Jean Simmons & Lois Smith
Cast photo
Woodard, Moorhouse,
and Angelou
Directing this impressive array of actresses is Australian Jocelyn Moorhouse, whose only prior directing effort, Proof (1991), walked off with a slew of Australian Film Institute awards (as did last year's Muriel's Wedding, a film that she produced and her husband, P.J. Hogan, directed). "I know nothing about quilting," laughs Moorhouse, "but then, of course, the movie isn't really about that. It's about love, which we can all relate to."
Adapted from Whitney Otto's 1991 novel, American Quilt is told through the eyes of Finn (Ryder), a graduate student who comes to spend the summer with her grandmother (Burstyn) and great-aunt (Bancroft). While Finn works on her master's thesis and contemplates a marriage proposal from her boyfriend, Sam (Dermot Mulroney), she listens to the women of the quilting bee reminisce about their own lives and relationships.
"You'll never find perfection in love," reflects Moorhouse during a break in editing last spring," and each story says that. Love's a balance, so you see the pain in each character's story but you also see what's beautiful about it. Even the one that fails."
The generational nature of the story -- which unfolds in flashback, with younger performers portraying the characters in their youth --created a rare wealth of roles for actresses age 16 to 66. ("It's hard to even find a movie where there are more than two women in the cast," sighs Bancroft.) Half of Hollywood seemed to line up outside the door of producers Midge Sanford and Sarah Pillsbury.
"I just went in and was very aggressive about how much I understood this character and felt I should be her," says Samantha Mathis, who shares the role of Sophia with Lois Smith. A young woman of daring and imagination, Sophia relinquishes her youthful dreams and becomes a "wife," not knowing how to merge the two.
"Sophia reminded me of my grandmother," says Mathis pensively. "I understand someone who is so afraid that something will happen to them that they ultimately create it."
Kate Nelligan was equally smitten with her character. "I rarely feel that I should play something. It only happens once every eight or nine years, when I believe I'm really the best person for this part. And I felt that way about Constance."
Neither a joiner nor a rebel, Constance has never understood the need of women to confide in one another. "The other characters in the story are much more accessible to each other," says Nelligan, "whereas I see Constance as someone outside the touchy-feely stuff that drives me, personally, mad. I mean, I'd rather die than make a quilt with a group of women. And I really felt I had that to bring to the part -- I'm not ashamed of it or embarrassed about it or apologetic about it."
The novel's richly drawn characters --adapted by scripter Jane Anderson -- enticed Jean Simmons back to the big screen after an absence of seven years and convinced Angelou to tackle the role of the imposing Anna. The quality of the writing was such that even the small parts attracted name talent. Kate Capshaw, who appears in only one scene of the film, declares, "I've been the lead in movies where there wasn't a scene this good."
Mathis and her under-30 costars were awestruck at appearing in a film with such actresses as Bancroft and Burstyn, Simmons and Smith. Their only disappointment was that, in playing younger versions of these women, most never had the opportunity to actually play opposite them. Only Ryder and Woodard, who play characters living contemporaneously with the older women, enjoyed that privilege.
Angelou recalls the day the two younger actresses confessed that their friends were asking what it felt like to work with such icons. "We howled," reports Angelou. "It's wonderful to be considered an icon but in a way it's awful and awesome. After that I named Miss Woodard and Miss Ryder the Iconettes."
Despite a preponderance of women both in front of and behind the camera, men were a valuable component of the production, from cinematographer Janusz Kaminski to composer Thomas Newman to the actors, who included Mulroney, Loren Dean, and Rip Torn. Still, American Quilt is a film predominantly for and about women, a fact that prompts Nelligan to ask: "How are you going to sell this picture so that it doesn't sound like a movie no man could sit through?"
With Hollywood dominated by maledriven, effects-laden action pictures, Nelligan's query is not an unreasonable one. You don't have to look farther than weekly box office charts to realize that analyzing feelings and probing "hearts and souls," to use Bancroft's words, rarely sell as well as car crashes, gun battles, or aliens from outer space.
"But this film is so rich," protests Loren Dean, who plays Sophia's husband, opposite Samantha Mathis. "My section of the story shows what happens when people realize it's too late to follow their dreams. Sophia and Preston saw being together and following their dreams as conflicting [goals]." Dean points out that while the film is told from a female perspective, "the message is universal."
A rankled Woodard puts it even more emphatically: "The word sensitive is not respected in the work we do in our industry." It's an attitude that denigrates both men and women, says the actress, who has worked with a number of male directors credited with being perceptive about so-called women's issues. "I wouldn't want Marty Ritt and Larry Kasdan and John Sayles and Tommy Schlamme to be thought of as sensitive, because that word isn't respected. Instead, think of their films as wholly human; whoever is represented --male or female -- is represented fully, practically, straightforward, as a human being."
Producers Sanford and Pillsbury did, in fact, consider a number of male directors for American Quilt, but both they and Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin Entertainment optioned the book and shepherded the project through Universal, really wanted a woman . . . and they really wanted Moorhouse.
As she demonstrated with Proof, her film about a blind photographer and his search for someone to trust, Moorhouse harbors delightfully unorthodox sensibilities. While American Quilt proves a far more conventional "woman's picture" than did Proof, it retains enough of an edge to keep things interesting. "The way Jocelyn would look at things was always a little weird and funny," says Mulroney, "always a little askew."
American Quilt is a story about dreams and remembrances, about past and present and how the two are reconciled. Moorhouse believes that "women in particular carry emotional memories with them all the time. It's like clothing we wear. I carry a lot of memories and they can still pierce my heart even if they happened twenty years ago."
With its many tales of love and loss, How to Make an American Quilt also stirred up recollections in the various actors who, not surprisingly, saw the story through the prism of their -- or their character's -- own experience. For Mulroney, whose Sam wants to marry a skittish and wary Finn, the film is about commitment. For Bancroft it's about how men and women relate to each other. "You give up loneliness," she says, "but you have to make compromises." Mathis found herself reflecting on her own life and relationships, with both men and women. "It's a story about some opinionated women," laughs Angelou. Then, in a more serious vein, she adds, "It's about expectations: women's expectations and also society's expectations of women. And they don't always jibe."
The quilt of the title serves as an obvious metaphor for the film. "It's women getting together with their individual patches," says Burstyn, "their individual stories, and putting them all together. The story retains the integrity of the patches but, in coming together, the women make a new pattern that is the quilt."
Jean Oppenheimer is a contributing editor at American Cinematographer.
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| Jean Simmons & Lois Smith |
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| Woodard, Moorhouse, and Angelou |
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