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DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD Send This Review to a Friend
Time has raced by too fast when Ellen Burstyn can be old enough to play mother to a character inhabited by Sandra Bullock. But the divine Ms. Burstyn is so very good in "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" that she makes time stand still with her funny and touching performance. The other star performances are fun too, and that's the secret, divine or otherwise, to enjoying director Callie Khouri's work inspired by Rebecca Wells's novels, one by the same title, the other, "Little Altars Everywhere." Khouri wrote the screenplay, with Mark Andrus credited for the adaptation. Not having read the books, I can't judge fidelity, but despite some of the silliness, find the cast-driven film generally entertaining.
The title derives from the childhood friendship of four impressionable Louisiana girls who meet secretly to form their own little society and in a bizarre ritual gleefully swear eternal loyalty to one another, sealed with their blood after cutting their palms with a knife. At the end of the ceremony they shout "Ya-Ya." It is all quite funny the first time around, but merely ridiculous when they predictably repeat the business as adults.
The film flips back and forth between the present and various points in time as the women mature. The prime focus is on Burstyn as Vivi and Bullock as her daughter Sidda, who have been having an antagonistic relationship all along. But it is accentuated when Sidda, a noted New York playwright, sounds off against mom in a Time Magazine interview. Vivi is furious. Sidda's boyfriend Connor (Angus MacFadyen), to whom she is about to be married, tries to keep things calm. Bullock is pertly appealing in her role as Sidda tries to make amends and juggle the new tensions that surface.
The plot thickens when the three Ya-Ya women band together to intervene in the spat and try to engineer a rapprochement while keeping their Ya-Ya pal Vivi in the dark. The three are hilarious--Fionnula Flanagan as Teensy, Maggie Smith as Caro, who drags an oxygen tank around with her, and Shirley Knight as Necie, although Smith looks a bit too old to pass as a contemporary. They decide to slip Sidda a Mickey and kidnap her back to Louisiana in the hope that they can teach her something about her mother's past that will earn her understanding.
In the flashbacks Ashley Judd has one of her most rewarding roles as the younger Vivi, seen as a troubled wife rushing headlong toward a breakdown, with Cherry Jones as her rigid and abused mother. In the later years Vivi's husband Shep is portrayed by James Garner, who imparts a man who harbors love for his wife but has retreated into living virtually on his own under the same roof because he can't deal with her neurotic behavior.
The film is really about secrets that families keep and the tragic misunderstandings that can result from lack of knowledge about what went on in the past. Thus we can expect Sidda to change as she learns more about her mother's life, leading to the inevitable pull on the heartstrings and the heal-all reunion. Khouri's screenplay can't leave well enough alone. Hence, the absurd Ya-Ya ritual toward the end as Sidda is inducted into the sisterhood. But the actresses are so thoroughly enjoyable that the film succeeds nicely as mass-market entertainment. A Warner Brothers release.
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