Queer Eye For The Cult Movie

It's about time someone paid tribute to The Stepford Wives, the iconic mid-'70s women's-lib thriller, which has languished too long in the Kult Klassics section of the video store. It's an interesting, even important film, and seems more so today, if only as a document of its time--that crucible when gender roles went up in flames, along with many marriages. Still, I wondered how anyone could update such a consummately '70s movie. I couldn't imagine contemporary female audiences buying a plot wherein conniving men turn their wives into homemaking robots. It just seemed so...well, so 1975. Somehow, though, they've done it. This new Stepford Wives is so 2004--for better and worse. (I dug it, but if John Waters were dead, he'd totally be turning in his grave.)

In any case, the gay twist works--I mean, if you're going to remake a camp classic, why not blow it out? Why not hire an icon like Bette Midler to play the sassy outsider and get Glenn Close to do her best psychotic meltdown? Heck, why not get Nicole Kidman, ex-wife of a rumored closet case and Scientology cultist--to play the heroine?

There's a reason the original film, despite its lofty intentions, turned out to be a cult favorite. It's a crazy movie with a crazy premise: A city slicker named Joanna (Katharine Ross) moves with her husband and kids to the small town of Stepford in search of sanity. Instead, she discovers that the local menfolk--toadlike engineers and computer types--are turning their wives into busty fembots who clean house all day and scream during sex, "You're the king!" It's a sinister setup--and Joanna's husband is in on it.

As ridiculous as the film sounds, it's genuinely spooky. (I watched it again recently, and later dreamed of the towering, Stepford-ized Paula Prentiss walking into my bedroom chanting, "I thought we were friends"--and wielding a kitchen knife. I kid you not, I actually slept with the light on.) It's just a creepy-ass movie, beginning as a straight drama and gradually building to a noirish thriller with a threat of horror. Of course, it doesn't have a happy ending, which may partly explain why some women found it offensive. There's a subtle but implicit message that a strong woman is no match for a society of male techno-gods. The film delivers this message in the wrong spirit, but the theme still hits home in an era of ever more invasive technology and body-transplant shows like The Swan.

The techno-Brave New World vibe remains in the remake, though the new version strives to reflect how times have changed, too. Our new Joanna (Kidman) is the tightly wound head of a TV network--a victim of the Superwoman complex you hear so much about. (The movie could have played this bit smarter, as I have yet to meet a woman oppressed by women's liberation--or a man. Let's face it: Some women are just insane--and so are some men.) We first see Joanna delivering a presentation on the new season of battle-of-the-sexes reality shows, all of which feature women kicking their husbands' asses. Despite her success, Joanna loses her job, then her mind. Trying not to lose her marriage as well, she moves with her husband (Matthew Broderick) and children to Stepford, now a gated community.