Healthy Relationships

There is an apocryphal account of a guy who puts a billboard on a little traveled road that spells out in twenty foot letters S-E-X. The story goes that within days the volume of traffic skyrocketed and the accident rate increased substantially.  This story emerged during the nascent 'sexual revolution' of the 1960's so today's public may not be so susceptible.  Nevertheless, S-E-X can still be an attention grabber.  You can depend on some sex-related outrage surrounding the political conventions.  And sex abuse in families, churches and schools is a pretty serious matter.   Sex is as American as well...

So hope the backers of two current films, "Hope Springs" and "Your Sister's Sister." I assume 'Hope' is going for a good portion of the 55 plus age group while 'Sister' aims a generation or two younger. The story lines are driven by exploring relationships based on sexual attraction or alienation.

These are good hearted stories that will be enjoyed by a wide-range of audiences.  The first, 'Hope', follows a couple, married 31 years, from their repetitive, hum drum existence in Omaha to a week long intensive marriage therapy session in Great Hope Springs, Maine.   Kay (Meryl Streep) basically drags Albert  (Tommy Lee Jones) to the therapist hoping to save the marriage.  Ms. Streep and Mr. Jones are among the class actors of our time.  'Your Sister's" is a three-some (or something). Three 30-ish young people, linked by friendship and kinship, are each in their own ways lost and alone.  Iris(Emily Blunt), Jack(Mark Duplass) and Hannah(Rosemarie DeWitt) work well in difficult roles. They end up together in an isolated retreat hideaway on Puget Sound.  Maine and the Puget Sound provide beautiful natural landscapes, the kind of places we go for 'healing'.

Each of the five primary characters is  out to find a cure for their empty spirits so that life can go on.  Albert and Kay have drifted way apart and need a major intervention to re-discover and re-ignite the passion that first birthed their love.  Or not.  In 'Sister'  the death of Jack's brother has left him in a year long funk.  He can only be angry.  He can't bring himself to tell Iris that he loves her.  Iris mourns her lack of courage to openly admit that she loves Jack.  Hannah, the sister,  has just left a 7-year lesbian relationship. No one of them has anything else in their lives that seems to matter.  They are stuck trying to wade through the relative complexities of their connects and disconnects, but have a tiny prism to look through.

Why does S-E-X so dominate the meaning of their lives?  Our lives?  (I'm going to take a break now to 'delete' the 75--no kidding--e-mails that come daily to get me to buy viagra or look at available partners) Is this the 'heart of the matter?'   Albert and Kay's Omaha  a 1950's kind of gender stereotyping of couples in their 60's probably exists.  The 'cluelessness' is funny, but pretty sad this late in the game.  I've heard that most of Omaha has been liberated.   And even if you go to the center of Puget Sound to work on your life, there must be other things that interest one after 25 years living in Seattle, often mentioned as one of the 'ten best places to live' in the U.S.   Isn't life more than getting one's sex lives straight?  Is our obsession another way we think we can at least have control over something?  The power of sex and the many ways it informs our lives is not to be minimized.  We've done harmful things to ourselves and others because openness and honesty have not been my or our strong suit in discussing it.   These films bring a healthy perspective that is accessible to many of us.  Persons near my age in 'Sister' laughed like school kids enjoying a guilty pleasure.  Maybe if we were more open, the pre-occupation would lessen and we could be about other things as well.  Films can be a context for that conversation.