Movie Review: Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her

Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her is a quiet movie. The minimalist piano tones that carry through the five women’s stories are mostly carrying the quiet, not the sound, through the vaguely interlocking women’s lives.

If you know anything about how and why I love movies, you know I love these interlocking, clever ones. But Things You Can Tell isn’t just clever, and isn’t just interlocking. It doesn’t have that semi-claustrophobic feel of Playing By Heart, or the fragmented but same-themed sense of Nine Lives. It doesn’t even have the mysterious sense of the universe at work that Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy has. These women are all alike in how alone they are in their own worlds; their separation is their most common element, even when they’re on screen together.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, which is what I love about this movie – that it’s complicated. It’s not a polemic against loneliness or a reassurance that you won’t always be lonely (like romantic comedies inevitably are), and it’s not a celebration of women’s independence, either (like…well, I can’t think of any movies that are. Girly friend movies? That’s still interdependence. Hmm. I’m going to have to think about this for awhile).

The first woman, Dr. Keener (Glenn Close, who is superb) is staying home with an elderly woman who’s more or less unaware of her surroundings. Dr. Keener cares for this woman conscientiously, so we know she’s a good woman, though we don’t really know why – maybe she lives with this woman and gets free board, or maybe this is her mother.

But Dr. Keener is also obsessed with a man from the office, obsessed enough to check the phone every few minutes and to call in a tarot card reader (Calista Flockhart) to see if they have a chance together. Dr. Keener is obviously conflicted about the choice, and dresses herself up – borrows earrings from the old woman – to meet the card reader, then sits enigmatic as the Sphinx or the Mona Lisa when she comes.

Flockhart tells her she’ll meet a man, but not the man at the office. Dr. Keener takes the news with suppressed disappointment.

The whole movie is like this. There are good things in it, but they’re second-good things, not the things the women originally wanted.

The second story, Rebecca’s, is the most honest, un-propaganda-ed account of a woman getting an abortion that I’ve ever seen.

Before we find out she’s pregnant, we see Rebecca (Holly Hunter) naked (cleverly positioned, though, so sorry guys and Knocked Up fans) in bed, being left – though lovingly – by a man we find out later she’s been seeing for three years. Later, she’s in the bank, and after that, she’s approached while smoking next to her car, by a homeless woman who asks for a cigarette.

Since the movie is set in southern California (and this part mainly outside), an airbrushed, espanished land of perfect people, the homeless woman stands out. Her diction is theater-perfect, too, but her presence is anathema.

Based on her appearance, which is tailored and perfect, you’d expect Rebecca to be put off by this woman, but she isn’t. She gives the woman a cigarette, doesn’t back off when the homeless lady comes close for a light, listens to everything she says and responds, even when the homeless woman calls her a whore. Twice.

To compress the story a bit, Rebecca finds out she’s pregnant, schedules an abortion, tells her boyfriend emotionlessly and gets even less emotion in return – she confirms he doesn’t want her to have the child, though it’s probably her last chance (she’s 39) – rebels against him by sleeping with an underling from the bank, then rejects that underling. As she’s sitting in the car with him in the morning before the afternoon abortion, the homeless woman comes up again.

Rebecca seems to take solace in the woman’s recognition of what she really thinks of herself, but it’s a complicated relationship – much more complicated and honest, despite being thirty seconds long, than any of the other relationships we see Rebecca in. The homeless woman calls her a whore again, and when underling tries to stop her, Rebecca says “no, go on” and listens with rapt attention.

The homeless woman concludes, “It’s not that I don’t like you – I like you, princess. I feel sorry for you.”

Dr. Keener performs the abortion. The antiseptic camerawork keeps the angles on close-ups of Rebecca’s face, Dr. Keener’s, the nurse’s. Rebecca gasps in the middle of the procedure and the nurse’s hand enters the frame and pats her hair. This is the only human contact we see at all.

Rebecca’s lied and said she was being picked up by her boyfriend. As she walks out of the clinic, she wobbles and suddenly bursts out sobbing – she stands by a manicured bush for comfort, then a parking meter. Time passes. She continues down the street and sees the homeless woman on the other side.

This is the only comfort she gets; the scene ends.

You don’t get the impression from this movie that abortion is more wrong than other options this woman had, or that she regrets her choice and wishes she had chosen differently (though either of those themes would sit well with my beliefs); you get the impression instead that there are situations in life that are really, really hard. We’re not victims of them – we get to make choices and often choose wrong – but we’re not completely in control of them, either.

Rebecca’s entire life up to this point is to blame for bringing her to this existential crisis and to a point where only a mentally ill homeless woman can understand her, and she’s both responsible for that life and determined by it.

The next section, in which Kathy Baker's character falls in love with a dwarf, is the one that’s stuck with me since I first saw this movie a few years ago. It’s sweet and strange, and I’ll let you see it for yourself.

I’ll let you see the entire rest of the movie for yourself, in fact – as long as you do. It is, above all, thoughtful. You shouldn’t be disappointed.