If I Were You

I was so impressed by If I Were You at the Palm Springs Film Festival that I expected to hear a lot more about it. Alas, it disappeared into the esteemed Lorber DVD ranks, where to our relief and delight it can still be found. It deserves a large-screen rep.

Writer/director Joan Carr-Wiggin wrote a brilliant screenplay and directed a richly nuanced cast to bring it to  impeccable life. 

      The plot is an inventive symphony of triangles. Madelyn (Marcia Gay Harden) spots her lying husband Paul (Joseph Kell) out with his bimbo mistress Lucy (Leonor Watling). After witnessing their quarrel Madelyn follows the apparently suicidal Lucy to her flat. Though herself heartbroken she consoles the girl and settles into a friendship in which -- at Lucy’s suggestion -- each will count on the other to direct them through their present crisis. The girl has lost her lover and the woman seems to have lost her husband, but Lucy doesn’t realize Madelyn is her Paul’s wife. 
     As Lucy doesn’t know who Madelyn is, neither does Madelyn’s demented mother. Nor, for that matter, does Paul, who is jealous and indignant when he takes her mysterious calls from Lucy to be from Madelyn’s imagined lover. Nor does Madelyn yet realize who Madelyn is. That discovery will come when the business woman and homemaker steps out of her habitual roles and plays -- Queen Lear. 

The two women’s situation sets up a steady stream of bristling ironies, especially as the women develop a growing intimacy: 

“Enough about me.”

“It’s a small world.”

“You’re nothing like Paul’s wife. Your husband must love you so much.” 

“You’re so much like me.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

“I’ve been multi-orgasmic since I was eight.” 

“How nice for you.”

And of course when Madelyn wants to discuss their marriage Paul retreats: “I’m just going to catch the end of the game.” That he does. 

Other brilliant set-pieces include the tipsy Madelyn erupting at a focus group, an absurd King Lear audition, and another aggrieved wife’s confrontation of Paul when she thinks her husband has been having an affair with Madelyn.  The climactic Lear performance makes you want to see the whole play. 

The rom-com element takes a sharp turn when Madelyn slips into a new relationship with Derek (Aidan Quinn), whose father died in the same home and at the same time as Madelyn’s mother. It begins in the nursing home waiting room in the shadow of death: “When was our last first kiss and did we even know it was our last?” Their relationship blossoms over ice cream in a wintry cemetery. In him she finds an understanding, joy and devotion long gone form her marriage. 

That cemetery image of rebirth confirms the function of the amateur theatre group’s production, where a troupe of well-meaning incompetents are saved by Lucy’s dippy Fool and Madelyn’s heartfelt Lear -- and the play saves them. The play harnesses Madelyn’s emotions and carries her through her heartbreak when Lucy turns against her and wins Paul away. Of course, Lucy understands Lear because she too has been maddened by losing everything she thought she had. Like Lear, Madelyn -- but also Lucy, Paul and Derek -- have grown to understand themselves better as a result of their adversity.  For Lucy and  Madelyn, the play has illuminated their selves and their lives, by giving them a detached yet engaging perspective on their personal dilemmas. Initially they helped themselves by taking the other’s advice, which each developed by pretending to be the other. Then they sank/recovered themselves in their Shakespeare roles. A Lear speech carries Madelyn through her mother’s funeral. Taking on a serious role gives Lucy the confidence to leave not just her bimbo life and callow ambition but her illusions about Paul. Both women get a new self-respect from the stage.

Wisely, Carr-Wiggin doesn’t leave Madelyn with either Paul or Derek. Given Paul’s familiar worry about his and his imagined rival’s penis size, the Derrick is the more satisfying victor. At least for us.