Selma Eugenia

What I wrote on Letterboxd after watching the film for the first time:

The moment the opening credits started rolling and the name of Peter Falk appeared before Gena Rowlands’ I knew I was going to have conflicting thoughts on this film. Is there an alternative title for this film that I’m not aware of called ”A municipal construction worker whose woman is under the influence”?

Nonetheless, they were absolutely brilliant together. An honest and raw exploration of midlife mental illness in 1970s America, specifically in suburban housewives. A book worth reading if the subject resonates with you is The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedman.

An excerpt from the opening page of the book:

”The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—”Is this all?”

Sacred space,

Pages from a 1970s Finnish book;

European Starlings from my photobook “On Belonging”,