''A Dangerous Woman'' is a 1993 American
romantic drama film directed by
Stephen Gyllenhaal
Stephen Roark Gyllenhaal (; born October 4, 1949) is an American film director and poet. He is the father of actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Personal life
Gyllenhaal was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Virginia Lowrie (née Childs) and ...
. The screenplay was written by his wife
Naomi Foner, loosely based on the award-winning novel of the same name by
Mary McGarry Morris
Mary McGarry Morris (born February 10, 1943) is an American novelist, short story author and playwright from New England. She uses its towns as settings for her works. In 1991, Michiko Kakutani of ''The New York Times'' described Morris as "one ...
. The feature was co-produced by
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment, Inc., formerly named Amblin Productions and Steven Spielberg Productions, is an American film production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg, and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marsha ...
and
Gramercy Pictures. It stars
Debra Winger
Debra Lynn Wingerhttps://www.pressreader.com/usa/closer-weekly/20200511/282084868951188https://www.discountmags.com/magazine/closer-weekly-may-11-2020-digital/in-this-issue/99961 (born May 16, 1955)https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Inter ...
,
Barbara Hershey
Barbara Lynn Herzstein, better known as Barbara Hershey (born February 5, 1948), is an American actress. In a career spanning more than 50 years, she has played a variety of roles on television and in cinema in several genres, including weste ...
and
Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel James Byrne (born 12 May 1950) is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, audiobook narrator, and author. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined London's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's s ...
. It included Gyllenhaal and Foner's two children,
Jake
Jake may refer to:
Name
* Jake (given name), including a list of persons and fictional characters with the name
* Katrin Jäke (born c. 1975), German swimmer
* Jake (gamer), American ''Overwatch'' player and coach
Animals
* Jake (rescue dog), a ...
and
Maggie, who later developed acting careers.
Debra Winger was nominated for a
Golden Globe Award for her performance and also won
Best Actress
Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress aw ...
at the
Tokyo International Film Festival
The is a film festival established in 1985. The event was held biennially from 1985 to 1991 and annually thereafter. Along with the Shanghai International Film Festival, it is one of Asia's competitive film festivals, and is considered to be the ...
.
[Staff report (October 3, 1994)]
Winger wins with 'Dangerous Woman.'
''Buffalo News
''The Buffalo News'' is the daily newspaper of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area, located in downtown Buffalo, New York. It recently sold its headquarters to Uniland Development Corp. It was for decades the only paper fully owned by W ...
'' The film has never been released on
Region 1 DVD. It was once released on video in the United Kingdom by
First Independent Films.
Plot
Martha Horgan struggles to have a normal life in spite of being mentally challenged. She is fired from a job at the local dry-cleaner after accusations of stealing from the cash register. She believes the theft was done by Getso, the boyfriend of her colleague Birdie.
Depressed, Horgan returns to the home of Aunt Frances and discovers that a handyman, Mackey, has been hired to fix the porch of the main house. Aunt Frances plans to host a gala event for a local politician. Irate over her husband's affair with Frances, the politician's wife had driven into the porch and damaged it.
Mackey is kind to Martha. He defends her from Getso, who bullies and insults her, and smashes the windshield on Getso's van. Martha becomes increasingly fond of Mackey as time goes on. Mackey recognizes Martha's feelings but does not take advantage of her.
One night Mackey returns drunk to Martha's home, lets himself in and proceeds to have sex with the eager Martha on her sofa. He later sleeps with Frances, who is also drunk, despondent following the gala. Her lover politician had reconciled with his wife and left with her at the end of the evening.
Mackey plans to leave as soon as he finishes the porch job, feeling guilty about being unfaithful to Martha, but Martha urges him stay and tries to seduce him. He resists at first, then succumbs, then finally rejects her and throws her out. Despondent, Martha seeks her only friend, Birdie, for comfort; she goes alone to Birdie's home. There she finds Getso, who taunts and threatens her. Feeling cornered, Martha stabs Getso repeatedly with a sandwich knife. Martha stays and tries to comfort Getso as he dies from his wounds.
Frances and Mackey seek Martha at the police station where they are informed that she is pregnant and will likely be charged with murder and spend the rest of her life in jail. They find Martha overwhelmed with guilt over what she has done and resigned to her fate. Frances, already suspicious of Getso, informs Martha that she is pregnant and that all she has to do is tell the police Getso raped her and she will be released. Martha refuses because it would be a lie but doesn't reveal that Mackey is the father of her child. Later, Mackey again urges her to lie to save her life, but Martha instead insists that Mackey must take care of their child.
A final scene set in the near future reveals that Martha was remanded to a care facility where she is allowed to have day visits. Frances, Mackey, and her child are shown taking her away for just such a visit.
Cast
Critical reception
Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' praised the film, especially Winger's acting and Gyllenhaal's direction, but found the film overall more akin to
melodrama than
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
:
Controversy
The announcement of the nominations for the
9th Independent Spirit Awards
The 9th Independent Spirit Awards, honoring the best in independent filmmaking for 1993, were announced on March 19, 1994 at the Hollywood Palladium. The nominations were announced on January 14, 1994. Actor and director Robert Townsend hosted t ...
—made by a committee of a governing body called the Independent Features Project West—was postponed due to a confusion over the eligibility of the film. The IFPW board determined that the film, which initially had received two nominations, had been partially funded by
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...
and thus was not eligible, according to then-IFPW President Cathy Main; Gramercy Pictures is jointly owned by Universal Pictures and
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (formerly known as PolyGram Films and PolyGram Pictures or simply PFE) was a British film studio founded in 1979 which became a European competitor to Hollywood, but was eventually sold to Seagram Company Ltd. in ...
. In response, Gramercy Pictures President Russell Schwartz said the IFPW's rules "make no sense" and the IFPW is "as archaic as the (
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...
')
foreign language
A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a given country, and that native speakers from that country must usually acquire through conscious learning - be this through language lessons at school ...
rules
Rule or ruling may refer to:
Education
* Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia
Human activity
* The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power
* Business rule, a rule pert ...
". Schwartz also added that Universal's only involvement was to guarantee a
bank loan
In finance, a loan is the lending of money by one or more individuals, organizations, or other entities to other individuals, organizations, etc. The recipient (i.e., the borrower) incurs a debt and is usually liable to pay interest on that de ...
to the filmmaker and its money was not used.
References
External links
*
*
*
*
Original New York Times Review
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dangerous Woman
1993 films
1993 romantic drama films
Amblin Entertainment films
American romantic drama films
Films about mental health
Films based on American novels
Films directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal
Films scored by Carter Burwell
Gramercy Pictures films
1990s English-language films
1990s American films