BEFORE AND AFTER
US, 1980, 96 minutes, Colour.
Patty Duke, Bradford Dillman, Barbara Feldon, Art Hindle, Conchata Ferrell, Rosemary Murphy, Kenneth Mars, Betty White.
Directed by Ken Friedman.
Before and After is an average entertaining telemovie. It is a battle of the sexes with the '70s serious and sometimes cynical tone. It is a film about hypocritical moral stances, husband Bradford Dillman having an affair and lying to his wife Patty Duke. In retaliation she has an affair. This material was treated in a much more sophisticated and telling vein in Richard Lang's A Change of Seasons with Shirley MacLaine?, Anthony Hopkins and Bo Derek.) The basic material of the break-up of a family, the pursuit of a career, the middle age crisis and affairs and compensation is reasonably handled. There is also an emphasis on the friendship between three women and the advice they give to one another, especially in the hysterical character played by Barbara Feldon who breaks an affair, falls in love and prepares for a brittle marriage.
The main emphasis in the film however, deriving from the title, is weight-watching and weight reduction. The film has been criticised as reinforcing the ideas that thin is beautiful and that it is the obligation of the woman to lose weight to be attractive to her husband and retain him. This seems to be the case at times, but is not the final solution.
Patty Duke appears as the rather hefty heroine, although not entirely persuasively. She has a fat friend and Barbara Feldon portrays a neurotic dieting friend. These two characters are some kind of balance for judgments about Patty Duke's behaviour. She tries exercises as well as weight-watching. The scenes of exercising are exasperating and the Weight Watchers session is in many ways ugly and frightening. However, the point of the film is very strong for a feminist viewpoint. Patty Duke does reduce, but for her own sense of herself, achievement, capacity for guiding her own life. While the film is designed for the home audience and plays for a lot of laughs and sentiment, it does make some substantial points for home consumption.
