In praise of Nora Ephron’s fea­ture debut, This is My Life

Nora Ephron was a writer before she was a film­mak­er. Her par­ents, Har­ry and Phoebe, were a screen­writ­ing team respon­si­ble for Hol­ly­wood clas­sics like Desk Set and There’s No Busi­ness Like Show Busi­ness. All three of her sis­ters were writ­ers; she’d often col­lab­o­rate with Delia on screen­plays. Nora’s first cred­its in Hol­ly­wood were as a screen­writer, and over the sev­en­ties and eight­ies she accrued respect and plau­dits for her work on Silk­wood, Heart­burn, and When Har­ry Met Sal­ly.

It was the suc­cess of the lat­ter film that inspired Dawn Steel, then head of Colum­bia Pic­tures – she was the first woman to run a major movie stu­dio – to ask if she want­ed to move into direct­ing, sug­gest­ing an adap­tion of Meg Wolitzer’s ​‘This is My Life’ would be a good fit for her. Ephron agreed, and after shep­herd­ing the project through var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ment hell (Steel left Colum­bia soon after their meet­ing, and was replaced by the noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult Jon Peters), gar­nered her first direct­ing credit.

Co-writ­ten by Nora and Delia, This is My Life has a real gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it when it comes to tack­ling the issues faced by women strug­gling to bal­ance rais­ing their kids with achiev­ing their career goals. The film fol­lows Dot­tie Ingels (Julie Kavn­er), whose rapid tran­si­tion from cos­met­ics counter fun­ny­woman to nation­al­ly famous stand-up come­di­an leaves her daugh­ters Eri­ca (Saman­tha Math­is) and Opal (Gaby Hoff­man) feel­ing abandoned.

With the help of duelling voiceovers from Dot­tie and Eri­ca, Ephron bal­ances the frus­tra­tions of both sides, acknowl­edg­ing how com­pli­cat­ed their sit­u­a­tion is; Dot­tie is nev­er por­trayed as cal­lous­ly neglect­ful for pur­su­ing her dreams, and the girls are nev­er por­trayed as mon­strous for miss­ing their mum. Ephron doesn’t offer answers, but nei­ther does she assign blame, and her com­pas­sion­ate, hon­est approach still feels refresh­ing today.

There’s not a sin­gle antag­o­nist in the movie, just a bunch of imper­fect humans mud­dling along, doing the best that they can with what they have. Even the girls’ long absent father isn’t vil­lainised when they (with the help of a pri­vate detec­tive) track him down, some­how con­vinced that he won’t aban­don them the way they think their moth­er has, though he did just that years ear­li­er. He’s severe­ly defi­cient in his dad duties, yes, and tragi­com­i­cal­ly ter­ri­ble at talk­ing to even his own chil­dren, but not a vil­lain – Ephron’s human­is­tic benev­o­lence extends to even the least deserv­ing here.

Despite being a com­e­dy about a come­di­an, Dottie’s stand-up rou­tines are the least fun­ny parts of an oth­er­wise very fun­ny movie. As both screen­writer and direc­tor, Ephron quick­ly estab­lish­es the close, laugh-filled rela­tion­ship between moth­er and daugh­ters, nur­tur­ing a fun repar­tee between the three of them through jokes and songs and squabbles.

An endear­ing, con­vivial cosi­ness per­me­ates the film as a whole, which only grows as the Ingels’ social cir­cle does; the murderer’s row of sup­port­ing tal­ent – includ­ing Car­rie Fish­er and Dan Aykroyd as Dottie’s agents, Tim Blake Nel­son as one of the many babysit­ter stand-ups that Dot­tie lines up for Eri­ca and Opal (his spe­cial­i­ty is humor­ous cou­plets about fish), and Car­o­line Aaron as the girls’ decid­ed­ly un-wicked step­moth­er – is full of top comedic actors on top form.

This is My Life boasts what still stands today as the sole lead­ing fea­ture film role of Julie Kavn­er, best known for voic­ing Marge in The Simp­sons (which was still in its infan­cy in 1992). Kavn­er is extreme­ly win­ning as the con­flict­ed, charis­mat­ic Dot­tie: her rela­tion­ship with her daugh­ters is warm and gen­uine, she sells her under­whelm­ing stand-up rou­tines with abun­dant charm, and that icon­ic grav­el­ly voice of hers imbues every line with extra spir­it. Though she was in her ear­ly for­ties when the movie was released – not tra­di­tion­al­ly the most in-demand age for a Hol­ly­wood lead­ing lady, espe­cial­ly 30 years ago – it’s hard not to lament the oth­er star­ring roles she may have had if the film had per­formed better.

Alas, while it opened to a decent crit­i­cal recep­tion, receiv­ing notably enthu­si­as­tic reviews from Roger Ebert and Janet Maslin, Ephron’s first fea­ture as direc­tor was a resound­ing com­mer­cial flop. The fol­low­ing year, her next project, Sleep­less in Seat­tle, would make almost a hun­dred times its predecessor’s box office – begin­ning its reign as one of the most beloved roman­tic come­dies of all time, cement­ing Ephron the queen of the genre, and con­demn­ing the sto­ry of Dot­tie, Eri­ca and Opal to rel­a­tive obscurity.

While Ephron does have some direc­to­r­i­al mis­steps that are bet­ter left for­got­ten (Mixed Nuts and Bewitched spring to mind), her debut is not one of them; its warm wit and empa­thet­ic atti­tude towards moth­ers bal­anc­ing child­care and pro­fes­sion­al dreams make it far too good a movie to have lan­guished in the dim recess­es of our cul­tur­al mem­o­ry for so long.

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