On Seeing "The Roses" With My Sister (Warning... spoilers, probably)

 

My sister is staying with me at the moment, and we went to see The Roses the other day, in the movie theater, which people don't seem to do as much, but which we especially like to do.
My sister is eight years younger than me, did not go to college, but worked her way up in the field of TV production, chose to not have children, and has a long-time domestic partner because she's not into marriage. I could not wait to get married and have kids almost as much as I couldn't wait to go to college, have gotten a few degrees, in fact, I'd still like to be in college. I have one child through adoption because of infertility, and would love to have a thousand more if I had the means to do so. I put this out there, because our "takes" on life are often very different, and were very different on this film. I should also out myself and say I have a major crush on Benedict Cumberbatch since I first saw the Sherlock series. My sister does not, and she thought the Sherlock series to be a bit  (OMG! I can't believe she thinks this!) boring.
This is the spoiler part: I am going to tell you the plot, the whole plot, and totally the plot, well, actually, perhaps a summary of the film is more accurate.

So, Olivia Coleman plays Ivy, and Benedict Cumberbatch plays Theo. People from the UK may enjoy this because the British couple moves to the West Coast of the US, where they generally impress people solely on the strength of their accents, and Olivia Coleman's character saying her  (Olivia's) favorite curse word which is not something I will type here, but which is 100% scandalous in the stuffy US.

Theo meets Ivy when he leaves a work party (held at a restaurant) to go hide out in the kitchen because he is an architect, and everyone at the work meeting is not absolutely loving all his ideas, which he cannot sit there and listen to. Ivy is a cook in the kitchen. He flirts, and I was buying it, and they run away to America together, which, I must be snarky and say, is no longer a good idea at all under the current regime, but I digress. 

They move to the US where he becomes a quite successful and sort of artsy Frank Gehry-esque architect. They have two children. The moved to the US so that Ivy could open a restaurant and become a chef, but instead she becomes a stay-at-home mom who is living life like many a Bake-Off hopeful. She makes his life very easy, and she makes her kids lives very indulged and fun, and funny, and there is a lot of sugar. The couple seems very happily married. Theo, very financially successful, buys Ivy a small shack of a rundown restaurant, so that Ivy can "play at" being a chef. She has few customers, and few employees, and is only open a few days/week, because she is still very much 100% in charge of their home life. Then, in a twist of fate, a horrible storm comes up and two things happen: Theo's latest project, as impractical as one of Gehry's projects, collapse in the never-expected and unprecedented storm. Cars are routed from the main road to the dilapidated road where Ivy has her shack, and she gets flooded with customers who love her food and her British-charm. She becomes a famous chef, like suddenly she's Gordon-Ramsey famous, and Theo is basically jeered at for a public meltdown on Instagram, and fired. He must suddenly be Mr. Mom, while she must pay the bills. He immediately starts his children on a no-fun, no-sugar military style training program that Ivy does not like and is not included in, but he does not want her included, and the kids go along because he is acting so miserable and crazy they feel they are helping him. In their home life Theo excludes Ivy more and more, and she starts working more and more on her career, expands into several locations, etc. You get the drift. Along the way Theo starts to say little things to Ivy, "I suppose sometimes I do hate you... Sporadic hatred." Ivy is shocked by this. As the movie goes on Theo becomes more direct in his dislike, and Ivy, who has all of Olivia's spunk and glossary of obscenities, gives as good as she gets, because she simply is not going to let him get away with it.

However Ivy does try to bring Theo back. She buys a huge plot of land on a cliff next to the Pacific, and let's him design his dream house so that he can prove he is a good architect and get back on his feet professionally. Theo loves this, but soon his life becomes more about the house than them as a couple, which is clearly not what Ivy had intended, with Theo overspending and resenting her once again, and working to exclude her even as he builds a gorgeous house for them. By the time they are ready to have friends over, they are both beyond playing at being happily married.

It gets worse from there as they decide to divorce, but fight over the home. Theo wants the house because it is his masterpiece, and Ivy wants the home because she is still in love, and stinging that he loves a building more than her. The fighting gets ugly, there is a last minute Hail Mary, and then (probably) an explosion, due to Theo beating the heck out of what is supposed to be Julia Child's stove, causing a gas explosion.

The film is both sad and funny, and definitely irreverent, and Cumberbatch and Coleman are wonderful, as is the supporting cast.

My sister enjoyed it less than me, because she felt it was a little too mean, and she felt that Ivy wasn't nice enough to Theo, and could have saved the marriage.

And that is where we differed.

I thought that Theo was insufferable (and remember, I lust after Cumberbatch), constantly whining about his fall from fame, and just so unable to celebrate Ivy's success even a little bit. He drinks, and is generally out of control in her world whenever he feels like it, and her character, in frustration, once says he is basically a bottomless pit of need. He tries to shame her, and succeeds, over him taking the kids to medical appointments. When she tries to join in on the runs, he wounds her with unkind remarks so she stays home. When she takes him away for a weekend to reconnect he gets so drunk on the plane that he would have been put on the no-fly list. He also runs up the bills on their home, spending over twenty grand on Irish moss, so that she has to keep earning the big bucks.

I also question the people who made the film, as Theo looks generally fit and handsome in running gear the whole film (and he runs incredibly fast) while they dress Ivy like a fat midwesterner on her way to a church supper. Her clothes were shockingly bad.

It was funny to me that we saw it so differently. In her relationship my sister lives, in many ways, like a man, and she has a slightly more successful career than her partner. There are no kids to be responsible for, and they share the bills but not their finances. My husband and I share our money from the time we moved in together; he earns more than I do, though I work as many or more hours week-to-week, and I do most of the home and childcare, if you were to take an accounting of the course of our lives to date. However over the years I have been working toward a more equitable split in terms of childcare, pet care, and home care, but it's been something I've needed to teach my spouse, and not that he's been unwilling to learn, and not that I don't think he's a great guy, but teaching was needed, and teaching is also part of the female labor.

So, I wondered how, as unlikeable as Theo was, though handsome and fit, he came out on top in my sister's view. She said she could not put her finger on it, but that Ivy just seemed mean, and less likable in general. I thought Ivy was feisty and smart, successful, and loving to her children, and really wondered at Theo being such a selfish jerk when he had everything... so much wealth, so much opportunity. However I do think Ivy needed better clothing. They very much worked to make her look old, messy, and overweight.

So, was the film biased against Ivy? Is society biased against women? I would absolutely says yes. Imagine being Theo, and all you had to do was occasionally take a kid to the dermatologist, run and keep fit, and have oodles of money to build the house of your dreams, all provided to you by your wife, and you hate her for it. Wow. And, of course, the very bad, no good end to this all is a direct result of another childish fit from Theo.

If you go, probably don't go with your spouse. If you go, expect a film where the funny is very funny, and very mean, and doesn't quite keep pace with the plain-old mean. You may leave a bit the worse for wear. But do consider if Theo treats Ivy fairly, if he can even get out of the way of thinking about himself long enough to think about Ivy. Consider if the filmmakers treat Ivy fairly, and consider your own expectations of women care-taking for their families and their men, in particular. In the US I absolutely am concerned that they're going to try to take the vote away from us, and never been more glad that I kept my birth last name when I married. I know which side quite a few of our more big-mouthed social media politicians would land-on in the Ivy-Theo debate. Ivy would definitely be labeled a "nasty" woman. I'm sure I would be too. ;)