True To Formula Movies By And For Women Are A Burgeoning Genre, But Seem To Be Falling Into A Pattern

After a long drought, Hollywood is unleashing something of a flood of films by and about women.

A decade of scrounging for enough actresses to fill out the Academy Awards competition - or even trying to find a decent date movie that wasn’t drenched in testosterone - has been redressed with the likes of “Boys on the Side,” “While You Were Sleeping,” “A Little Princess,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” “Clueless,” “Something to Talk About,” “Dangerous Minds” and “Moonlight and Valentino.”

And more are on the way. “How to Make an American Quilt” is the second of the fall releases, after “Valentino,” with a large female cast and a number of women in major, behind-the-scenes creative positions. This has to be cheerful news to anyone who values diversity in storytelling, indicating that such movies are moving up on the agendas of studio decision makers (most of whom are male).

But it does bring us to the next question. There are apparent similarities marking “American Quilt,” the just-released “Valentino” and the upcoming “Now and Then” and “Waiting to Exhale” - and they are traits shared with such recent hits as “Little Women,” “The Joy Luck Club,” “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “Steel Magnolias.” Do those similarities suggest that the Hollywood “women’s movie” has hit a kind of artistic plateau? Can we see what the next step might be?

“American Quilt” producer Midge Sanford is happy to be in a position to address that question. “‘Joy Luck Club,’ ‘Steel Magnolias,’ ‘Enchanted April’ - studio people say, ‘Well, someone seems to be going to them, so I guess we’ll let those kinds of movies be made.’ Which is said, perhaps, with a slight edge,” she says with, well, an edge in her voice.

“What might be the next step? I don’t know, but it’s a really interesting question because we certainly don’t want to be repeating ourselves. I haven’t seen any of the other three movies coming out, but I have read the book ‘Waiting to Exhale’ and it does seem rather different” from “American Quilt.” “Hopefully, we can all move on to another place.”

Based on Whitney Otto’s best seller, “American Quilt” recounts the romantic travails of a group of older women (played by Maya Angelou, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Nelligan, Jean Simmons, Lois Smith and Alfre Woodard) who gather together to make a wedding quilt for Burstyn’s granddaughter (Winona Ryder). A little conflict, a bit of bawdiness, some tears, much nurturing and forgiveness are spread over an episodic course of intimate conversations and illuminating storytelling.

Not all these elements and patterns appear in every woman-centered film of 1995. But a surprising number pop up again and again, even in such unexpected places as the teen-age comedy “Clueless.” And none of these pictures even flirts with the unpredictability and edginess of what many recall fondly as the best “women’s movie” of recent vintage, “Thelma & Louise.”

Of course, it must be said that this genre in the making is nowhere near as rigidly uniform as the hundreds of male-centered action movies Hollywood has churned out in the past dozen years. And even if the newer women’s pictures do share a certain sensitivity, their creators are aiming to make them no less tough than all that guy stuff.

“We wanted edge, intelligence and wit. We really didn’t want this movie told through gauze,” says “American Quilt” producer Sarah Pillsbury, whose previous films with partner Sanford include such flavorsome fare as “Desperately Seeking Susan,” “River’s Edge” and “Eight Men Out.”

“We don’t think of women’s stories and women’s lives as soft. Actually, most women’s lives are pretty damn hard, and the idea that there’s not a hard edge to a women’s story because no one pulls out a gun and shoots somebody is really offensive to us.

“Our concern about all of these women’s movies that are coming out,” Pillsbury continues, “is people who see something that is emotional and will call it sentimental and manipulative. Because it might have provoked some feeling in them, they think they were manipulated as opposed to, maybe, they saw something that moved them. We made a point of emphasizing that life hurts, but you can triumph over that with the power of forgiveness.”

Pillsbury and Sanford hired director Jocelyn Moorhouse precisely for the tough-minded spirit they’d seen in her work. The Australian filmmaker, however, actually viewed “American Quilt” as softer than her astringent feature debut, “Proof,” and the raucously illuminating “Muriel’s Wedding,” which she produced for her husband, P.J. Hogan.

“I wanted this to be a very gentle film, very loving,” Moorhouse says. “That was selfish on my part, I guess, because I’d made a rather vicious film with ‘Proof.’ But the script that won me over was very loving and tender, but at the same time not sentimental. It does explore those areas of how women love men and how women deal with certain emotions - especially if they’re cerebral women - how they deal with the more primal urges. Intelligent women can often be completely confused by their hormones taking over.

“That’s one of the little secrets about women that often aren’t explored in movies,” Moorhouse continues. “Maybe it’s good to show some of those secrets, maybe that’s why there are all these new films coming out about women. Perhaps what will happen is that it will continue along this path.

“But when you have films with a lead female character, we’ll get to know her through a more truthful side. What I certainly want to do with future films is show more of a female’s self in reaction to things, as opposed to what men might expect a woman to do.”

The intimate, verbal and open-hearted nature shared by many of the current films seems natural enough to actress Alfre Woodard. “There probably are reasons why they’re happening right now, but they should have been made all along,” says the double Emmy-winner and star of “Crooklyn” and “Passion Fist” as well as TV’s “The Piano Lesson.”

“It’s the absence of them in the past that we should note. This is what women do when they’re together. You sit two women in an office, waiting for more than 10 minutes, and they will start to share stories. And even if they’re strangers, women don’t listen casually; they start to comfort or give advice or empathize. It is something that’s very natural. What’s very unnatural is that it has not been in the cinema before.”