twist--which is about as bitter as THE PLAYER ever gets--is that these lines are spoken, not by a "creative executive," but by the head of studio security, Walter Stuckel (Fred Ward).

Altman wants the audience to know what it has lost, not only with his opening sequence but with repeated references to classic films via posters hung on office walls. These serve both to point up the mediocrity and inanity of the films currently being made, and as a wry commentary on various plot developments. Again, Altman is poking gentle fun rather than venting genuine ire.

The cast is uniformly wonderful. Robbins gives the most frighteningly bolted-down performance by a leading man since Harrison Ford's hideously repressed district attorney in PRESUMED INNOCENT. Scacchi (WHITE MISCHIEF, PRESUMED INNOCENT) has never been better cast than as the "ice queen" painter, and Goldberg has never been funnier. Ward proves he is becoming one of Hollywood's top character actors with a great turn in the style of the A STAR IS BORN-era Jack Carson. Dean Stockwell and Richard E. Grant are hilarious as the creative powers behind the dreadful project Mill foists onto Levy.

The list goes on, to Roberts and Willis, along with Lily Tomlin and Scott Glenn, as the stars of the films within the film; Buck Henry, writer of the original GRADUATE, seen here pitching a hilariously ludicrous sequel; Burt Reynolds bitching about producers over lunch; and 50 or so other celebrities seen in cameos that dot a film Altman reportedly brought in on an amazing $8 million budget. The film can justly be described as an embarrassment of riches, making it only too playeresque that it was initially rejected by every major studio in town.

1994

"Prêt-à-Porter" (aka "Ready To Wear")

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Robert Altman's READY TO WEAR (PRET-A-PORTER) has the air of some major designer's budget line: while dimly recognizable as the work of a master, it's tailored to middle-class taste, seemingly perfunctory, and, relatively speaking, rather drab and uninspired. What ought to have been a wickedly delightful film--the conjunction of Altman's usually matchless acerbity with the glittering pretensions of high fashion--emerges as an arid, lifeless farce. It's not especially engaging or perceptive, and, worst of all, it isn't funny.

Like the director's NASHVILLE, READY TO WEAR attempts to encapsulate the experience of a time and place--in this case, the extravagant spring fashion shows in Paris--by interweaving the stories of a couple of dozen characters. The film begins with a clandestine meeting between the mysterious Sergio (Marcello Mastroianni) and the French minister of fashion. When the minister suddenly dies while the two are stuck in traffic, Sergio bolts from the car, afraid he'll be charged with murder, and jumps into the Seine. On the run from the police, he hides out in a ritzy hotel occupied by a flock of journalist, designers, and assorted fashion groupies. When he runs into his long-lost flame, the dead minister's wife Isabella (Sophia Loren), they attempt to rekindle their affair. Also at the hotel are three powerful fashion editors (Sally Kellerman, Tracey Ullman, Linda Hunt), each trying to sign a superstar fashion photographer (Stephen Rea), who humiliates them individually with remarkable cruelty. Through a hotel mix-up, two reporters (Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins) find themselves trapped in a room without their clothing, but their initial hostility soon gives way to romance. Designer Simone Lowenthal (Anouk Aimee) is being undermined by her conniving son (Rupert Everett), while airhead reporter Kitty Potter (Kim Basinger) is omnipresent, babbling witlessly for her American cable audience. Some sparks are provided by Forest Whitaker and a wildly campy Richard E. Grant, as rival designers who become infatuated with one another. The whole thing culminates in a predictable joke, as Lowenthal fights back against the Texas moneymen who've swallowed up her company, mounting a climactic runway show in which her anorexic models appear entirely nude.

In the wake of Altman's triumphs with THE PLAYER and SHORT CUTS, it's astonishing how inept READY TO WEAR turns out to be. The assorted plots and concepts are stale; the thematic material--e.g., the unsurprising suggestion that people's understanding of others is shaped by what they wear--works on a depressingly obvious level. Even the film's much-discussed climax has little but titillation value. It's supposed to be a "statement" on the absurdity of fashion, but since the character who devises it is so thinly drawn that her motives are inexplicable, the scene has no resonance, especially in light of the uniformly inconsequential material that precedes it.

If nothing else, READY TO WEAR serves to remind us that Altman is no less dependent on solid screenwriting than less celebrated filmmakers. His best movies have always been based on outstanding scripts--e.g., Ring Lardner Jr.'s M*A*S*H, Joan Tewkesbury's NASHVILLE, Michael Tolkin's THE PLAYER. Here, working with a screenplay credited to himself and Barbara Shulgasser, he's unable to transcend jokes that don't work (e.g., an opening misfire that hinges on the not-very-stunning revelation that there's now a Dior boutique in Red Square); shock effects that don't shock (Danny Aiello as a closet cross-dresser); and flashes of arbitrary philosophizing (a TV reporter's portentous closing monologue) that are meant to cram a whole wardrobe of loosely stitched ideas into a neat satirical package.

