In the movie A Walk on the Moon (1999), directed by Tony Goldwyn, the character Pearl, played by Diane Lane, is forced to make a choice between two men with whom she interacts in entirely different ways. One man is her husband, Marty (Leiv Schreiber). The other man is a hippie entrepreneur known at the summer camp as the ôblouse manö, played by Viggo Mortenson. In a sense, Pearl must choose between two types of intimacy that she wants in her life. Her husband represents the stable and the familiar, an intimacy that has grown over time with shared tasks, emotional disclosure and goals. Walker Jerome, the ôblouse manö, on the other hand, represents something new and exciting and offers physical intimacy and variety that Pearl did not get from her husband.
The story begins at the beginning of the summer, when Pearl, a young Jewish housewife, spends the summer at a Jewish family camp with her son, daughter and mother-in-law, as well as with other friends. Her husband Marty either canÆt or wonÆt take time off and works in the city during the week and comes up to the camp to visit on weekends. Early on the audience can see PearlÆs dissatisfaction with the way things are between herself and her husband. For example, at the beginning of the movie she urges her husband to take more than just weekends off, to ask for a regular vacation to stay with her and the kids. As pointed out by Adler and Towne (1999), she is demonstrating the typically feminine need for gaining intimacy through sharing time and exchanging stories and disclosures with one another. This cannot be done while Marty is in the city. Later, Pearl shyly asks about trying new things while they are having sex, to which her husband, Marty, replies by making a joke and coming in dressed like a cowboy. Again, this is another example of the different types of intimacy shared by men and women and is also representative of the predictability/novelty dialectic that of...