Champagne for Two

(Lewis Furey, 1987)
What happens to the director of a happy accident like "The Mask" a quarter of a century on? Well if you're Julian Roffman you ensconce yourself as the writer of a big-news event in Canadian entertainment: 'Shades of Love', a string of classy soap operas with a 'modern' outlook and the biggest hacks available for the price. Furey does duty here, showcasing the tribulations of the ambitious career gal who cannot slow down to love. This kind of dares you to call it a name: is escapist schlock for women any more offensive than cathartic schlock for men? Especially with performances as acceptable and direction as clever as this? Well, maybe not. But while it may be clever it's not good; Nicholas Campbell's 'breaking and entering' intro cannot possibly be effective through all the gauze, the power feminism smacks into the usual monogamy wall even if it addresses real issues, and to the extent Campbell and Kirsten Bishop do their job, it's against the undertow of a script that rushes them from conflict to resolution to conflict with positively mathematical banality. By the third or fourth vacuous easy-listening montage, you start to long for the things that money can't buy.