With a title that wouldn't seem out of place in a Harlequin Romance, THAT CERTAIN WOMAN is Edmund Goulding's ultra-soap opera of the weepiest kind. The story of the super self-reliant Mary Donnell, a former bootlegger's wife turned attorney's faithful and efficient secretary. It seems that they might be engaged in something a little over-the-sweater, or maybe he likes her too much and she's just too good to say no, but the Hays Code filtered any naughty-naughty. Where Mary should have been more independent, she's now this saint dressed in self-sacrifice so extreme it gave me a headache at times and made me think Bette's equally self-sacrificing character in ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO was closer to Mike Tyson fighting Evander Holyfield. Translation: she made that character fierce in comparison. In short -- Mary Donnell, while is totally and absolutely in love with her boss' client's son Jack Merrick (Henry Fonda, a bit colorless), is unable to fight Jack's mean old father who doesn't want Her in the way. She is, in fact, the quintessential "telenovela" heroine: good to the nth degree, noble to ridiculous levels, passive to the point that you want to smack her like a piñata and see if you get a reaction, sad, and able to bend over backwards farther than Linda Blair doing her spider-walk in order to let things happen, even if it means letting go of her son and even leaving the country. Not that this is a bad thing: it's kept the romance genre alive and well and thriving in newsstands and drugstores alike, but to make a full-length movie out of this without some degree of irony is a bit much. I would have wanted something to happen, let's say, that a monkey-wrench be thrown in for good measure, but bah, this is soap, sap, and sugar down to the bitter end.
Review of That Certain Woman
