Let’s Hold A ‘Mirror’ Up To A Valid If Aborted Premise

Several recent so-called women’s movies - “The First Wives Club,” “Waiting to Exhale” and the latest, “The Mirror Has Two Faces” - remind me of a conversation recounted by an old friend. The friend - an attractive, professional woman of about 40 - has gained a few pounds. Although she still looks great, she frets constantly about getting back into shape, about how vital it is to her self-esteem to regain her former tautness.

Recently, a longtime male friend cut short her lament. “Why is it so important?” he asked.

Surprised, she explained that she once turned heads and misses doing so now.

“But you’re so successful in so many other areas,” he said. “You need that, too?”

She was almost feeling better, almost considering that a size 12 wasn’t the end of the world, when her friend said:

“Besides, why try? … There’s nothing in the world like a 25-year-old woman.”

I had to smile. Just days before, I’d seen a 25-ish salesclerk whose perfect skin, graceful features and offhand poise blended into something spectacular. I longed to ask her a question much like the one I later heard at a screening of “Mirror,” in which a mousy professor (Barbra Streisand) asks her former knockout mother (Lauren Bacall), “How did it feel, being so beautiful?”

Her mom’s answer: “It was wonderful.”

Sure it was. It was wonderful, too, watching “Exhale,” “First Wives” and “Mirror” - at least for a while. It’s refreshing, seeing some female concerns given big-screen import: beauty, age and the fact that there’s nothing quite like a 25-year-old woman.

And a lot of us ain’t 25 anymore.

But halfway through each of these movies, a certain squeamishness sets in. After the initial cheap thrills provided by the revenge scenarios in “Exhale” and “Wives” - and if you haven’t seen Angela Bassett barbecue a BMW, you don’t know revenge you start to wonder:

Why don’t these bright, over-30 women exhale long enough for anything besides men to occupy them? Can’t these First Wives do more to challenge the notion that beauty is all about flesh and firmness?

“Mirror” seems to be different. In it, the dowdy but never unattractive professor spends much of the movie persuasively asking: What’s with this Madison Avenue-exacerbated beauty obsession that ruins people’s lives?

Good question. Though she’s smart, charming and successful, the prof is attracted to empty, hard-to-get hunks. “I’d love it,” she sighs, “if somebody really knew me.”

The somebody who inevitably does is also a hunk (Jeff Bridges), albeit one who teaches math. Weary of dim beauties, he seeks a dowdy brainiac for a stimulating friendship. He and the professor discover the fun, supportive, challenging relationship of their dreams - except there’s no sex, a problem that clearly must be resolved.

To this point, real-life plain Janes - and attractive ones sick of endless Revlon rituals - are pulling for them. They know that in the real world, average-looking, fat and seriously homely people find true love.

They know Hollywood is a crock and are glad to see a clever romantic comedy admit it.

Then it happens. Somehow - it doesn’t matter how or why really - Professor Caterpillar doffs her baggy sweaters and transmogrifies into Barbra Butterfly: long-legged, busty, blond even.

Major betrayal.

Now there’s nothing wrong with glamour - most of us enjoy watching grown-ups such as Streisand, Tina Turner and Susan Sarandon work it better than any youngster. There’s nothing wrong with a woman developing her own unique loveliness. But that’s the problem with “Mirror.” Streisand, who miraculously snatched success in Hollywood without bobbing her nose or blunting her perfectionism, embodies better than anyone the power and beauty in self-acceptance.

So why’d she do this?

Because “Mirror” is, after all, a movie. And because on some level, she’s like every woman who has underestimated herself as actually being the physical package the world sees and judges, someone whose wrinkles, crooked schnoz or dumpy body could diminish her.

Somewhere along our moviegoing way, some of us learned differently:

That average women are allowed happy endings, too. That, in truth, there is nothing like a 25-year-old woman, which is OK because there are compensations - maturity, sophistication, money market accounts - for getting older. Still, in movies aimed at the younger set - “The Truth About Cats & Dogs,” “Circle of Friends” - regular-looking heroines actually get the guy without transforming themselves.

Streisand should note this. At the end of “Mirror” - after her character has bemoaned the fakeness of music swelling as stars smooch on screen - she and Bridges kiss and prance to a syrupy tune in Manhattan’s predawn streets: They are gorgeous, photogenic - and absolutely unbearable.

Which made me think that the best reason for a mirror to have two faces is that it has more than one side with which to smack them.

xxxx