"The Associate" A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL November 3, 1996 This is one of those films that reminds me why I started doing film reviews six years ago in the first place. I'd guess that 80 to 90 percent of the film critics in this country are white males and I started noticing that there were films I liked a lot that they panned, and that this pattern didn't seem to be based on just differences in artistic taste but on something else. These tended to be films focusing on women's issues, women's lives, rather than on men, and the male critics often seemed just not to get it, or were, perhaps, so uninterested that they didn't care if they got it or not, or, in some cases I suspect, they were so threatened by something in the film that they didn't want to get it. So they'd blow these films off as fluff, give them bad reviews, thereby restricting people's ability to see these films because they'd be gone from the theaters in a flash, to make room for new films that could connect more directly with the interests of the white, middle-class men who write the reviews. I missed a lot of good films by reading (and believing) these reviews until I wised up. "The Associate" is one of these films. I (and all the women I know who have seen it) enjoyed it immensely, and I recommend it to you, but you'd better see it this week; it was pretty much ignored by the national media and trashed by the local guys, so the houses are empty and it will soon be history until it comes out on video. The reviews you've read have probably been misleading as well. The ones I've seen, anyway, focus on this as a film in which Whoopie Goldberg plays a white man, as Dustin Hoffman played Tootsie or Robin Williams Mrs. Doubtfire. Wrong. That's not what the film is about. Oh yes, she does, near the end of the film in a few scenes, pass herself off as financial genius Robert Cutty whom she made up when the Wall Street establishment wouldn't give her, as a Black woman, the time of day unless she was the associate of some man. But the film is not about Robert Cutty, it's about Laurel Ayres and it's about her secretary, Sally (played by Dianne Wiest). So to complain about the film that Goldberg doesn't do as good a job as Hoffman and Williams at impersonating a person of the opposite sex and to go on to complain that as Robert Cutty Goldberg's makeup owes too much to latex (when she's doing not just a cross gender but also a cross racial impersonation is to miss the point big time--or not to care about the point, or to dismiss the importance of the point. The point being the near impossibility of penetrating the glass ceiling that keeps all but straight- seeming white men from rising to the top echelons of the financial world, regardless of their knowledge, ability, and determination. Actually, as the film begins, Laurel Ayers has done pretty well on Wall Street, in a high level position of a large brokerage firm where she works with Frank, a slick talking younger white man she has taught everything he knows (played by Tim Daly). At the staff level, Sally, who is the best there is at what she does and provides Frank and Laurel with the flawless support work they need to do what they do, is in a career dead end. The difference is that she knows this while Laurel still believes she can make it to the top on her own by playing the boys' own game. That includes treating Sally like a piece of furniture just as they do. Finally, Sally tells Laurel what she thinks of that and Laurel's education in sexism has begun. When a vice presidency comes up, Frank pulls a bunch of old-boy stuff to impress the bosses and ends up with the job that, based on merit, Laurel should have had. When Laurel sees what happened she quits and decides to start her own firm, but she soon finds out that her former clients give her the brush off. Only Sally comes to her aid and manages, through the secretaries' network, to get her an appointment with an important client who thought Laurel Ayres was the name of a firm rather than a person. Since he likes her ideas but won't deal with anyone but a man, Laurel makes up a mysterious, reclusive, globe-trotting partner named Robert Cutty, who never seems to be able to show up at meetings (so Laurel represents him), but who pulls off a series of great coups and becomes Wall St. Man of the Year or some such thing. The plot going on get somewhat convoluted once the firm of Cutty/Ayres opens, so I won't try to give you a summary. Suffice to say the situations and dialogue are often funny, the characters, especially Laurel and Sally, are well developed and acted and there really does seem to develop a bond between them. The supporting cast is filled with wonderful New York actors such as Eli Wallach, Austin Pendleton, Lainie Kazan, and Bebe Neuworth who play their parts to perfection. Finally, this is a dilly of a comeuppance film. By the final reel Wall Street is all but knee deep in glass shards, the fallout from the class ceiling shattering into a million little pieces (foreshadowed by Laurel's hitting a golf ball through a glass door earlier in the film when she was still trying to play by the boys' rules and had to take a crash course in golf in order to meet with a client who would only do business on the back nine.) Anyone who can relate to Laurel and Sally will walk up the aisle after the film with a warm glow. Apparently, most of my fellow critics couldn't relate to them. But feminists will, so go see the film and send 'em a message by word of mouth. For the WMNF Women's Show, this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1996. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or reproduce this review without permission of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu.