There’s a lot to make me love this movie: the year, the Barr-Streep-Begley Jr. sandwich, the crass and welcome feminist undertones, and the femme’d-up satanic set design. Even though the viewer must endure Roseanne doing Ruth-cum-Vesta with her full range of expansive emotive abilities, Meryl Streep’s turn as Mary Fisher—romance novelist and doomed antagonist (she never knew what hit her)—more than makes up for it.
The synopsis: Ruth (Barr) and Bob (Begley Jr.) are living a typical 1980s middle-class existence on Bob’s accountant salary, with two teenagers in the suburbs. The movie starts exactly where it should: at a work gala where Mary Fisher quite literally collides with Bob—and swoops him away in seconds. Really, it’s Ruth who does the colliding. True to her character’s form, she’s always bumbling, staring too long, and deemed unattractive by 1989 beauty standards.
She-Devil is told entirely from Ruth’s point of view, with her omniscient narration leading us along. So, if Roseanne’s delivery isn’t your thing, you might want to skip this ‘80s gem.
Once Mary Fisher has Bob in her clutches (the very first night), he never leaves her pink palace again until forcibly thrown out. But only after Ruth/Vesta systematically strips him of what he calls his four essential manly rights: 1) home, 2) family, 3) career, and 4) freedom. And how does she achieve this nefarious plan? By empowering other women and giving back to her community (the horror!).
I first saw She-Devil at 13 or 14, and it made quite an impression. I loved Mary Fisher’s self-built palace by the sea (built on books, no less!) and Ruth’s creative ingenuity throughout the movie (she really knows how to blow up a house). This was the first female character I’d seen who, when crossed, burned it all down—family home, possessions, lives. Kaboom.
Ruth literally burns down the family home, drops the kids and dog off at Mary Fisher’s, and reinvents herself—starting with a new name, Vesta Rose, and then a new career. The film then shifts its focus to poor Mary, who is rapidly transformed from romance-fairy-princess to the harried housewife we all know lurks inside.
After Mary’s crass, sassy mother is booted from the Golden Twilight nursing home, and the kids, the dog, and the laundry take over her pink Long Island mansion, cracks begin to show. When a tell-all magazine article trashes her powder-puff brand, Mary’s eye begins to twitch and her shoulders tense up, overwhelmed by all that invisible labor.
Since the central plot is Ruth/Vesta’s quest to ruin her wayward husband, it helps that Bob is extremely wayward. Vesta opens a temp agency and strategically places bubbly, naive Olivia Honey in Bob’s path. True to form, Bob snaps up the bait like a starved salmon, and Vesta’s plan to implode Mary’s pink palace picks up speed. Soon Bob is “working late,” the house is trashed, Mary’s latest novel (Love in the Rinse Cycle) is tanking, and, finally, Vesta frames Bob for financial fraud. He’s been stealing from his clients (mostly Mary)—a fact that doesn’t sit well with this particular steel magnolia.
The seductress becomes the harpy, as happens in every fairy tale past the Happily Ever After. And when Mary finally sees Bob for what he is—a deceitful fleck of pond scum—she kicks him out and transforms herself into a feminist writer (complete with Steinem specs and a middle finger to the serious…critics). So really—who’s the hero, or anti-hero, here?
Ruth/Vesta gets what she wants, too: her kids back, and Bob locked up and penitent. With its jazzy soundtrack and blush-toned palette, She-Devil offers just enough rage to make a statement... but never quite figures out what that statement should be.
