Something to Talk About (1995)

[6]

Screenwriter Callie Khouri’s much anticipated follow-up to her Oscar-winning script for Thelma & Louise is a more conventional romantic comedy, but not one without bite. Julia Roberts stars as Grace, a busy wife and mother who discovers her husband (Dennis Quaid) is cheating on her. Her family encourages her to keep it a secret and deal with it privately, but that’s just not Grace’s style. She makes it a public matter, bringing into question not just her own husband’s infidelity, but marital problems throughout the neighborhood — and even between her own parents, played by Robert Duvall and Gena Rowlands.

Something to Talk About is basically a battle of the sexes, with its female characters leading a righteous revolution against male indiscretion. While it may sound like heavy material, Khouri does a remarkable job keeping it warm and funny. Quaid’s character is never quite villainized — in fact, Khouri gives us an opportunity to empathize with him. My misgivings about the movie are all in the final act, when children are revealed to be the great remedy for estrangement, and everything gets a little too tied up with a bow.

While the ending is maudlin, there are great moments leading up to it. Kyra Sedgwick is a scene-stealer as Roberts’ spitfire sister who seems to channel all of Grace’s rage and aggression, to the misfortune of Quaid’s testicles. The centerpiece scene of Act Two is a highlight, when Roberts and Quaid nearly come to a genuine reconciliation over dinner — too late for Grace to take back the poisoned fish she’s just fed him. But the film’s best moments are between the venerable Rowlands and Duvall, when Rowlands takes inspiration from her daughter and locks Duvall out of the family home for an affair he had decades ago.

Directed by Lasse Hallström (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Chocolat).