Fresh look

The remake of the 1975 thriller “The Stepford Wives,” which opens Friday, is a quick-witted, dark comedy. But the actresses who play the spouses-turned-robots think it may still spark controversy.

“I think the idea of seeking perfection in people — and feeling they need to be perfect — is everywhere,” says Nicole Kidman. “And the imbalance between that idea and actual reality creeps into everything in the culture.”

Adds co-star Bette Midler: “There’s such a backlash against feminism going on now. It seems like a conspiracy. The bottom line is about money: Get women back in their boxes and buying some products.”

The new “Stepford Wives” follows the premise of the first version: Joanna Eberhardt (Kidman) moves from Manhattan with her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) and their family to the idyllic Connecticut town of Stepford. She soon discovers it is populated by husbands who replace their wives with buxom, empty-headed automatons.

The original “Stepford Wives” was a perfect jumping-off point for ‘70s-era feminists who saw the film as a metaphor for the struggles facing that era’s women’s liberation movement. But instead of targeting devious husbands, the new film satirizes overachieving, workaholic wives.

While the original film’s Joanna (played by Katharine Ross) was fearful her sassy, independent streak would result in her being replaced, Kidman’s Joanna, a TV executive, actually earns more than her spouse.

Midler, 58, says the remake “throws a lot of ideas on the table.” She, Kidman, Glenn Close and the singer Faith Hill — who makes her film debut as a Stepford wife — related to many of them.

“When women started going into the (workplace), they had to be a hundred times better than the men they were competing against,” says Close, 57. “That’s where that image of the striving, strident, ambitious woman may have come from.”

“I don’t believe actually that you can have it all,” adds Kidman, 36, who was married to Tom Cruise from 1992 to 2001.

“I worked intermittently in my twenties, and I loved it,” she says, “but we wouldn’t want to be separated for more than two weeks. I didn’t want to sit in hotel rooms on the phone, saying, ‘Gosh, I wish we were together!’

“And I wanted a baby from a very early age. (She and Cruise adopted two children.) I think it’s an illusion to think you can have everything, and it’ll all be fine. I’m not saying you have to make choices, but it’s hard.”

The film also addresses the clash between conforming and self-definition.

Hill — whose character, perhaps symbolically, blows a fuse during a barn dance scene — has long been bedeviled by the issue of whether she’s a country or pop singer.

“(The music world) has always had trouble with me,” says Hill, 36, “because I don’t make my choices based on what people think of me. I’m an individual, I don’t know any other way to be.

“Whether it’s the popular choice or not, that’s just what I am.”

“I’ve had 30 years of choosing mostly work over life,” says Close, a single mom of a 16-year-old daughter. “The last couple of years, if I read a movie script I liked, it was hard to not jump in. But I also feel that, at this point, if I met somebody cool, I’d want to change my life.”

Still, says Kidman, “I think when you’re in a position to do roles and the timing is right, you can’t say no.

“To be honest, I don’t plan a lot,” says Kidman, who has done 10 films in the past four years. “It’s a lot of spontaneous reactions to things, then saying to myself, ‘Well, I suppose this will all work out in the end.’

“I don’t like to get too analytical about it. I’m having a very blessed life. But, hey, there are lots of times when it’s not there at all, or when there are things besides work that are more interesting. The unpredictability of life is what’s so wonderful. It’s more of an ebb and flow, and going with the flow of your life.”

Kidman certainly went with the flow making “Stepford Wives,” which had a tough shoot last year in New York and Connecticut. The production went over schedule, causing her to drop out of the thriller “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” with Brad Pitt.

Then Midler and co-star Christopher Walken reportedly had trouble with director Frank Oz (“The Score,” “In & Out”), who called in sick several days.

“It was a hard film to make,” admits Kidman. “It was tricky to get through. I don’t think that part has been overblown. But we all got along. The actors were tight.”

And making movies — even difficult ones — can be inspiring, the actresses say.

“When I spent five months as Cruella De Vil in ‘101 Dalmatians’ without my family, that was hard,” says Close. “But I feel strongly now that it’s about who I choose to spend my working time with, and if I’ll learn something.”

“Or maybe it’ll be devastating,” interjects Kidman, “but boy, you’ll come out of it with something else imprinted on you that will somehow make your life a little richer.” self end