Waiting to Exhale (1995)

The film Waiting to Exhale (1995), directed by Forrest Whitaker, tells of the problems faced by four black women as they try to have relationships with men who are not worthy of them. The four women are friends, and they are metaphorically presented as always being on the edge of life, holding their breath, and so waiting to exhale. The women are all beautiful and have no problem finding males, but those males treat them more as commodities than as human beings. In some degree, these women have been accomplices in their own degradation, carrying on relationships with married men and other men they know are not going to be committed to them for any length of time. As shown in the film, women are second-class citizens in part because they have allowed themselves to be so regarded, and they will not change this situation until they take control of their lives and assert their humanity loudly and directly.PRIVATE

The four women are Savannah, Bernadine, Gloria, and Robin, and the four come together in the urban and suburban world of Phoenix, Arizona. Savannah worked as a broadcast executive in Denver, and at the beginning of the movie she is moving to Phoenix. Her life has been a series of sexual encounters and relationships, including a recent one with a married man. Once in Phoenix, she continues in the same form with that married man in her new home. He has long been stating that he is about to leave his wife, though it should be clear by now that he is not doing a

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time around. Her attitude changes when she meets her new neighbor, Marvin, a widower who tells her, "My late wife was a big woman," thus suggesting that her weight is no longer a problem. This new man is the real thing, but it takes Gloria some time to recognize it. She has been hiding for so long and has been disappointed so thoroughly that she finds it difficult to let go of her sense of hopelessness. Bernadine seems to have achieved the ideal, for she is married to a wealthy businessman, lives in a house in an exclusive suburb, and has two children. All this falls apart when her husband announces that he is leaving her for his white secretary, and Bernadine's life changes in an instant. Before this occurs, Bernadine would have seen herself as the envy of her friends, for she had achieved what they still sought. Bernadine asserts herself by taking her husband's clothes, putting them in his car, and setting the whole thing on fire. When she does find a man who suits her, he is a soul mate whose wife is dying. Consider Savannah to be the main character, with the other women representing different aspects of the mature contemporary African-American woman. Savannah is the first of the four we meet in the film, and she i

Category: Film - W