There are sitcoms, there are dramas, and then there are the great shows that careen back and forth, making you laugh and cry and think and cringe — shows like Six Feet Under and The United States of Tara.
Both were written in part by Jill Soloway, a successful TV writer whose first feature film, Afternoon Delight, has just been released.
The film takes the idea of a “women’s picture” to a new level of honesty. Soloway says she wanted to see “what it would feel like to have a movie that’s about what it feels like to be a woman.”
It may raise hackles: at one point, characters joke about the rape scene in The Accused.
“You know, in most movies, even movies that are about women, there’s usually a guy somewhere. If he’s not the director he might be the producer, he might be the writer, who’s just putting a little bit in there about how he likes women to be and act and behave,” Soloway said.
Afternoon Delight tells the story of a bourgeois Los Angeles couple that visits a strip club to spice up their marriage. During her private lap dance, the wife feels something for the dancer she can’t explain, and a few days later she invites the other woman — a prostitute as well as a stripper — home to move in with her family.
The scenario comes out of an experience Soloway herself had visiting a club.
“I think I was struck by the intimacy and the connection, the emotional connection that happens during a private dance. You close that curtain and it’s not really about getting turned on — it’s about feeling like, for those three minutes, it’s only the two of you in the world,” she said.
It’s a connection between women that Soloway says she felt uniquely suited to tell.
“I just thought how funny it would be if a mom came in there and she got really confused about what that love feeling was,” she said. “Is this girl my daughter? Is she my sister? Am I her?”
In spite of its many racy aspects, the film celebrates the strength of the monogamous marriage.
“I was a little embarrassed when I watched the whole movie,” Soloway admitted. “This is a commercial for Family First.”
Afternoon Delight is in theaters now.
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