Between Friends (1983) (TV)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Lou Antonio

Writers:

Jonathan Estrin (writer)
Shelley List (novel)

Release Date:

11 September 1983 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Two middle-aged women with nothing in common meet by accident and develop a close friendship while continuing to deal with their own lives. |

Plot Keywords:

Friendship | Divorcee | Sexuality | Mother Daughter Relationship | Melodrama

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Elizabeth Taylor	...	Deborah Shapiro
Carol Burnett	...	Mary Catherine Castelli
Henry Ramer	...	Sam Tucker
Bruce Grey	...	Malcolm Hallen
Chuck Shamata	...	Dr. Seth Simpson
David Clement	...	Man at Party
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Clare Barclay	...	Young customer
James Bearden	...	Realty office customer
Lally Cadeau	...	Lolly
Simon Clery	...	Waiter
Jeri Craden	...	Mrs. Ingram
Vera Cudjoe	...	Essie
Nancy Kerr	...	Customer
Shelagh McLeod	...	Heather
James D. Morris	...	Lionel
Michael J. Reynolds	...	Kevin Sullivan
Maida Rogerson	...	Woman at party
Barbara Tyson	...	Francie (as Barbara Bush)
Stephen Young	...	Martin

Also Known As:

Nobody Makes Me Cry

Runtime:

USA:100 min

Country:

USA | Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:15 (video rating) (1986) | UK:AA (original rating) | Iceland:12

Filming Locations:

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Company:

HBO Premiere Films

Quotes:

Deborah Shapiro: He wanted to make a merger, kind of like steel and oil.
Mary Catherine Castelli: So, what did you say?
Deborah Shapiro: I told him I was getting out of the business.

aka Nobody Makes Me Cry

Carol Burnett is Mary Catherine Castelli, a real estate agent who meets a Jewish divorcee Deborah Shapiro (Elizabeth Taylor) when their cars crash outside Mary Catherine's office. Deborah asks Mary Catherine to sell her house, her `Tara', but snowed in on the day of her inspection, Mary Catherine and Deborah bond and become blood sisters. Mary Catherine is fresh from her own divorce where her husband left her for a younger woman and has had a series of affairs with married men.

It seems that director Lou Antonio has Burnett and Taylor switch expected roles, and Burnett is fine as Mary Catherine, a woman uncaring about her greying hair, her sexual candor convincing. She swears with gusto, and is fun when laughing at having her toes sucked, and covering up one of her lovers telephone dirty talk.

The teleplay by Shelley List and Jonathan Estrin, based on List's novel Nobody Makes Me Cry, explains the title by Mary Catherine's promiscuity, where `No man touches me, and nobody makes me cry'. Of course, it is Deborah who makes Mary Catherine cry, breaking through her anger and self-loathing. Mary Catherine's anger allows her to be funny, with `The world, my dear, outrageous as it may seem, does not revolve around you', and reflective after she ends her latest affair `The bad girl stuff doesn't do it for me anymore. No more nuns to shock'. One of the reasons the casting against-type works is that Mary Catherine is the more interesting of the two women, though she is saddled with the ubiquitous whiny teenage daughter Francie (Barbara Bush).

Taylor is believable as a romantic, a woman who is happiest when she has a man, considering how many times she has been married in real life. However the idea of her stooping to advertising in the personal columns is a big ask, and perhaps this is acknowledged by presenting the only respondee as a pathological type.

Antonio's montage of the women talking is full of awkward pauses and much drinking, and if the material finally reveals itself to be lesser than the performers, Burnett and Taylor make a surprising and entertaining team. Taylor is very funny. Hitting a cymbal as she exits her son's room, telling off the `cretinous' customers at a bookshop she works at, the way she pronounces `smooth' for `smooth dancer'. Her feigned innocence when told she is leading when dancing, the darting of her eyes in embarrassment at unwanted advances, and making a drunken scene at her 50th birthday party standing on a coffee table, culminating in `Will somebody get me out of here. I've gotta pee like mad'. Taylor's breathless recital of Walt Whitman at the bookshop is worth enduring for the cretins punchline. Carrying a little weight and the director making us aware of her lack of height, Taylor is still astonishingly beautiful.