'Going Shopping'

I'm a rugby-playing, Maxim-subscribing, Motorhead-obsessed dude, but I know a hideous floral-print dress when I see one. The Santa Monica boutique of Holly G. (co-writer and Jaglom spouse Victoria Foyt) serves its customers complimentary tea and biscotti to compensate for the type of overpriced clothing that screams, "I have serious marital issues!" No wonder da Holly G. show has one Mother's Day weekend to raise dough or close up shop. Tea and biscotti add up. Henry Jaglom's latest study of contemporary female obsessions among a noxious clan of West L.A. bourgeoisie is of more pathological than cinematic interest. Is any other filmmaker so strongly identified as a self-hating male? Jaglom has obvious humanist tendencies, but only for women. The men in Going Shopping function either as sources of income or selfish enablers of female hysteria. It's enough to make us wonder, as talking-head shopaholics confess their fear and desire to the camera, whether these women are confronting their own obsessions or Jaglom's. The same question might apply to Sally Potter, vis-à-vis her upcoming trilogy: Cheating, Harleyfever, and Going (Porn) Shopping.