1996

"Faithful"

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Based on a play by star Chazz Palminteri, this wooden domestic satire might have worked better on stage. Unhappy hubby Jack (Ryan O'Neal) hires philosophical hit man Tony (Palminteri) to murder his wife Margaret (Cher) on their 20th wedding anniversary. Margaret and Tony end up trapped in her house, and there follows a great deal of bickering, punctuated by two or three effective gags. It's painfully contrived and stagy, and the awkwardness isn't helped by the fact that Cher spends much of the film tied to a chair.

"If These Walls Could Talk"

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The same house serves as the setting for three stories of women confronted with the subject of abortion in this film made for HBO. Credited primarily to writer-director Nancy Savoca (1993's HOUSEHOLD SAINTS), this trilogy lacks the graceful touch of her best work.

1952. Despondent since the death of her husband six months ago, Claire Donnelly (Demi Moore) let a moment of comfort with her brother-in-law turn into an act of passion and is now pregnant. Unable to bear the shame that an illegitimate birth would bring on both her and her in-laws, she seeks an abortion. But even though she works as a nurse, she is unable to locate an affordable, reliable doctor to help her. Desperate, she hires a shady abortionist who botches the job, leaving her dying of internal hemorrhaging.

1974. Having raised four children, two of them now in high school, middle-class mother Barbara Barrows (Sissy Spacek) looks forward to going back to school and finishing the degree she interrupted years ago. But when she accidentally becomes pregnant, it appears as though the family will have to sacrifice much: her schooling, the early retirement of husband John (Xander Berkeley), the private college her daughter Linda (Hedy Burress) wants to attend. Although Linda stridently demands that she get an abortion, Barbara decides against it.

1996. Although she had previously been against abortion, college student Chris (Anne Heche) considers having one when she becomes pregnant. At a women's clinic, she receives advice from a counselor and speaks with some of the women protesting outside. The next day, she decides to return for the operation, not knowing that protestors have planned a large demonstration. She makes her way in and receives an abortion from Dr. Beth Thompson (Cher), who is widely respected. As Dr. Thompson finishes the procedure, a gunman bursts into the run and shoots her to death.

It's tempting to speculate how much this cable film's three high-powered stars had to do with the production, as their segments seem to mirror their public personae. Moore's segment may be historically accurate, presenting information that needs to be known about what women endured when abortion was illegal. But it is so horrifying as to be unwatchable. Spacek's turn as a middle-class mother forced to make personal choices is the best of the lot, though the character of her daughter, an obnoxious teen feminist who thinks she knows everything about women's issues, is more of a caricature than it needed to be. And Cher's segment (which she also directed) is a star turn in which she takes top billing from Anne Heche (who plays the main character) to play the part of a martyr in too much makeup. IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK may provoke discussion, but is finally too slanted in one direction to be of use for anything other than raising money for abortion rights.

1998

"Tea with Mussolini" (aka "Un Tè con Mussolini")

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A gauzy look at the formative years of an Italian boy who's raised by a gaggle of expatriate women against the backdrop of WWII. 1935: The illegitimate son of a local businessman who wants little to do with him, Luca (played as a child by Charlie Lucas, and as a teenager by Baird Wallace) is taken in by Mary Wallace (Joan Plowright), an older English woman living in a local pensione. Mary's friends pitch in and help care for the child, taking him to school and to museums, teaching him to love literature and firmly inculcating him with steadfast notions of right and wrong. His mentors include artistic Arabella (Judi Dench); Elsa (Cher), a flighty, fabulously wealthy American who knew Luca's late mother; and lesbian archeologist Georgie (Lily Tomlin). The self-deluded queen bee of the expatriate community, Lady Hester Random (Maggie Smith), refuses to believe that rapidly changing European politics will affect their lives and even wangles assurance from Il Duce Mussolini (Claudio Spadara) himself that no harm will befall them. Needless to say, history catches up with them, and their lives change dramatically before the war ends. The culmination of director Franco Zeffirelli's lifelong desire to explore his own childhood, this semi-autobiographical film falls prey to a misconception that afflicts many reality-based projects. It proceeds from the notion that if a story is true, it doesn't have to be worked out as rigorously as fiction... after all, that's the way it was. And while the divas make their characters hugely entertaining, they're also such high profile actresses in such a soft-edged film that it's hard to actually worry about what's to become of them. Elsa may be a Jew in Fascist Italy, but she's also Cher: Her worst tribulation is that she has to go out without proper make-up.

Paramount "Tea With Mussolini" site

MGM "Tea With Mussolini" site

Click the box below for a look at the sell-sheet used to offer the title to retailers.

1999

"Divas Live '99"

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2000

"Cher: Live In Concert"

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When the video releases were offered for order to retail, the package included a two-track "Believe" CD single and the sell-sheets below. Click on the sheets for a larger view.

Reviews courtesy TV Guide Online

Cher's home-video fitness releases did phenomenally when they first came out and still sell strongly today.
Her approach to physical well-being is effective on these tapes and they are well worth a look.

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