Arts & Entertainment

AT THE

MOVIES

Sole Sisters

Jewish siblings with nothing in common but their shoe size
come together in film based on Jennifer Weiner novel.

Naomi Pfefferman

hen Jennifer Weiner
attends the premiere
of In Her Shoes —
based on her 2002 chick-lit
bestseller — she'll wear a
brand new hairdo.
This past summer, the 35-
year-old and her younger sister,
Molly, an actress, both had
identical geometric bobs. But
since Sis is one of her dates for
the premiere, Weiner grew her
brown hair shoulder-length and
added blonde highlights and
loose waves she says are very
"in" for fall.
"I decided we couldn't both
have the same hair on the red
carpet:' she adds with a laugh.
The way sisters compete and
relate is the subject of Weiner's
novel and the movie, which was
adapted into a screenplay by
Susannah Grant (Erin
Brockovich). Like the book, the
frothy film, directed by Curtis
Hanson (L.A. Confidential),
revolves around Jewish siblings
who have nothing in common
except size 8'/2 feet and a
wicked stepmother. The fiction-
al Maggie (Cameron Diaz), a
size zero babe, is an irresponsi-
ble party girl with dyslexia.
Rose (Toni Collette), a frumpy
size 14, is a successful attorney
with low self-esteem about her
looks and her love life.
Rose collects shoes to make
herself feel better; Maggie cov-
ets and pilfers the boots and
high heels.
It is only when the sisters
reconnect with their long-lost
grandmother (Shirley
MacLaine) that they learn to
make peace with each other —
and the footwear issue.
The shoes become "a
metaphor for all the ways the
sisters are jealous of each other
— for wanting to inhabit some-

h otos by S i d ney Bal dwi n/Twenti eth Centu ry Fox

Jewish Journal of Greater
Los Angeles

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62

Sisters Rose and Maggy Feller (Toni Collette, left, and Cameron Diaz), travel a bumpy road toward true
appreciation for one another in in Her Shoes.

one else's skin and get what
they get out of life Weiner
says.
While barefoot in her
Philadelphia bedroom after her
recent haircut, the funny, direct
author insists the fictional sib-
lings are not versions of herself
and her own sister. But their
relationship did provide the
general impetus for the story.
Weiner's sister didn't steal her
shoes, but she took her clothes,
mostly her plus-sized sweat-
shirts when the 1980s film
Flashdance made oversized

sweats fashionable.
"I was always the responsible
one, saying, 'Mom says we have
to be home by 11; and she was
the one saying, 'Let's take the
car keys; Mom will never
know," the writer recalls. "She
was always cute, petite and
bubbly, while I was more,
`Jenny, get your nose out of that
book.'"

Chick-Lit Success

To create In Her Shoes, Weiner
wondered: How can people who

grew up in the same house wind
up radically different individu-
als?
The blonde, blue-eyed
Cameron Diaz looks less like
Weiner's sister than the gorgeous
WASPs both siblings grew up
with in Simsbury, Conn. The
dark-haired Weiner "felt like an
outcast in so many ways:' she in a
2002 interview. She says she was
"funny-looking," brace-faced and
plump. On her youth trip to
Israel, where there were four
other Jennifers, she was labeled
"the fat one."

Weiner spent the next decade
dieting and seeing nutritionists
— until she had an epiphany in
the late 1990s. "I was trying to
get somewhere my body didn't
want to go;' she says. "I got to the
point where I thought, 'How
much more nonsense am I going
to put myself through, and how
much more time am I going to
waste? With all the genuine suf-
fering and injustice that takes
place in the world, how much
more of my life do I want to
devote to looking like Jennifer
Anniston?' And I said, am

October 6 , 2005

„TN