ADAM: Max Meyer breaks with tradition.

stars:
Hugh Dancy, Rose Byre, Frankie Faison, Mark Linn-Baker with Amy Iring and Peter Gallagher.

Hold on to your hat, secure your seat belt, the film "Adam" breaks with tradition. Imagine a main stream film, Fox Searchlight films where the women are Not the essentially irrelevant characters who appear when a need to show the otherwise perfect man mess up because of Her, the Bad one , the woman otherwise kept out of the viewer's awareness.

In Adam the women are the driving message vehicles opposing the men who have so much trouble making it in this world.

The pivotal moment is encapsulated in the concept of "the lie": the big lie, the little lie. In this film "the lie" is one and the same. When untruth is celebrated all bets are off, is the unspoken message that cries out to the viewers loud and clear.

Lies of omission (secretive extra marital affairs) and lies of convenience and lies in business, financial irregularities seem to hold equal weight in this less than exciting film.

Adam is message driven, without benefit of a hint at character change. That is not to be confused with change of behavior. Behavior, the human ability to learn, is amply shown, is actually the overt message of the film. But in this day and age with all the technological advancement in film making, with all the great ways of telling a compelling story, Adam falls so short of interesting that the audience was restless and even I had trouble crying at the film's end.

The one outstanding moment was the on scream appearance of Amy Irving. Her professional achievement was on a par with the reigning Queen of film, Meryl Streep. Too bad she was given a minor role. Imagine if the film had used a "mature" woman rather than a young, lost soul to carry the message forward?

Adam, is a lesson in not to lie, not to omit, not to manipulate and to be emotionally honest. A lesson none of us in today's world will learn no matter how much we believe in its importance.

It just ain't real.


Linda Zises
Criticalwomen@blogspot.com
WBAI Women's Collective

A Memory Revisited:

Have we forgotten Raymond Velez from the Bronx, the politician the then New York City Mayor Ed Koch called "the poverty pimp". Have we forgotten that Espada Jr. has a history, a decade of being elected on the Democratic ticket because... that is where the votes are and once elected to the State Senate, switching to the Republican side because... that is where the money is?

I met Raymond Velez in early 1970's. He was a short, full breasted, wider than tall man, whose head sat on his shoulders without apparent need of a neck.
He presided with his arms wide perched on a dais awaiting the moment when his voice, his pearls of wisdom would be heard on air. Radio at its finest.

I was working for the City of New York and had, at his insistence, written a grant proposal. I was also pregnant, in my ninth month when Raymond sent his "boys " to my New York City office to learn the fate of our effort to get him more federal money.
I had my feet slightly raised as I sat in my desk chair His "boys" surrounded me. When the fatal piece of paper upon which a rejection of our request for money was plainly stated and read aloud by me, the assembled men erupted into fierce yelling, complaining, gesturing. I sat up, uncomfortably erect or as erect as I could given my physical state and said, ""It's not my fault". When that failed to calm the clamor in the room, I became more agitated. That's when i pulled rank. "Get out of my office"", I yelled "Out, Out!" and as I stood up with great difficulty the men dispersed. All except one. He was a slender man who stood quietly while his fellow travelers ran away.
"From where I come, men don't treat pregnant women this way" he said. Please, let me drive you home".
I did.
It was a quiet trip, no words seemed necessary in the wake of so many That was on a Friday. On Monday morning January 3, in the beginning moments of a fierce snow storm, I delivered my second son.

Linda Z(ises)
criticalwomen@blogspot.com