Quote:
(thirdlady @ Mar 18 2006, 07:43 PM)This film is great!
anyone seen that movie?
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A great icon of its day, one of my Favorites. I love the repor SV has with the Wall, play on the old pun and copied many times. The use of the primary character as the narrator and first person perspective lends to the comic observation of events outside of the narrative effectivly. Although I have it on VHS I am still to collect it on DVD holding out till it is available as a freebee in the papers.

Shirley Valentine takes the form of a monologue by a housewife before and after a transforming holiday in Greece. Shirley's a middle-aged Liverpool housewife, who finds herself talking to the wall while she prepares her husband's chips 'n' egg, wondering what happened to her life. She compares scenes in her current life with what she used to be like and feels she's stagnated and in a rut. But when her best friend wins an all-expenses-paid vacation to Greece for two, she leaves the drudgery of cooking dinner for her husband, packs her bags and heads for the sun. The note on the kitchen table reads "Gone to Greece back in two weeks." Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light.
"It is a simple and brilliant idea...the profound and perennial point of the comedy is the problem we seem to have contemplating the idea of a woman alone - in a pub, on a beach, in a restaurant. This is what Shirley learns to combat as she unravels her own sexual and social identity. The play is not only funny, it is also moving." (Michael Coveney, Financial Times)
With Shirley Valentine, Willy developed a new style of writing - the one woman show. When first created, Shirley Valentine was a two act play created for one voice. In the first act Shirley is at home, in her kitchen and talking to her wall. In the second act she is in Greece on holiday and talks instead to a rock on the beach she visits each day, though I feel tthe transition between play and screenplay was well done.