New York City/Critical-Faculty Ambivalence: A Journey Through the Looking-Sea of “An Unmarried Woman”

I hadn’t seen Melanie Mayron’s “Girlfriends” back in New York City in 1978. I loved it. I watched more movies about women than I did before: Ellen Burstyn in ” Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” 1974 and the movie “Broken English” 2007). The films were about people who are blue who are taking precautions not to be. They are moody movies, wherein geography figures as largely as the characters, where a change in location occasions a change in perspective.

“An Unmarried Woman” is, disappointingly, not available to stream, and I found myself scrounging for YouTube scraps, looking for other movies that would inspire the same mood. I hit the Criterion Channel, thinking perhaps an escape into French cinema would do the trick. I struck out in the hot sun of Roger Vadim’s 1956 Jacques Deray’s 1969 film “La Piscine” and “And God Created Woman” didn’t offer the complex characters or the coziness I was looking for.

Last week I wrote about seasonal ambivalence, about trying to be comfortable in the cold in-between. My mood was as dark and icy as the weather and I wanted to change it decisively, so I turned to my cultural diet. What would a syllabus look like for optimism? There is a scene I had in mind. In “An Unmarried Woman”, Jill Clayburgh danced to Swan Lake in her New York City apartment. I haven’t seen the 1978 film since I was a teenager, but that scene stayed with me: exuberant, silly, creative, full of possibility.

The year continues to get its bearings, to establish itself. Right now, it’s still a collection of post-holiday weeks, getting-going weeks, weeks for planning the year to come. We get up to speed at the on-ramp. We will be on our way soon when we are in the flow of traffic.