Word: womanities
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Villanova 70, Woman's basketball...
JANIS JOPLIN would have detested The Rose. Starring Bette Midler, this thinly-disguised biography chronicles the epic self-destruction of Rose, a white woman from the south, singin' the blues. Director Mark Rydell clearly knows how to hack at the heartstrings; the very first shot of the film identifies Rose, i.e. Janis "pearl" Joplin, with the other self-destructive heroes of our culture, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. As the biography of a real woman, The Rose reveals nothing. It takes a marvelously idiosyncratic human being and reduces her to a cliche...
...that level however, the film works. Forget the idea that this film has any connection with Janis Joplin, the woman, and enjoy its insights into the cosmos of a "star." The Rose works splendidly when it treats Rose as a singing phenomenon transcending human limits and fails abysmally when it portrays her as a lonely woman with all of Joplin's reputed problems. As a star on stage, Midler becomes a voice and a presence. In the striking concert scenes, she projects an astounding vitality and animal-like ferocity, savaging both herself and the audience. Her voice lacks the razor...
...scene and topic with the leering prurience of a porn director. He offers up to us his Bryant-esque theory of homosexual women: when that rare "good man" ain't around, another broad will do, but when the real McCoy rears its head, both literally and figuratively, the other woman is naturally and immediately banished. After all, it's only normal...
WHEN THE FILM refrains from digging up dead dirt on a dead woman and concentrates on creating the live persona of Rose, things improve. The entire sequence with Frederic Forrest as an AWOL Army sergeant is enchanting; Midler's gifts as both a comic and serious actress shine as she creates an original character rather than rehashing old rumors about Joplin...