Word: lela
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...indication that White has not grasped a few bottom-line realities in the motion-picture industry. Waiting to Exhale is about money, and Hollywood is a bottom-line town. That is why box-office receipts are kept track of so closely. When African-American talents such as Loretta Devine, Lela Rochon, director Forest Whitaker and author Terry McMillan become common household names like Madonna, Demi Moore, Ron Howard and Michael Crichton, then Hollywood will, I hope, produce more films that explore African-American life. Yes, ultimately some of these movies will be slick Hollywood trash. But only then will African...
...struggling welfare mama, sassy street-corner "ho" or domineering matriarch in sight. Indeed for all the predictable carping from black men about the supposed bashing of their sex in Exhale, it is middle-class black women who take the real beating. Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine and Lela Rochon play to a new black female stereotype that is in some ways more damaging than the ones it replaces: the young professional woman who can excel in a demanding job, be a successful single mother and support her aging parent, yet who is abjectly clueless about defending herself from exploitative...
...hyped movie, "Waiting to Exhale" is based on the best-selling, and better written, novel by Terry McMillan. The movie's central characters are four black women trying to eke out a living for themselves in Scottsdale, Arizona: Savannah (Whitney Houston), Bernadine (Angela Bassett), Gloria(Loretta Devine) and Robin (Lela Rochon). Also featured are big-screen talents Wesley Snipes, who plays Bernadine's post-marital love interest, and Gregory Hines, who plays Marvin, Gloria's last chance at romance...
...Phoenix, Arizona, and the women are black, but everything else is familiar. Bernadine (Bassett) finds that her longtime husband is deserting her; Savannah (Whitney Houston) has a lover who won't leave his wife; Gloria (Loretta Devine) can't get her bisexual ex-husband into bed; and Robin (Lela Rochon) shacks up with a virtual Fiesta Bowl Parade of losers. The men are all rotters except for two perfect guys (Gregory Hines and Wesley Snipes) who are ennobled by watching their good wives...
Houston has not yet made the same mark with her acting. In Exhale, she wisely works as part of an ensemble that includes Angela Bassett, Lela Rochon and Loretta Devine. Bassett has most of the showy scenes (in one, her character sets her adulterous husband's belongings on fire), while Houston's scenes are quieter, less demanding (an emotional phone call to her mother, a slow dance at a party). Says author McMillan: "She's going to be a really better actress when she starts seeing herself as an actress and not a singer who acts...