How could you not like a film which features Harvey Fierstein as a moyl with two-pierced ears? You simply can’t.

Which reminds me of the joke in “Every Goy’s Guide to Common Jewish Expressions:

A man passes by a store window with nothing in it but a beautiful antique clock. He goes in and says, “Excuse me, do you repair Seth Thomas wall clocks?”

The man in the shop says, “I don’t repair any kind of clock. I’m a moyl.”

“But in your window you have a clock.”

“And what would ‘you’ put in the window?”

Getting back to “Everything Relative,” this feature is sort of a lesbian “Return of the Secaucus Seven.” Katie (Stacey Nelkin) is the birth mother of a new child. Her lover Victoria (Monica Bell) is the co-mother, and Victoria’s brother is the father, but forget about him. (He’s only viewable for a second.)

Anyway, their boy’s bris is the reason there’s a moyl in the house and why a group of 1970’s college pals——all lesbian but for one—— are reuniting. After the “chopping off of the foreskin” ritual is completed, the gals all get into their cars and head off to a house in Northampton where they went to school. Let the neuroses be unveiled.

This one had an affair with that one. That one wants to have an affair with this one. There are folk songs and tears and softball and sex and more sex and lots more tears and laughter. Plus one Republican investor girlfriend who’s sent packing: “Did you really vote for Pataki?”

What’s charming about the film is that none of these gals are particularly brilliant or witty. They use ridiculous phrases like “it’s water under the bridge” over and over again until you want to scream, “Blow up that damn bridge already” That they resolve their problems like escapees from a bad episode of Jenny Jones adds to their realism, and you’ll wound up embracing the gals (A) for their likability. (B) because you know you only have to spend two hours with them.

These at-time squirrelly “revolutionaries” are immature and seductive and again very unvarnished. The moping Maria (the terrific Olivia Negron), is a Mexican who’s lost her children in the courts because of her sexual persuasion. Angry Luce (the excitingly muscular and lithe Andrea Weber) is still mourning her girlfriend who died over a decade ago. Bubbly Sarah (Carol Schneider) is the confused heterosexual who wants to be pregnant more than anything. And so forth.
By the end of the film, you will never see so many happy lesbians, let alone human beings, in one picture. Everyone’s trauma is resolved with a few quick strokes like an episode of the “Brady Bunch.” But why not?

In their classic 1972 work “Lesbian/Woman,” Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon write:

“A Lesbian is a woman whose primary erotic, psychological, emotional and social interest is in a member of her own sex, even though that interest may not be overtly expressed. At a time when women, the forgotten sex, are voicing their rage and demanding their personhood, it is fitting that a book on the Lesbian be written. Like her heterosexual sister, the Lesbian has been downtrodden, but doubly so: first, because she is a woman, and second, because she is a Lesbian.”

The time that have been a-changing, but not so quickly in the world of celluloid. While “Everything Relative” is definitely not a landmark film, it’s certainly a buoyant step in that direction.


DIRECTOR/WRITER/PRODUCER: Sharon Pollack
CAST: Ellen McLaughlin, Olivia Negron, Stacey Nelkin, Monica Bell, Andrea Weber, Gabriella Messina, Carol Schneider, Malindi Fickle, Mina Bern, Irma St. Paule, Lynn Cohen, Harvey Fierstein, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Andrew McCarthy
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Irene Sullivan (Tara Releasing)
CO-PRODUCER: Patricia Larouzière
LINE PRODUCERS: Clare Martorana, Mark Hibbard
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Zakaela Rachel Othmer
EDITOR: Meredith Paige
COMPOSER: Frank London
SOUND DESIGN: Chen Harpaz
CASTING: Jack Bowdan, C.S.A.

GENRE: Drama NO MPAA RATING RUNNING TIME: 1:50

WEB SITE: www.tarafilms.com