An Unmarried Woman

1978's AN UNMARRIED WOMAN is one of the best documents of the post women's liberation era I've seen.  It joins other cinema such as GIRLFRIENDS and LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR as an example of allowing women to take the lead role, perhaps appearing in every scene, and be examined as human beings who dare to challenge the roles society expects of them.  A society designed by men, of course.

Jill Clayburgh portrays Erica Benton, an upper East side wife and mother who is envied by her circle of friends for her seemingly perfect life. She and Martin (Michael Murphy), a wealthy stockbroker, do all the usual things marrieds do. They try to relate to their precocious teenage daughter Patti (Lisa Lucas).  They have a lot of sex but also fight about when they don't.    But one day her husband Martin (Michael Murphy) tearfully announces that he has fallen in love with a younger woman, someone he met while looking at shirts at a department store.  I know affairs can be ignited anywhere but if someone remade this film with these characters the whole thing would probably have begun while waiting in line at Starbucks.  Erica looks back at her perfect husband with disbelief and disgust.  Sixteen years of marriage. Everything gone in a matter of seconds.

The tears come later.  Martin moves out and Erica begins to examine herself, what went wrong in a life that was so meticulously mapped out.  She begins to see a psychiatrist named Tanya (played by real life therapist Penelope Russianoff), each session more painful but perhaps closer to self-actualization, self-awareness, what have you.  Erica feels guilty.  Tanya explains that guilt is unnatural, a man made emotion. Hmmm.  As Erica shows no signs of being religious, we can't blame the guilt on a deity, at least.

Erica will slowly begin to date again.  Unfortunately, her first stab is with Charlie, her arrogant and chauvanistic co-worker.  She allows herself to go back to his apartment.  When they begin to get intimate, she can't help but laugh.  She had never been with anyone else.  How is she supposed to feel?

Later, she meets an amiable English artist called Saul (Alan Bates) who has great potential to be her next mate, a serious relationship.  He's talented, funny, a good lover.  But has Erica reached a new level, found that life can thrive without a romantic appendage?

Clayburgh is just so fine as Erica.  Take that in every imaginable way.  Her litany of emotions never once rang false for me. Her role in witer/director Paul Mazursky's film is showy but never over (or under) played. She is indeed in every single scene.  This is late '70s life through her confused eyes, though we may react differently to Martin, Patti, and her friends (one is of whom is played by Kelly Bishop, in a part that will be quite amusing for fans of Gilmore Girls) than she does.  Mazursky realizes them all clearly.  When Patti is sarcastic during a dinner with her mother and Saul we understand that she is masking pain and confusion.

Does Erica do that? At times.  She can be abrupt, horribly bitchy (even to strangers), then tender.  AN UNMARRIED WOMAN always allows her to be herself, a complex "hot mess" (in the modern vernacular).  In 1978, it must have seemed revolutionary.  Less so now, though unlike many contemporary female characters she is not reduced to a pop culture spouting caustic.  She is a grown up, back in a time when grown ups made films for grown ups.