Mermaids (aka You're Not Listening To All I Say)

Could it be said that Mermaids, the 1990 comedy-drama from Orion Pictures, ends on too happy a note? This seems to be a common charge levelled against the feature, even among critics who were otherwise well-disposed toward it. Roger Ebert opened his generally positive review with the observation that "I had the feeling, watching "Mermaids," that it was originally headed in another direction. The material is "funny" instead of funny, and we don't laugh so much as we squirm with recognition and sympathy." The film intermittently suggests that matters of genuine trauma might be brewing, but ultimately side-steps this in favour of "one of those happy endings Hollywood likes so much right now". It is a sentiment echoed by Mike Massie of Gone With The Twins, who notes that, "by today’s standards, “Mermaids” represents a simpler time with simpler solutions."

Mermaids centres on an all-female family, the Flaxes, and the unconventional lifestyle habits imposed by their matriarch, Rachel (Cher) - or Mrs Flax, as Charlotte (Winona Ryder), her formality-starved first-born, insists on calling her. Directed by Richard Benjamin and adapted from a novel by Patty Dann, the film had a rocky road to fruition. Swedish director Lasse Hallström was originally hired to helm the picture, but dropped out to direct Cinecom Pictures' Once Around (1991). Frank Oz was brought on as his successor, but he also didn't linger long; rumour has it that there was sour chemistry between himself and Cher and Ryder. Also, Emily Lloyd was originally cast in the role of Charlotte, but ousted from the project, reportedly because of concerns Cher raised about a lack of credible biological resemblance between herself and Lloyd; Lloyd later sued Orion Pictures for breach of contract and received an out of court settlement. In Hallström's hands, the film might actually have lived up to those gloomy expectations set by Ebert; according to the film's entry in the AFI Catalogue, his treatment of the material had, at one point, concluded with Charlotte's suicide - although, having read Dann's novel, I can confirm that Benjamin's ending was a lot closer to the original source.

Mermaids is set in 1963, which largely serves as an excuse to kick out a nostalgic soundtrack, with Cher supplying her own cover of the Rudy Clark-penned pop favourite "It's In His Kiss" - here titled "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)" - though at one point there is an intersection between the characters' personal troubles and the assassination of Kennedy. The pleasures of the film (of which there are many) stem chiefly from the central performances, which are delightful and bring out the dimensions in the four main characters. The narrative is not an especially tight one, but in a way that plays to its merits. It is a particularly charming example of what might now be termed (thanks to Tarantino's vernacular) a "hangout film", which is to say a film to which we feel compelled to return, time after time, not because there's anything particularly riveting about the dramatic action, but because there's something deeply reassuring in the characters' familiarity; they come to seem like old friends with whom we can relive fond memories. And these characters certainly offer a lot of colour, even if it is all window dressing for their neuroses. Mrs Flax has a long history of ill-fated love affairs, and an established pattern of relocating her family to a new community after each relationship's inevitable implosion. Her nomadic lifestyle enables her to retain the kind of character anonymity with which she feels comfortable, but does make things difficult for Charlotte, who never has the opportunity to settle in any one place and develop ties of her own, merely resentment at the realisation that she's spent half of her life in cars, being driven from state to state. Sometimes, Charlotte even handles driving responsibilities herself, for it is established that Mrs Flax taught her how to drive at an unusually young age (Mrs Flax insists that driving is one of the two most important skills a woman can have, although she never specifies what the other might be). Now in her mid-adolescence, Charlotte believes that she has outgrown her mother, her various eccentricities having transmuted into embarrassments, and yearns for a more traditional lifestyle. She is still hopeful that her father, of whom she possesses a single, extremely hazy memory from early childhood, will come back into their lives and redress the balance, and further begrudges the family's non-stop relocation as a roadblock that will only delay his ability to trace them. It is a patently naive belief, and Charlotte's attachment to the idea is one of our first hints that, despite her professions to being the grown-up of her perpetually uprooted household, she is still assuredly a child inside. In that regard, she and her mother are more alike than either would care to admit.

