October 22, 2007

Why Matters Matters

Seth Arenstein finds that Ricki Lake is unbelievable — in the good and bad sense — in Lifetime's Matters of Life & Dating.

Tube Stake | Programming Reviews by Seth Arenstein

Gabriel Hogan and Ricki Lake in Matters of Life & Dating.

• Monday, October 22, 2007

Matters of Life & Dating, 9pm, Lifetime.

It’s easy to brush off this film as just another Lifetime original movie with a cause. You’d be wrong to do that.

While far from being classic cinema, Matters of Life & Dating contains excellent writing about relationships, between female friends, between lovers, and between men and women, one of whom wants to be a lover but realizes the other person is in love only as a friend.

The film’s direct style shines through whether its characters are discussing sex or breast cancer, which is the issue this film was made to address; it makes some excellent points about the disease and how single women’s lives are influenced by breast cancer. But this isn’t a film about breast cancer only, and that makes it a stronger piece.

The biggest problem with Matters is also its biggest asset. Ricki Lake, its star and executive producer, looks wonderful here: trim, youthful and alluring. Even at age 39, she’s believable as a 30-something on the low end of her 30s who’s an active participant in the dating scene. Her performance as Linda, a single woman who’s an art gallery manager, is fine.

Where things fall down is that every man on the screen falls for her — and they’re nearly all hunks from central casting. The film opens with a tall, good-looking, preppy fellow telling her that he wants to have sex with her. Linda’s flattered, but not interested — "Sex with you really isn’t great," she tells him. Later she meets a hot Frenchman, complete with the Charles Aznavour accent, and the man’s got money. He, too, falls for Linda.

Lake's character supervises two youngish men in the art gallery who must hang and re-hang paintings as she sees fit. Even the two of them want her. A random rich guy comes into the gallery to find art to hang on the walls of his new apartment. He, too, thinks Linda’s a masterpiece.

So it comes as no surprise, then, that the doctor who diagnoses Linda’s breast cancer is a tall, slightly graying man with great shoulders. Truth be told, Linda’s best friend, played nicely by Rachael Harris, makes eyes at the doc, although Linda clearly sees the attraction.

Now it’s important in one sense for Linda to carry Cupid’s bow. It allows the film to treat the issue of sex, dating, body image and breast cancer. Do you tell your date about your breast cancer before you begin necking? Before sexual intercourse? When you initially meet?

While the string of coincidences that has every man falling for Linda destroys the credulity of Matters, what the film says about breast cancer and the ways people fight it, individually and in groups, is important viewing.

That material — along with Lifetime's always impressive breast cancer awareness off-air campaigning that accompanies this project — makes Matters matter and this far more than just another Lifetime Original.