Hollywood vixen Julia Roberts recoups her cool

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): Oh, to be Julia Roberts. Russet hair cascading down a curvaceous frame, whiter-than-white teeth lighting a mega- watt smile, hazel eyes as big and sparkling as the Hope diamond. It's easy to see why the camera loves Julia Roberts -- she's gorgeous.

Then there is her sunny "realness" that crowned her Hollywood's queen. Even as the happy hooker in 1990's Pretty Woman, the blockbuster that made her name, Roberts was the archetypal girl-next-door. America's sweetheart is precisely that: sweet, and with a big heart.

So loved was Roberts that people wished they could be her (no wonder considering her fee is US$10 million and up). But while fans dreamed of a life with all that money and all that hair, Julia Roberts was trying to be anyone but Julia Roberts.

After a failed marriage with singer Lyle Lovett, she chopped off the glamorous locks, discarded the glamorous roles and even tightened the smile. Roberts switched from Golden Girl to Plain Jane, and paid for it at the box office. Remember her as Mary Reilly? Few do. In interviews, she often asked, as Garbo supposedly did, to be left alone.

Still she made headlines, like the time she cavorted on a bar with a female exotic dancer. Left alone while trying to get attention? Ha.. ha.. ha..

Knowing vixen

Perhaps the joke is on us. In her new film My Best Friend's Wedding, 30-year-old Roberts is in her prime, smiling and slinking her lithe self back into our hearts. She's a vixen, and knowingly so, craving and loving the attention of those she courts. And in the movie, as in real life, people can't help giving Roberts the attention she demands.

You can try not to. When Roberts first appears onscreen (as a food critic, of all the unlikely things that a person looking like Julia Roberts would ever wind up doing), framed by a halo of her trademark red curls, my reaction was: Why like Julia Roberts the Prom Queen? She has enough admirers already.

But whatever it is that makes men swoon and women sympathetic, Roberts has it in abundance here. By the film's end, an annoying lump sat in my throat with Robert's name on it, preceded by a range of fawning adjectives: funny, lively, lovely. And one more attribute which made her character, and the film, particularly endearing: crazy.

Directed by New Zealander P.J. Hogan (Muriel's Wedding) and written by Ronald Bass (Rain Man), My Best Friend's Wedding is excellent, goofy entertainment. It is clever, witty and compactly edited while full of the punchy one-liners that make great romantic comedies.

What is particularly good about it is that the film doesn't take itself, or Roberts, too seriously. Here she makes fun of herself, letting go of the spotlight which obviously belongs to her only after holding on to it with a hysteria fit for a B-grade drama queen. This is the movie where Roberts loses her cool onscreen, but recoups it off camera.

The story is deceptively simple. When her best friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney) tells her he is getting married, Julianne (Roberts) discovers that, after nine years of friendship, she is in love with him. So she sets out to elbow her competition Kimmy (a luminous Cameron Diaz from The Mask) with a swivel of her womanly hips, and less scruples than even nasty Dynasty dame Joan Collins. The difference being that Roberts shines even when playing dirty. Scrambling (literally -- this is slapstick comedy) from one disaster to another, Roberts schemes even more sneaky ploys to win her man, with sidesplitting results.

Her spiral to desperation is hilarious, not just for her spot- on comic timing but because she's so much more attractive than her "Miss Pre-teen Illinois" rival. When Roberts turns up her devastating charm to maximum, she effortlessly wins the trust of female peers and the lust of the males. It's no competition, really: Kimmy is the epitome of pretty youth, but is put in the shade in the sex appeal department to sharp, streetwise Julianne.

In fact, this critic wondered what such a radiant, independent woman saw in dull, old-fashioned Michael. Mulroney (Living in Oblivion) has dreamboat looks and a demure charm -- his waltzing serenade will no doubt secure a centerfold in teen magazines -- but hardly suits Julianne's free-spirited spunk.

He derides her aversion to that "yucky love stuff", and at first she tries to conform to his wishes. Ultimately, she's too smart (or too stupid, depending on your politics) to give up her freedom.

And, for all the matrimonial theme, that is what My Best Friend's Wedding is: a feminist film. Because the filmmakers want you to have fun, however, this subtext is subverted.

But the messages are there. From the opening credits showing Doris Day singers crooning of conjugal domesticity, to an upbeat ending where the source of comfort is the arms of a gay man (a crackingly funny Rupert Everett as Julianne's editor), My Best Friend's Wedding quietly questions conventional gender roles.

The film presents stereotypes -- that a woman puts her career second to her husband, that what she really wants and needs is love and marriage -- but then delivers an irresistible heroine who isn't quite sure that she is all that, and is quite happy with what she isn't. Sure, Julianne gets depressed when her conniving plans don't work, but it is debatable whether this steel-willed gal laments losing her beloved, or just losing.

Her neurotic tantrums are the secret to the film's success -- it is recognition of Roberts' superhuman allure, partly derived from an equally superhuman confidence and drive, but also from her all-too-human insecurities and vulnerabilities. Us mere mortals love to see goddesses beg for approval, to see them sweat for their deification.

Of course, it's empty vanity on our part. Because when we leave the theater feeling sorry for a humbled Julia Roberts, wishing -- no, knowing -- that she emerged triumphant, and looking forward to her next film, she has already won the game.