The family's most recent move has brought them to Eastport, a small town in Massachusetts, and Charlotte is unusually buoyant about this particular fresh start, due to their new house being situated beside a convent, which fits in perfectly with her personal ambitions. The lack of formal structure in Charlotte's family life has driven her to seek out substitutes for parental authority, leading to a keen interest in the rituals and discipline of Catholicism, a source of more bemusement than contention from the Jewish (albeit seemingly non-practising) Mrs Flax, and aspirations of being a nun; we presume that a lifetime commitment to celibacy appeals to Charlotte as definitive rejection of the promiscuity modelled by her mother. Unfortunately, the convent turns out to be a mixed blessing, enabling a serpent to enter into her adolescent Eden - a serpent by the name of Joe (Michael Schoeffling), a handsome 26-year-old janitor who works at the convent, and who tests Charlotte's devotion to a life of purity. It's revealed throughout the course of the film that, despite her awareness of her mother's licentiousness, Charlotte actually has a poor understanding of how sexual relations work; at one point she faces a personal crisis spurred on by her erroneous assumptions that pregnancy (which she is inclined to see as divine punishment for lustfulness) could be brought about through kissing. Mrs Flax might have taught her daughter to drive yet she has taught her very little, consciously or unconsciously, about the facts of life. We suspect that this is because Mrs Flax's own knowledge of the world has stagnated in a similar state of infancy, and that her hit and run survival strategy, when it comes to houses and relationships, is indicative of her inability to handle any kind of long-term responsibility (besides her daughters, that is). When discussing her fondness for cars with prospective new beau Lou Landsky (Bob Hoskins), the owner of the local shoe store, she insists that, "If you hate a place, get in your car, and poof, you're gone." Mrs Flax is keen to sell her ostensible talent for ditching her missteps and starting anew elsewhere as the ultimate in freedom and resilience, but it becomes apparent that this is itself a form of entrapment, designed to protect her from ever having to get too introspective about her life choices and their impact upon her children. It is a tactic she has applied to just about any occurrence that might bring negative scrutiny upon the family - her reaction to a teacher expressing concern for Charlotte's mental health was also to move. This points us toward the irony implicit in the picture's title - neither Charlotte nor her mother know how to swim, with both characters constantly teetering on the brink of disaster, symbolised by the ominous stretch of water adjacent to the covenant...although it ends up being Kate (Christina Ricci), the youngest of the family, who takes the literal plunge on their behalf. She, ironically, is a very proficient swimmer.

By Mrs Flax's admission, the one area of common ground that she and Charlotte have consistently had between them is their mutual affection for Kate, Charlotte's half-sister - to the point that a low-key rivalry might once have developed between them, with Charlotte encouraging the toddler Kate to call her "Mom". Kate's father was an Olympic swimmer with whom Mrs Flax had a short-lived affair and, in keeping with the picture's general theme about the apple never falling far from the tree, Kate appears to have inherited his talents, with aspirations of being a competitive swimmer herself. Kate is something of a prodigy in the water, and she quickly has her new instructors at Eastport in awe of her abilities. Yet there's a sense that, in spite of Charlotte and Mrs Flax's professed love for Kate, both of them are, in actuality, too wrapped up in themselves to pay much attention to her. For the first half of the film, Kate exists largely on the sidelines, saying very little, with Charlotte and Mrs Flax regarding her more in the manner of a pet; they are amused by her antics, when they notice her at all, but tend to talk more about her than to her, and generally assume that she can keep herself entertained. In one scene, where Kate attempts, in the bathtub, to break the world record for holding her breath underwater, Mrs Flax questions the situation only indirectly through Charlotte, whom she advises to call an ambulance if Kate doesn't resurface in so many seconds; an ostensibly random slice of life from this most unconventional of clans that grimly foreshadows the film's climax, where Kate nearly drowns and both Charlotte and Mrs Flax are forced to confront their mutual negligence on the matter. Kate does not, at first, make her own views on the family's situation known; what finally coaxes her out of her shell is Lou's increased involvement their lives, which emboldens her to start talking a lot more and asserting her place within the unit. Kate's love of all things aquatic begins to manifest itself in the family's various modes of aesthetic expression, with Lou redecorating a bedroom in his apartment to an underwater theme for her amusement, and Mrs Flax dressing up as a mermaid for a New Year's party at her suggestion. Crucially, the Flaxes' shared joy over the mermaid costume is one of the rare instances in the story in which we see all three of them in perfect sync with one another.

