Word: mistress
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...laughs come from the bizarre anachronistic changes and crass one-liners. "Dorine, shut the fuck up!" is not really funny by itself. Injected into a 322-year-old text, it is hysterical. But it is also cheap. Auletta's changes are so self-conscious that Dorine, while discussing her mistress's illness and the use of leeches to cure it, comments to the audience how odd it is that they are making all these modern references and have no idea what modern medicine is. Why didn't Auletta just change Moliere's references to leeches, too? Because he wanted...
...shared by Solange (Lois Folstein) and Claire (Mary Rutkowski), the sisters who are employed in the house of an unnamed "Madame" (Barbara Matteau). The play opens with what seems to be a maid's insurrection against Madame, as Solange inexplicably drops her servile tone and begins to abuse her mistress. Their bizarre, frequently incomprehensible exchange, in which erotic and violent impulses are mingled, is broken off suddenly by the sound of an alarm clock--the real Madame is about to come home, and we learn that Claire has been wearing her clothes as part of a play-acting ritual...
This disorientation is the first of many the play has in store, as the relationships between the sisters and their mistress seem to change totally from one minute to the next. By thrusting the audience into this complex psychological game without telling us the rules, Genet is able to communicate the sheer strangeness of the sisters' inner lives; some act of violence seems necessary to shatter the feverish atmosphere...
Laurent (Alain Chabat), a real estate dealer, cheats on his wife Loli (Victoria Abril) but insists--men are such romantics--that she is ever faithful to him. As his mistress replies wearily, "That's probably what my husband says to his mistress about me." Loli is indeed constant, until she meets Marijo (Balasko), a butch musician. Marijo fulfills all the popular lesbian stereotypes: she has short hair, a gruff manner and a weight problem; in the kitchen she's better with wrenches than with sauces. But she also has a knack for intimacy, and that's what Loli desperately needs...
Lying awake nights sweating over Elizabeth Berkley's career? Relax. The Showgirls star is playing GOLDIE HAWN's husband's mistress in The First Wives Club. "We have to afford people some mistakes," says Hawn of Berkley. "She's a lovely girl." The sisterly goodwill has apparently spread to the whole cast. Of working with Hawn and BETTE MIDLER, DIANE KEATON says, "It has heightened my impression of how talented they are. They're the major fascinating women of all time." How will such nice women manufacture the vengeful feelings their characters need? Easy, says Midler. "I'll think...