Film

Moonlight and Valentino (1995)

Director: David Anspaugh

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A women's film, '90s style. When her husband dies, Rebecca (Perkins) can't bring herself to pronounce the W-word, but she's immediately surrounded by an ad hoc support group - neighbour Goldberg, sister Paltrow, and mother-in-law Turner - all too ready to put her in her weeds. Each woman comes with a badge denoting her own special interest group: the widow, the wife, the virgin and the divorcee. It's like a convention. Grudges and recriminations surface, the inevitable 'intimacy issues', but nothing too disruptive, nothing that can't be put right with a cathartic group hug. You can gauge the sensitivity factor from Rebecca's creative writing assignment: write a poem without words. The film has a neat line in neat lines, gets a lift from Paltrow's palpable sexual anxiety, but works much too hard for its tears. In his first major role, Jon Bon Jovi plays a sex object, and he's every bit as anaemic as the rest. Based on an autobiographical play by Ellen Simon (Neil's daughter).

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