Kate is clearly the emotional centre of her family, something that goes acknowledged but is mostly taken for granted, and her proficiency as a swimmer seems symbolic for her ability to survive the indifference and turbulence that is constantly thrust upon her by her elders. I am inclined to see the symbolism of the film's title as an allusion to Mrs Flax's desire to remain elusive, submerged and out of view, with none of her family's messy business bubbling to the surface; Kate's only recourse so far has been to remain an unknown, both to the world and to her family, but throughout the film we bear witness to her surfacing as a character, something that is all the more intriguing for the fact that it happens only implicitly, in the backdrop of Charlotte and Mrs Flax's conflict. As it turns out, Kate has questions about her own father and his persistent absence throughout her life, but these have not been adequately answered by either her mother or sister, whom she regularly asks to regale her with the story of her birth, presumably in the hope that she might, eventually, get closer to the truth. In the meantime, Kate seems open to the possibility of having Lou fill the void, which Lou himself seems more than happy to do, as he sets his sights on the lofty ambition of being the man to finally tame Mrs Flax into putting down roots. Charlotte also responds positively to Lou, and to the promise of stability he brings, but displays knee-jerk aversion to the suggestion that he could replace the absent father she is still anticipating might return some day. Charlotte's conflicting feelings toward Lou are not explored in any substantial depth, but touched on just enough for us to see how they mirror Mrs Flax's own. She too enjoys the fresh possibilities of having a new person in her life, but remains firmly on guard against the danger of allowing herself to become too attached to Lou - she is, after all, attuned to the likelihood that she and the girls will be moving on again soon enough.

A recurring motif throughout Mermaids has to do with the Flaxes' unusual meal routines. Mrs Flax has raised her children on a junk food diet comprised entirely of party snacks, spurring anything more demanding as "too much of a commitment" (somewhat conversely, she irritates the neighbourhood children by handing out tubes of toothpaste instead of candy to trick or treaters), and they do not eat together at the table, but rather scattered in various positions around the kitchen. Mrs Flax's relationship with food quite blatantly mirrors her relationships with men and communities - she's accustomed to fingering (literally and figuratively) but spurns anything more serious - while also revealing something of her fundamentally kiddish nature, which could, depending on your perspective, be perceived as either the sign of a free spirit or a stunted personality. At first, Lou is intrigued by Mrs Flax's knack for creating wonderful finger foods, but is bothered when he discovers that these form the nexus of the family's nutritional intake. Charlotte, naturally, favours the idea of more traditional dining, to the extent that at one point she even runs away from home and inserts herself into the household of a family of clean-cut strangers, marvelling at their entirely prosaic routines. Kate, ever the dark horse, reveals that she has similarly strong feelings - when Lou offers to cook a more traditional dinner for the Flaxes, she responds that: "Anything that's hot and not shaped like a star sounds good to me." Dinner on Lou's terms completely transforms the Flaxes' dynamic, with the family all gathered together and Kate and Charlotte sparring on equal terms, but is perceived as a threat by Mrs Flax, who is just as wary of the possibility of her children forming emotional attachments as herself, lest it hampers their ability to move on along with her.

