Hysterical Blindness (2002)

I adore Juliette Lewis. If she’s in it, I’ll watch it. Here, she’s Beth, who along with girlfriend Deb (Uma Thurman) spends evenings hanging out at a bar, hoping to get lucky. Beth lives with her daughter Amber, the coolest kid, who is into baton twirling. Deb lives with her mother Virginia (the splendid Gena Rowlands).

One night at the bar, Deb has a short conversation with Rick, who not only has eyes like Patrick Swayze, but actually owns a house! But the next night, he ignores her. She totally throws herself at the guy, so pathetically desperate that Beth can’t help being embarrassed for her. Rick grudgingly allows Deb to come home with him and it’s raining when they get there – always a bad sign, in a movie. They sit around and drink beer for a bit, but he doesn’t make a move, and suddenly she blurts out, “I give an incredible blow job” and proceeds to devour him. They wake up on the floor, where he says, “I’m fine.” She wants to move to the bed and continue the action. Reluctantly, he takes her to bed but the action doesn’t continue, he just wants to sleep. She does manage to get a conversation going, in which he discusses home handyman projects. In her mind, she’s already moved in and helping him remodel.

Meanwhile, Deb’s mom and her guy Nick are having a whole different kind of conversation about Virginia’s house, which he encourages her to fix up a little if that’s what makes her happy, to go ahead and spend some of her hard-earned money on things that please her. These two are in late middle age, maybe even old, and they’re amorously affectionate. You don’t see a lot of this in movies, but it sure looks good. They’re sweet and considerate with one another, and talk freely about their former spouses. There’s a lovely moment when Nick shows up at the diner where Virginia works. She spots him, sitting in a booth, and does a little bounce on the balls of her feet -visibly perking herself up – before going over to take his order. He shows her a brochure for a place he has picked out in Florida for them to retire to, together.

After one lousy night with Rick, Deb browses through a catalog and picks out an engagement ring. Totally disregarding the fact that he’d obviously wished she had disappeared overnight, and didn’t even want to have breakfast with her, she’d undauntedly continued to abase herself, inviting him over for dinner. On the evening of this “date,” she prepares a big spread and gets all gussied up – and of course, he never shows. Her out-of-control neediness gets even worse. She sits in her car staking out his house, crying, till finally he arrives home alone. Next day she calls in sick and hangs out at the bar, where she runs into her mother’s boyfriend Nick, who manages to cheer her up a little. Later, when Nick doesn’t show up to meet Virginia, Deb harangues her about how stupid she is ever to believe in men. But there’s a good reason why Nick stood her up – he had a heart attack and died. Virginia’s grief is wretched. He wasn’t just some guy she glommed onto, he was a real gent who genuinely loved her. Now, no more love, no more Florida plan, no more dancing to Sinatra.

Beth’s style is way different from Deb’s. In being superficial, just trying to have a good time, she handles life much more competently than her man-hungry friend. For example, there is some talk with the bartender about Beth sticking around after hours for some fun – but he insists it has to be there, he’s not going anyplace. But she gets a phone call and really has to go home, where her daughter is lonely, and threatening to call up the grandparents. Beth is not that desperate for male companionship, and puts her daughter first. Surprise – the bartender reconsiders, and says maybe he’ll swing by later.

Deb shows up at the bar, dejected and morose, and swills down several drinks. Rick shows up, and after she begs for attention, says if she wants to get laid later, that’s fine, but while he’s there he’s going to hang with his friends and shoot some pool. She makes a spectacle of herself dancing alone, something which only a few days earlier she had pounced on Beth about – “People think you look stupid.” Which Beth didn’t. But when Deb slinks around dancing alone, trying to attract Rick’s attention, she really does look stupid. She pesters him, pulling him away from his game, trying to get him to dance. She continues to make such a scene that he decides to split, which causes her to totally throw herself at him, clutching desperately. Disgusted, Rick says “You should sober up,” and leaves.

Deb says to the bartender, “What’s wrong with me? I really want to know.”
“Maybe you don’t see things so clearly.”
“Hey, fuck you.”

Of course this isn’t the only instance we’ve seen of Deb’s “hysterical blindness.” In the first scene, she’d told Beth about actually going blind at work, and being taken to the doctor, where her vision returned. This episode was caused by stress. During one of the bar evenings, some other women were putting Deb down because of her mother’s humble waitress job. But when she was mad at her mom for having Nick stay over, Deb went into the diner and did this pain-in-the-ass picky customer routine, to help make her mom’s shift miserable. There doesn’t seem to be any aspect of her life where Deb sees anything clearly.

After the debacle with Rick, Deb goes home to snuggle up with her sleeping mother. We’ve already seen Beth snuggling with her daughter. As always, the women are left to take comfort from one another, the men having done their typical disappearing acts. Virginia does, at least, take the loving advice Nick had given her before he died, and buys some nice new furniture for her house. She also has the sad reward of hearing from Nick’s son how happy the old man had been lately, and how glad his children were that he had found that happiness in what turned out to be his final days.

In the last scene, the two young women and little Amber frolic in the yard to the strains of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” as the bereaved Virginia looks on, smiling. Really, as we’ve seen so many times before in films and in real life, the world rests on the strong backs of women, while men are just an occasional blip on the screen.