The Other Woman

Nick Cassavates’ The Other Woman actually has three: sensitive and emotionally trampled on Kate (Leslie Mann), hard-as-nails and emotionally repressed Carly (Cameron Diaz) and big-breasted and therefore brainless, emotionless and personality-less Amber (Kate Upton.) Together they almost make a fully functional human being, and in their quest to get revenge against the man who cheated on all three of them, almost make a good film. A film I started fantasising about during this one. A film that seemed to offer me everything the one I had committed to couldn’t.

Let’s call this The Other Film.

The Other Film wouldn’t be directed by the tonally blind Nick Cassavetes, whose work on The Hangover II, The Notebook and My Sister’s Keeper shows that he can’t provide real satisfaction in any genre, and certainly can’t juggle elements of comedy and drama simultaneously. The Other Film wouldn’t present me with caricatures of women who are defined only by their relationships to a man. The Other Film wouldn’t tell me that a woman’s reaction to adultery is either hysterical emotional incapacitation or a dive into sadistic Schadenfreude. The Other Film wouldn’t make me watch prolonged scat jokes. The Other Film wouldn’t indicate that men are morality-free animals who don’t feel guilt, but can be subdued with some oestrogen (it’s weakness in capsule form!) and the apparently terrifying appearance of a transvestite.

But most importantly, The Other Film wouldn’t try to pass off these rehashed, patronising clichés as “girl power.”

It’s a shame, because there are things to love about The Other Woman; Mann and Diaz’s performances, the brief flashes of emotional insight. Guess I’ll just have to take them with me in the divorce.