Mrs Flax's penchant for bolting was ingrained from an early age; she informs Lou that she ditched her own parents the instant she'd received her high school diploma and her first pay-check. In the case of her ex-husband, and Charlotte's father, she was forced to suffer the indignity of being on the receiving end of this abandonment, when he departed shortly before Charlotte's birth, although what really aggrieved her about the situation was that he took her car in the process (given that the car has always functioned as a vessel of escape for Mrs Flax, we sense that this is symbolic for her inability to run away from the incoming responsibility of Charlotte). Charlotte unwittingly demonstrates how strongly she takes after both of her parents during her ill-informed pregnancy scare, when her impulse is to jump in the car and drive away, as if somehow she can outrun her imagined problem. She ends up in Connecticut, with the aforementioned ordinary family, who bemuse her for how greatly they resemble the families she has only seen on TV and that might as well, up until now, have been only fictional. Of course, Charlotte's giddy euphoria at the thought of being able to integrate herself into this band of conventional strangers makes it plain how hopelessly divorced from reality she is; while under their roof, her fictitious pregnancy appears to be all forgotten, and she regales the family with ridiculous tales about her parents' feats, living out the dual fantasy of being both a part of this new, most vanilla of households, and having originated from a much more exotic background, desires that seem almost oxymoronic. A parallel is implicit between Charlotte's delusions that all of her problems could be transcended by commandeering a brand new niche in life and her mother's chaotic lifestyle habits. But then, we're aware that the real issue prompting Charlotte's excursion had less to do with her imagined pregnancy per se than the communication barrier between herself and Mrs Flax. Charlotte had previously attempted to reach out to her mother about her concerns - while her mother was in the bathtub with the curtain drawn, reading a copy of Peyton Place, in case you needed a clearer visual metaphor - but, finding herself up against an instant emotional roadblock, was driven to set out in search of an alternative outlet for her angst. Significantly, it is Lou who eventually shows up to bring her back down to Earth, while Mrs Flax's anger at the situation is expressed more comically, through her psychopathic bludgeoning of a plate of flapjacks. 

Occasionally, the theme of apathetic parenting is reflected in the broader atmosphere. The assassination of Kennedy prompts the observation from Charlotte that, "It felt like there wasn't an adult left in the world", alluding to the fact that most adults are now indoors, glued to their radios and television sets for the latest news, but also to the complete breakdown of cultural stability the event seems to epitomize. Crucially, it is while the world is busy reacting to the president's death that Charlotte is compelled to seek out more dubious authority in the form of Joe, and she experiences her first degree of physical intimacy in sharing a kiss with him. It should be noted at this point that if you thought the scenario in Licorice Pizza was a bit squick, you might have similar problems here - Mrs Flax encourages the teenaged Charlotte to romance the 26 year-old Joe, and the appropriateness of this relationship is not, in itself, called into question. Mrs Flax later reacts badly to the news that there has been sexual intimacy between Charlotte and Joe, but it's not clear if her indignation stems from the sex itself or from its public nature (since everybody in Eastport finds out) or possibly even jealousy, Mrs Flax herself having recently come onto Joe following a dispute with Lou, something that has prompted Charlotte to up her game ("You want to drive Lou away, that's your business. You want Joe, that's war."). Joe is played by Schoeffling with a quiet melancholy that suggests murkier, potentially more hazardous depths, much like the convent river itself; an allusion that is reinforced when Charlotte surrenders her virginity to Joe, and this is juxtaposed with Kate's own literal fall into the river, which occurs when Charlotte was supposed to be watching over her. The implication is, of course, that both are wildly out of their depth, with Charlotte's failure to look out for Kate echoing her mother's own failure to adequately prepare her for the world ahead, other than equipping her with her own go-to survival mechanism of fleeing at the first hint of contention.

