Take A Deep Breath
'Exhale' Is A Litany Of Female Complaint

Date: December 22, 1995
By Terry Lawson, Movie Critic

From Detroit Free Press
Submitted by: Larry A.


'Waiting to Exhale'
* * (out of four stars)
Rated R; sexual themes and situations, vulgar language

The movie "Waiting to Exhale" is based on the best-selling novel by Terry McMillan, which was something of a publishing phenomenon. Though the book is about four black women and the various problems they have with black men, it crossed color boundaries to sell thousands of copies to non-blacks as well -- though the majority of those, we might safely presume, were enjoyed by women.

That's because if the movie adaptation is true to the tone and the spirit of the book -- and since McMillan herself is the executive producer, we can assume she approves -- the only men who could make it through "Waiting to Exhale" would be those with a definite masochistic streak or those wanting to know how they are talked about behind enemy lines. If you're a man and want to save your $7, the answer is ... like a dog. If you're a woman, then nothing any man says about "Waiting to Exhale" is going to matter much anyway.

According to the gospel of "Waiting to Exhale," which is likely to be received with choruses of "Amens," not only do men not get it, they don't even suspect it. Between the members of the fed-up quartet who get together to signify and sing the blues in "Waiting to Exhale," they go through at least three married men, all of whom swear they will get divorces; two drug dealers; seven pathological liars; two thieves; two who prefer white women; two egomaniacs; and one who turns out to be gay. And with one notable exception, none of them knows how, or cares, to please a woman in bed.

And being pleased in bed is obviously a major preoccupation of "Waiting to Exhale," which, despite being told primarily through narration, is not really a narrative at all but a collection of vignettes from the lives of four friends living in Phoenix.

They are Gloria (Loretta Devine), the owner of a beauty shop and single mother of a 17-year-old son; Robin (Lela Rochon), an executive at an insurance agency; Savannah (Whitney Houston), a producer for a television news magazine; and Bernadine (Angela Bassett), who for a few brief moments after the movie opens is the well-to-do wife of the president of a company she helped found. But as Bernadine is putting on her diamond earrings for the company's New Year's party, he announces he isn't taking her, but the white bookkeeper with whom he has been having an affair.

Bernadine reacts by emptying the closets of his designer suits and Italian shoes and dumping them in his BMW, which she then sets on fire. (The first sign that this movie might have a loose grip on reality is that the fire department lets her off with a warning.) She then takes comfort with her friends, who offer solace but no solutions. Each of them is having her own Male Trouble.

With the sassy Robin, the problems seem to be mostly of her own making. She is inevitably attracted to street hustlers and hoodlums who leave her stranded at parties or steal her wallet. When she does take a chance on a dumpy accountant from her office, he turns out to be dud in the sack and a scoundrel besides.

Savannah has higher standards, which presents its own set of problems: Any man to whom she is attracted seems to have his pick of paramours, or else be more attracted to himself than to her. Unwilling to lower those standards, and urged on by her mother, she lapses back into an affair with a handsome and successful married man.

As for Gloria, she has retreated from the gender wars to raise her son and liberate her waistline. Still, when her son's father shows up for one of his none-too-frequent visitations, she tries to seduce him, only to be told he's not interested; after years of pretending, he's now officially out of the closet.

For a while, we assume these episodes -- some played for high tragedy, others for low comedy -- are leading us somewhere, or that they will accumulate into a theme that is a little more substantial than "black women good, black men very bad." They never do, and after a while, we realize they are only marginally connected. Even major emotional incidents, as when Gloria tells her son that his father is homosexual, seem to have no ramifications beyond the moment.

Nor is director Forest Whitaker any more expansive about the characters themselves, who seem defined only by their wardrobes and interior decorations. Therefore Gloria is dowdy and down to earth, Robin is sexy and sensuous, Bernadine is sophisticated and needy, and Savannah is a savvy professional. We know what kind of women they are, but never who they are; in their own way, they are as stereotyped and one-dimensional as the men they diss.

Ironically, this is actually better news for the male actors, who at least get to wax despicable in individual ways. (To be fair, two "positive" men do enter the women's lives in the end; one is a handyman played by Gregory Hines, whose wife is dead, the other a lawyer, played by an unbilled Wesley Snipes, whose wife is dying.)

The females stars, on the other hand, get to do little but cry and complain and kvetch until the end, when they all decide they really don't need men after all, and ride around singing along with songs on the radio to prove it. This may be a female thing that the rest of us don't understand, but as far as I can tell, it isn't any big thing.