GOING SHOPPING
Directed & Edited by: Henry Jaglom.
Produced by: Judith Wolinsky.
Written by: Victoria Foyt & Henry Jaglom.
Director of Photography: Hanania Baer.
Music by: Gaili Schoen.
Released by: Rainbow Releasing.
Country of Origin: USA. 106 min. Rated: PG-13.
With: Victoria Foyt, Rob Morrow, Lee Grant, Bruce Davison & Mae Whitman.

With an eccentric and engaging story line, Henry Jaglom's charmingly quirky take on women's obsession with shopping manages to enthrall viewers, while tapping into deeper issues that underlie America's materialism. A Sigourney Weaver-esque fashion designer, Holly Gilmore (Victoria Hoyt), is on the brink of losing her 10-year-old boutique, and must procure $ 40,000 to pay rent. What might be described as questionable acting skills in the beginning (especially on the part of Holly's ultra-cute daughter Coco) becomes instead a humorous and sympathetic portrayal of women’s struggle against the oppressive forces of popular culture.

Interlaced are sequences of "average" women addressing the camera, commenting on the significance of shopping: "It's a big romance," one claims. Others relate shopping to war or a cure for depression. Such comically superficial depictions seem at first chauvinistic and grossly imbalanced, but the viewer comes to realize that Jaglom's intent is not to reveal women as a shallow species, but rather, to point to the cause of a sad reality. As one woman puts it, in childhood girls are fed the story of Cinderella - how she manages to steal the prince's heart not with incredible wit or intelligent conversational skills, but with an amazing dress and killer glass slippers. Thus, girls are taught that appearance makes an individual. This thought is further developed when Coco (Mae Whitman) - a sweet, barely pubescent trendster - asks her mother permission to get her bellybutton pierced to impress a crush.

Jaglom brings this male-female dynamic into play throughout. Holly decides to leave her boyfriend when her demands of "where's my money?" are greeted with a wince and a shrug. Holly's crazy kleptomaniac mother, delightfully and fittingly played by Lee Grant (perhaps comically referencing her award-winning performance as the shoplifter in Detective Story), finds herself victim to a cheating mobster boyfriend. Later in the film, a customer has an anxiety attack when she can’t find the proper dress for her engagement party - she realizes her fiancé’s tastes have subjugated her entire identity.

Holly becomes the epitome of the quintessential independent woman when she finally manages to obtain the necessary funds to keep her shop open. Her new and refreshingly non-toxic love interest reveals he is a former shopaholic - Jaglom's borderline-cheesy attempt to include the opposite sex in his exposé. The film leaves the viewer amused, discomfited, and in a state of query over whether or not to flee the modern world. Parisa Vaziri
September 30, 2005