Taking the stage at the Ziegfeld last Monday for the premiere of the long awaited HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce, director Todd Haynes dedicated the night to mothers, “This is a movie about a mom. Mine passed away while we were making it.”
Starting top down, he introduced the cast: Kate Winslet: “She delivers a seismic career defining performance,” he noted, and in her career that's saying a lot. Winslet got up, splendid in a Stella McCartney sheath with polka dots on sheer fabric, her blond waves pinned back in a French twist. The stellar ensemble followed suit: Guy Pearse, James LeGros, Melissa Leo, Mare Winningham, Evan Rachel Wood, her blond tresses done like a long Veronica Lake do. Composer Carter Burwell stood up and bowed, his newborn in a snuggly. The night extended to dads as well.
If you are nostalgic about the James M. Cain's 1941 noir novel, or the 1945 movie starring Joan Crawford in an Oscar winning performance, think again. Haynes makes the material his own, more Far From Heaven with its take on the limitations of American women's lives.
This is an epic 5-part film set in depression era '30's and Mildred Pierce is one resourceful woman in a way that may feel resonant in today's economy. Principled and full of pride, she throws her cheating husband out and takes a job as a waitress in a Hollywood hash house much to the horror of her hoity-toity daughter Veda. In the 2 parts shown, Veda is played by a young actress, Morgan Turner. By part 3, Wood takes over the role as the drama becomes more emblematic of the troubled relationships between mothers and daughters.
Director Lena Dunham, whose debut film, the much acclaimed Tiny Furniture, featuring her own mother playing egad, her own mother, has a bit part in the miniseries, a nurse in a harrowing hospital scene. Ilene S. Landress, a producer of Mildred Pierce is developing an HBO project with her called Girls. You can't believe the sex these young people are having, she said of Dunham's new series, and I don't mean Mildred Pierce kind of sex, referring to the tasteful scenes with Winslet in a slip, or genteel and bare-breasted with Guy Pearce as the gigolo Monty. Added Landress of the film's locations, particularly the Glendale, California house where the Peirce family resides: We imported palm trees to Glen Cove.
The after party at the Plaza Hotel was a riot of New York arts/film people, among them John Waters, John Cameron Mitchell, Mira Nair, Jason Reitman, Paul Haggis, Bob Balaban, Steve Buscemi. Oren Moverman, Stanley Crouch and Harry Evans. And because Mildred Pierce opens a restaurant serving only chicken and waffles, we thought the dinner menu would be a no-brainer. The surprise highlight of the buffet: short ribs.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
Where is the fearless soul who will acknowledge the elephant in the room?
Blogging -like much on the Internet --remains an enterprise like the wild, wild west, a frontier with few parameters. Leaving the stage, Bennetts told me that she has posted on Huffington, but only as a marketing tool, when she has needed to bring attention to a new book: “Why should I write for nothing when I can get paid?” she asked.
Posted by: Flour Mill | April 06, 2011 at 11:16 PM
The character of Lucy, played so brilliantly by Melissa Leo, is perhaps the most important key to unlock the mystery of Mildred Pierce. Mildred is a complex woman, but Lucy let's us get in Mildred's mind by that advice she gives Mildred. Both Melissa Leo and Kate Winslet deserve to win emmys for their outstanding performances!
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As I watched the Mildred Pierce miniseries it made me feel uncomfortable and sad because I recognized myself in Mildred, and I could see my own daughter in Veda. I recently spent ten days in my daughter's flat in London to help her "heal" from a bout of depression and during this time, as with all the time I spend with her, I have essentially been my daughter's "bitch." In her relationships with others (who don't really know her) she is charming, sollicitious, caring... but in the privacy of her flat, she is demeaning to me, abusive, berating and demanding. She swings from manic moments of self aggrandizing to crying her eyes out, and in between she will scream at me for offering to clean her kitchen or do her laundry. I'm now in the States on business and I'll tell you, I couldn't have gotten out of her flat soon enough. I thought I was going to lose my mind.
She blames me for all of her troubles - she blames my divorce from her father when she was 11 for making her the way she is today: unstable and needy. She even says that her eating disorders are my fault because I failed to pack her a school lunch every day and didn't force her to eat salads (she subsisted for days at a time on toast with butter and jam but it would have required literal force-feeding to get her to eat anything else - the girl has always been oppositional and I thought that force feeding would be more traumatic than whatever nutritional damage the toast and jam could be doing.)
The part that makes me like Mildred Pierce though (and it's not the sleeping around with men) is that in spite of all the abuse, I keep giving and giving and giving to her. I am virtually broke (the trip here from New Zealand bankrupted me - but she said she needed me and I did it anyway). I have used my credit cards to buy her clothes and gadgets - anything to make her happy. She is jealous of the things I own (all of which has been purchased on credit cards). Her father is an orthopaedic surgeon and has been financing her lifestyle for years. When I buy anything for myself the first thing she does is call him and say: "You will never believe what Mum bought herself!" So while I'm here, the Mildred in me has bough her a new wardrobe at Top Shop, an iPad 2, and a used Vespa. When I return home it's likely I will have to sell one of my cars to cover these expenses. I know I'm stupid for doing this but I feel guilty for all of her troubles, guilty for the divorce, guilty that I can't give her what a father can give her, and I hate the fact that they talk about me behind my back - that she complains that I'm cheap with her and he encourages her to keep pushing me to give more and more.
Since my ex husband has a better relationship with her than I do, I have encouraged her to get her the thing she needs most: psychiatric treatment. She is addicted to pot, has an eating disorder, has a boyfriend at Cambridge whom she's bullied and bossed into doing her bidding... a nice young chap who is no match for her.
A normal person would say:stop taking her abuse, stand up for yourself. But I fear that I will get so angry I will never want to talk to her again. Or vice versa. My own mother was a narcissist and I finally cut her off after a lifetime of abuse. I can't do that to my daughter, or risk her doing that to me... or can I?
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