{"id":6368,"date":"2009-10-24T06:22:44","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T22:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/10\/23\/in-her-shoes\/"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:18:57","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:18:57","slug":"in-her-shoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/10\/24\/in-her-shoes\/","title":{"rendered":"In Her Shoes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-shoes-01\" In Her Shoes<\/a><\/em> (2005) \u2013 on rental. This was a pleasant find on DVD rental that arrived together with The Clone Wars<\/em> several evenings ago. And fortunately too, as In Her Shoes <\/em>was a wonderfully sweet and thoughtful film that studies relationships in broken families. This film nicely washed the stink off Star Wars: The Clone Wars<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Her Shoes<\/em> involves three women characters: an irresponsible, almost good-for-nothing pretty bimbo Maggie (played by Cameron Diaz), her workaholic, frumpy and slightly overweight sister Rose (Australian actress Toni Collette) and their grandmother Ella (Shirley MacLaine).<\/p>\n

Rose leads a unexciting but orderly and purposeful life of a well-paid associate in a law firm and is in a romantic relationship with her firm\u2019s partner. Maggie shows up one day \u2013 after hoping from job to job to job \u2013 all drunk. Rose while fiercely disapproving of her sister\u2019s extravagant behavior takes her in, which Maggie promptly returns the favor of by having Rose\u2019s car impounded and generally disrespecting her home. The last straw comes when Maggie sleeps with Rose\u2019s boyfriend, and act which emotionally destroys Rose. Told to leave and never return, Maggie travels to find a last relation she never knew \u2013 her aged grandmother who now works in a retirement home.<\/p>\n

The film tells the story of each of the three women\u2019s discovery and restoration of their relations, and also redemption. So yes, there\u2019s a happy conclusion of sorts at the film\u2019s end \u2013 and that\u2019s not giving too much away. The journey to that ending is what counts, and is at times heart warming and tearful, and finally representative of sisterly bonding, despite all the character clashes and friction each have from start to end.<\/p>\n

Even though Diaz gets first billing in the cast list, Collette and MacLaine are the real standouts. Diaz isn\u2019t in a role that\u2019s dissimilar to previous ones: she already looks the part of the beautiful blonde bombshell, and that in this film she\u2019s also an insufferable and illiterate alcoholic are just additional character layers for her to sink into.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s Collette\u2019s Rose as the person who\u2019s on the receiving end of her sister\u2019s indiscretions that audiences will most empathize with. I haven\u2019t seen a lot of Collette\u2019s screen performances yet \u2013 the most recent one being the made for television movie Tsunami: The Aftermath<\/em> from a few years ago \u2013 but after In Her Shoes<\/em>, will make an effort to. MacLaine does a feisty take on a grandmother who’s secretly burdened guilt of not being there for her granddaughters when their mother passed away.<\/p>\n

The film at 130 minutes nicely too runs at a relatively longer length than most comedy-dramas of this type. So, the story-telling takes its time, and there are plenty of story-development scenes, and Rose\u2019s learning to love again and Maggie\u2019s acceptance into the elderly community are moves along nicely and doesn\u2019t feel rushed at all. The only clunker I can think of \u2013 and why I took a star away from my rating of this film \u2013 lies in its a couple of scenes contrived to squeeze tears out from you.<\/p>\n

But then again, if sniffing if not outright crying in this sort of sisterly-love films is your thing, that wouldn\u2019t bother you very much. The both of us liked the film, and Ling even gave it her stamp of approval.:)<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Her Shoes (2005) \u2013 on rental. This was a pleasant find on DVD rental that arrived together with The Clone Wars several evenings ago. And fortunately too, as In Her Shoes was a wonderfully sweet and thoughtful film that<\/p>\n

Read More In Her Shoes<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}