This film, which got somewhat lost in the shuffle at the time of release, is a worthy rental if you haven’t seen it already. Ladies, if your SO or DH still owes you for Valentine’s Day, this fills the chick-flick quota quite nicely.
In something of a spinoff from classic flick The Graduate, Rumor Has It stars Jennifer as Sarah Huttinger, a young woman whose true identity has always alluded her. She never identified with her Pasadena-based family growing up, which perhaps made a move to New York to work at the Times an inviting prospect. Now that she’s there, however, her main responsibilities involve the wedding announcements and obituaries. She is engaged to Jeff (Mark Ruffalo), and despite Jeff’s multitude of charms, Sarah is more than a little bit anxious about settling down.
Upon arriving in Pasadena to serve as maid of honor for her sister Annie (Mena Suvari), however, Sarah finds that nothing is what it seems. Her grandma Katherine (Shirley MacLaine) lets it slip that Sarah’s late mother had run away before her own wedding, and it doesn’t take much further deduction to realize that The Graduate is based on her own family. Sarah is now on a quest to discover the real reason why she looks and acts so differently from the rest of her family, and in doing so she figures out what the future holds for her as well.
The film takes place in 1997, in order to line up the ages of the characters and the release of the Graduate. Here is an article from the New York Times about the challenge of accurately costuming the recent past:
So Yesterday
Alex Cayley for The New York Times
‘Domino,” the latest Tony Scott film, features cameo appearances by the actors Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green, who in previous lives starred in the seminal 90’s television show “Beverly Hills, 90210.” The two, in fact, play themselves, outfitted to appear as if they were still living and dressing in their 90’s heyday. To achieve their look, the film’s costume designer, who goes by the initial B., paid close attention to their denim. “Jeans from the early 90’s just don’t fit well,” she explains. “They’re a little peg-legged. They’re a little saggy in the rear end. Which was the key to pinpointing that era.” Nicole Kidman in “Cold Mountain” this is not.
When designing period dress for the 1990’s, as opposed to, say, the 1890’s, it is helpful to understand that yesterday should look like today, only different. Lately, the recent past - and how it looks - have been on the minds of several filmmakers. Gus Van Sant, for example, in his grunge meditation, “Last Days,” has the actor Michael Pitt cycle through Kurt Cobain’s entire wardrobe of slip dresses, plaid hunting jackets and misshapen striped sweaters, despite the fact that the film takes place roughly over a 24-hour period in the mid-90’s (Cobain died in 1994). Or consider Jennifer Aniston, who will appear next month in “Rumor Has It. . .” much of which is set in the late 90’s, a time that is acknowledged in a voice-over and with winking props like a car phone with a conspicuous black cord. Aniston looks familiar - she dresses in a lot of black and even the occasional anachronistic low-rise jean - but Kym Barrett, the costume designer best known for her work on the “Matrix” trilogy, aimed for the subtle uniform of a Manhattan career woman at that moment. It did not help her cause that the 1990’s have yet to find their exact place in the fashion canon, and that 1997, in particular, was remarkable precisely for being unremarkable. “I can’t think of anything particularly defining about it,” says Melanie Ward, a senior fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar and one of the most influential stylists of the 90’s. “It really was about inconspicuous luxury - a cashmere turtleneck. I remember wearing black pencil skirts and knee-high black suede boots. That was the look.” For Aniston’s coif, Chris McMillan created a composite style inspired by Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Aerin Lauder and, in a funny meta-twist, the television actress Jennifer Aniston. “We used original Rachel,” he says, referring to the momentous layered cut he himself invented for the actress’s role on “Friends.”
The recent past comes with a unique set of aesthetic complications. Audiences are more likely to have strong opinions about clothes that are not unlike those still hanging in their closets. “Most people remember wearing a really horrible suit that looked like one of those women on television who had an affair with a politician,” Barrett says. There is the correlating problem that because these clothes may still be in circulation, they are less available to the costume designers who seek them out in costume houses and thrift stores. And you can’t count on new clothes to provide an accurate retro feel: while the fashion industry continues to raid the 20th century for inspiration, it has yet to fully embrace the last decade. Not even the designer Marc Jacobs has gone there.
“There are things that are not out there right now - like cocktail suits for lesbians,” says Aggie Guerard Rodgers, the costume designer for the film adaptation of the musical “Rent,” out this week. “When I found a white DKNY rayon pantsuit in the Goodwill in San Francisco, I almost died and went to heaven.”
Does a movie that takes place in the 90’s qualify as a period piece?
“Absolutely,” says Rodgers, who invested “Rent” with the kind of exacting detail that she also applied to films like “The Color Purple,” “Beetlejuice” and “American Graffiti.” For “Rent,” she combined elements from the late 80’s, when the show was set, with some from 1996, the year it opened on Broadway, became a phenomenon and inspired a boutique at Bloomingdale’s, replete with shrugs, color-blocked fitted sweaters and holographic vinyl originally created by Angela Wendt. (Bloomingdale’s has opened a second “Rent” boutique in honor of the film version.) Rodgers even made sure the extras were suited with fuller sleeves, broader shoulders and larger armholes because, as she points out, “businesspeople were not as health-conscious as they are today, so the suits were quite a bit bigger.”
Which might seem like a lot of effort for a small return. After all, the audience that would appreciate such subtleties might not line up for a movie about junkies who sing about their feelings. “I know, no one will notice,” Rodgers says. “Costume designers are nutty. But the littlest things can make us happy.”
