They're Holding Their Breath
Waiting For Film To Open Many Black Women See Themselves In "Waiting To Exhale"

Date: December 21, 1995
By Annette John-Hall, Staff Writer

From The Philadelphia Inquirer
Submitted by: Larry A.


They can't wait to see beautiful black women, like themselves, celebrated on the silver screen.

They can't wait to see black women support and nurture each other in a common bond of sisterhood.

And they really can't wait to see Angela Bassett's character snatch her husband's clothes, pile them in his BMW, and set them on fire.

For the droves of African American women who saw their lives in every paragraph of Terry McMillan's best-seller Waiting to Exhale, the film adaptation has been three years overdue.

So when the movie - which stars Bassett and Whitney Houston - finally opens nationwide tomorrow, scores of black women will treat it as an event they had anticipated.

They are planning Waiting to Exhale parties. They will get together with groups of girlfriends to see the film and then celebrate afterward with drinks or dinner, and discussion.

"I'm looking forward to going to see us in a film without us being sex objects or playing some trite role," said Nichell Taylor, 26, an Atlanta writer who plans to see the movie with about four girlfriends after a leisurely Saturday brunch. "This is the first major motion picture in my lifetime that has focused on black women's lives, black women who have varied lifestyles."

The film focuses on the lives of four professional women and their relationships with men.

There are Bernadine (Bassett), whose husband dumps her for a white woman; Savannah (Houston), whose only meaningful relationship is with a married man; Robin (Lela Rochon), whose choices in men are questionable at best; and Gloria (Loretta Devine), whose loneliness is offset only by her dependency on her 17-year-old son.

With a $16 million budget and an all-star cast that includes Wesley Snipes and Gregory Hines, 20th Century Fox is hoping that the movie generates crossover appeal, as did the book, which sold three million copies.

But from the look of things, the movie is already guaranteed to be a blockbuster among African American audiences, especially women.

Already, the Exhale soundtrack, produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and featuring such artists as Houston, Patti LaBelle and Mary J. Blige, has skyrocketed up the charts.

"I loved the book. I love the soundtrack. I'm playing it right now," Tuesday Gordon, manager of a women's boutique in Center City, said.

Gordon and about eight other black women have formed Sister Circle. The group started out as a book club but blossomed into a bosom-buddy posse. The women recently rented a limousine for a day of makeovers and lunch in New York, and will vacation in Egypt in June.

And, of course, they are attending tomorrow's opening of the movie in Philadelphia.

"I loved how (the characters) nurture and look after each other through thick and thin," Gordon said. "It's identifiable and it's reality."

The book has been criticized as being male-bashing. But Gordon, who is 37 and single, sees it as more of a realistic look at the four women and the choices they make.

"I still believe in the black man. There's nothing like the black man," she said. "But we still go through the lies and the cheating. Men do drive you crazy enough to burn up their car."

Arlene Jenkins knew she would be one of the first in line for the movie after reading the book on vacation in Hilton Head, S.C., three years ago.

"I usually don't have time to get through books, but I got through this one," said Jenkins, 39, who lives in Deptford. "All my girlfriends were reading the book and saying, 'Girl, this is you! This is you!' It reminded me of what girlfriends go through and how we relate to and support each other."

Jenkins, her sister Lois Salvador and a group of other friends are planning to see the movie in Marlton.

"I'm just so happy that there are so many black people in the movie, and they're all so pretty," Jenkins said. "From the trailers, it looks beautifully done. Love stories for white people are always in the movies. I want to see black people going through the same things."

All of those reasons are why Pat Wheeler Holmes and about 30 other women are planning to attend a matinee in Washington on Saturday.

The plan, said Holmes, is to see the movie and then have lunch, drinks and discussion at B. Smith's - the former model's elegant soul-food eatery - at Union Station.

"For some reason this movie has made women really want to go as a group," said Holmes, who teaches advertising and communications at Howard University. "I was talking to a woman the other day on the elevator and she told me she wanted to go and asked to bring two or three people. . . . This has really gotten bigger than what I thought."

Holmes said her husband, Kenneth, "hated" the book because he thought it was too derogatory toward men.

Bernard Middleton, 31, a hotel employee in Manhattan, disagrees.

"I don't think it was male-bashing at all," said Middleton, who plans to see the movie tomorrow with three of his male friends. "Me and my friends read the book and each one of us could identify with each of the characters."

He says he can especially identify with Bassett's Bernadine, the car- burner. "I went through a breakup of being dumped after supporting somebody, so when she burned the car, that was me," Middleton said. "So I'll definitely be talking to the screen when I get there."

That's the attitude most Exhale aficionados have: They don't expect the film to solve the problems of the universe and they don't even care if it ranks two stars. They just want it to entertain them, just as the book did.

"I'm hoping for high energy, some bonding, and in the end, some hope," Gordon said. "But more than anything, I expect a good time."