Kate is saved from drowning by the nuns, but the awareness that disaster was only narrowly averted while her mother and sister's attentions were each turned comes as a violent blow to Charlotte and Mrs Flax, who finally have the heated confrontation that has been simmering away this entire time. Mrs Flax's knee-jerk reaction to the incident is, unsurprisingly, to start packing her bags, explicitly blaming this latest move on Charlotte and the fact that everybody in town now knows about her dealings with Joe. This angers Charlotte, who has come to feel settled in Eastport, and Mrs Flax finds that, because Charlotte's compromised behaviours are so conspicuously a reflection of her own, it is difficult for her to claim the moral high ground in this situation. She does, however, question why, if Charlotte thinks so little of her life choices, she seems so determined to emulate the mistakes she made - by which she alludes principally to her misplaced trust in Charlotte's father, whom she married too hastily. Mrs Flax has a candid discussion with Charlotte about her father for what appears to be the first ever time, revealing that he did return, briefly, when Charlotte was four - her hazy memory of having encountered him around that time might not have been so misleading after all - but was only there to secure a divorce so that he could remarry, and had no intention of rekindling their relationship. Amid this catharsis, each of them reaches a compromise that opens the door for some degree of personal growth on either side; Mrs Flax agrees that, despite her misgivings, the family can remain in Eastport for the time being, while Charlotte finally lets go of her long-standing assumption that her father will one day come back.

Returning to my original question, does Mermaids end a little too happily, given the messiness that precedes it? I think it's certainly fair to say that the story is wrapped up a little too abruptly, through an epilogue where Charlotte gives us a glib rundown on each of the narrative loose ends. Her relationship with Joe concludes ambivalently - we learn that, while the Flaxes stayed put, he has left Eastport to start a nursery in California (already the subject of local rumour regarding his high school sweetheart, whom he may have gotten pregnant, it seems that this latest humiliation was too much for him to bear). He has not completely deserted Charlotte, however, continuing to keep in touch through postcard correspondence - in that regard, he has possibly graduated from ill-fated love interest to fulfilling the role that her estranged father might have had under better circumstances. Charlotte has lived with her own newfound notoriety, which she finds tolerable, and developed a fresh fascination with Greek mythology that seems to have supplanted her interest in Catholicism (implying either that her foray into sexual activity has impeded her ambitions of becoming a nun, or that it was only ever a passing phase to begin with). Kate has mostly recovered from her accident, although the implication that she might have suffered permanent hearing loss as a result of it is not treated too seriously. Finally, Mrs Flax has remained in her relationship with Lou; still, lest we fear that shes in danger of becoming too conventional a parent, it's confirmed in the final sequence that she has yet to bend to the orthodoxy of main courses, as we see Mrs Flax, Charlotte and Kate preparing their latest dinner, comprised of plates of assorted party food.

What does appear to have progressed is that the Flaxes are now accustomed to eating their finger food together as a family, as indicated in the places being set at the table, suggesting that they feel settled and united in their life in Eastport, while still retaining and relishing their fundamental kookiness as a unit (in that regard, it might be seen as an ending that aspires to have its cake and eat it). They also appear to perfectly contented in one another's company, for the first time since the brief interlude involving Mrs Flax's mermaid suit. All the same, it seems to me that the glibness of this ending is not entirely lost on the film, the closing images of which show Charlotte and Mrs Flax dancing in sync to "If You Wanna Be Happy" by Jimmy Soul (the lyrics of which caution us that glamorous women are typically not bearers of happy endings), while Kate has slipped outside into the yard and is grappling with the fiddly task of dragging her inflatable pool up the porch and into the house for some indoor swimming. Charlotte and Mrs Flax might finally be seeing eye to eye, but there's a sense that their focus is still not entirely fixed on Kate, who is once again being primarily left to her own devices (Lou's absence from the final sequence, meanwhile, creates ambiguity regarding his long-term footing within this unit). This family, and their newly-established sense of stability, has the potential still to either sink or swim. For now, though, we have, much like the characters themselves, eaten our fill of bite-sized nibbles, and we sense that our welcome, as spectators, may be overstayed.