Delving into the past to illuminate the present

Film review: Divine Secrets of Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Sisterhood is a subject Hollywood movies have tackled with grace, candor and insight since the pre-war classic The Women (Claire Booth Luce’s ageless, magnificent comedy), How to Make an American Quilt, and Steel Magnolias. Now comes Divine Secrets of Ya-Ya Sisterhood which delves into the past to illuminate the present. It is a movie that is bound to be watched for years to come.

The story is about a feuding mother and daughter and how the mother’s loyal childhood barkada tries not only to reconcile them but to make the younger woman realize her mom’s complex past and come to terms with her own anxieties and fears.

The secrets referred to in the title are none other than the contents of a well-kept scrapbook full of fading photographs and letters, ticket stubs, and even dried flowers. By hook or by crook, the sisterhood will make the daughter Sidda (Sandra Bullock) go over this memorabilia to understand her mother Vivi’s past and her complicated personality.

There is little time, not because someone is dying (thank heaven nobody dies in this movie even if the characters are mostly geriatric) but because Sidda’s wedding preparations are peaking, and the old woman’s birthday is forthcoming.

Two or three stories overlap here, the first being the raging battle between Sidda and Vivi (the present), and the other, told in flashbacks through the obligatory soft focus lens, Vivi’s younger days.

The flashbacks are further subdivided into Vivi’s early youth in the late ’30s and early ’40s (the movie opens with four little girls engaged in some ritualistic blood compact forming the Ya-Ya sisterhood, you know, just a crazy, silly girl thing) and her early womanhood-motherhood in the early ’60s.

Unavoidably there is a romantic quality of Vivi’s maidenhood but soon hard realities set in, and she is shown suffering from some domestic and personal turbulence. She finds solace in the Catholic church, but it doesn’t hurt that all this time, the sisterhood is compact, the friends never away. They are like fairy godmothers in a vintage Disney cartoon. They are determined to save the heroines from perdition and restore balance and serenity to their lives.

Now it’s a situation rife with nostalgia and emotional moments, but to writer and debuting director Callie Khouri’s credit, this poignant, layered tale (based on two novels by Rebecca Wells – doesn’t end up a maudlin melodrama. Still, not a few eyes will remain dry when the movie reaches its climax – predictable but, well, good for a happy cry.

The actresses should share a big chunk of the credit for this. Sandra Bullock, being the biggest star in the cast, also gets the biggest exposure but alas, in the acting department, she is eclipsed by just about everyone. Most notable of her co-stars are Ellen Burstyn and Ashley Judd who play the same character in two different eras (a good Oscar campaign late this year should propel these two women to the frontline in next year’s Best Actress race).

A consistent and excellent actress, Burstyn continues to come up with memorable performances, from a free-thinking actress-mom in The Exorcist, a peripatetic waitress in her Oscar-winning Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and a paraplegic in Resurrection, to the other year’s Requim for a Dream. In Divine Secrets, she plays Vivi, a southern belle in her twilight years, with customary passion yet full of sympathy and never cloying.

The same may be said of Ashley Judd in the very same role – the performance of her career. As the younger Vivi, she is beautiful and projects equal parts sadness and joy. She has appeared in many other movies but none of them of lasting merit.

In their senior years, Vivi’s Ya-Ya pals are played spiritedly by Fionnula Flanagan, Shirley Knight (youthfully slim in the Group and Coppola’s The Rainmaker), and Maggie Smith. The latter is still everywhere, from Hook and Clash of the Titans to Harry Potter but the young generation of moviegoers may not be aware that this lady has won deserved Oscars, the more important one for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969.

It’s virtually an all-girl production, and in fact, that’s how the producers (Bette Midler is one of them) call themselves – All-Girl Production. Guys in the audience however should not be intimidated. Here’s one women’s picture that isn’t anti-male.

Two characters who matter, played by James Garner as the elder Vivi’s husband and Angus MacFadyen as Sidda’s fiancé, typify the cool, supportive, post-Feminist men.

There’s one heel, a fop in the nouveau riche household who humiliates the black servant serving them dinner, but it’s a bit role, and if he’s totally unsympathetic, he has a hoity-toity mother to match. Also, the all-girl production will see to it that this character promptly gets his just desserts – literally and in the face, like Jane Fonda punching and turning the table on a male heckler in Julia.

In the end, the most useful moral of the movie – even to male moviegoers – is the vicious cycle of a parent’s problematic relationship with his/her children who repeat it on their own kids once they raise their own families. The Ya-yas point out that this must be stopped once and for all so that, well, everyone will truly live happily ever after.