Forest Whitaker's Waiting to Exhale is perhaps the quintessential chick flick and a perfect example of everything the cinematic subgenre is capable of. “Children's Film” often concerns heroines undergoing personal transformation, and it is capacious enough to accommodate romantic comedies (“You've Got Mail”), tragedies (“The Notebook”), fables of friendship (“Beaches”) and mother-daughter dramas (“Terms of Endearment”). Its conventions are cosmic: chance, life-altering “meet-cutes” are sometimes a literal encounter, if not a metaphorical one, and chance encounters have a way of adding up. Well-produced songs bring relief; a mixture of mood and weather, like in “Moonstruck”. “Exhale,” about four friends who support each other through a series of interpersonal crises, fits in with matrilineal musings, music, camaraderie, and pathetic delusion—when one character finally ends her sexual drought, it rains in the desert. These films show women exploring their options, taking steps to achieve goals and love relationships. In Whitaker's film, the main characters are at various stages of overcoming grief and developing new relationships. Because change is an act fraught with anxiety and confusion, the quartet spends the entire film talking over each other, praising, retreating and looking for moments to release—to allow themselves to breathe.
In February, New York's Metrograph Theater hosted the Divorced Women's Film Festival, which screened Waiting to Exhale and other cinematic depictions of breakup, including The Age of Innocence, The First Wives Club and The Wars of the Roses. Hayley Mlotek, program curator and author of a book on sociocultural influence no-fault divorcesexplained that the films she chose “are classics not because they reflect life, but because they can be a vision of our feelings.” Her selection focuses on women with emotional foresight who are also on the cusp of realizing what they really want. As a thirty-something divorced woman about to make a career change, I could relate to these ever-changing characters. I went to see Waiting to Exhale right after Valentine's Day.
When Exhalation premiered thirty years ago, I was six years old and too young to see it, so I embraced it as a mystery of language, gestures, and unspoken instructions. Back then, the atmosphere in the film was similar to my mother's: full of romantic conversations, long-distance phone calls, sad rhythm and blues, and those brilliantly made-up faces that I associated with Fashion Fair Cosmetics, where she worked as a manager at the counter. In the gap between her thirty years and mine, the film existed as an artifact of the relatively edgy 'it' of the nineties and, thanks to its multi-platinum, Grammy-winning soundtrack, became a signature piece in the history of collateral marketing. Babyface, who produced the album and wrote or co-wrote all but one of its songs, did so after reading the script; an all-star lineup of soul, R.&B. and multi-generational pop artists such as Houston, Aretha Franklin, Mary J. Blige, Chaka Khan, Brandy and TLC highlight the storytelling.
Adapted from Terry McMillan's 1992 bestseller. novel The film of the same name, Exhale, is equal parts a “chick flick,” also known as a maudlin film, a black women’s “chick flick,” and a precursor to sitcoms like Girlfriends and Insecure. The film, which launched a string of film adaptations of MacMillan's other novels, also marked a watershed in the representation of the black professional class. The subject of talk shows, parties and dinner discussions hosted and attended by the likes of Gayle King, the film became not only an artistic phenomenon but also a sociological phenomenon after its premiere. In a 1995 article for New York newspaper Timereporter Karen de Witt stated that “Waiting to Exhale is quickly becoming a Waiting to Exhale event,” and quoted a woman who said of the collective experience of watching the film, “This is our Million Man March.” ''As an adult, I rented and streamed the movie alone; Metrograph was the first time I saw it with other people.
