Women make film men shine

When hollywood was still adult, they were called "women's pictures." They revolved around eternal issues such as the tension between personal happiness and wifely duty or motherhood, and the shape these issues took could range from powerhouse tear-jerkers such as "Imitation of Life" to no-holds-barred melodramas such as "Mildred Pierce."

Today they are called "chick flicks," and they refer to any movie that a girl or a woman is most likely to attend alone or with her gal pals, or with her local chapter of the Oprah Book Club. Examples currently in theaters include "Catch and Release" and "The Holiday" as well as "Music and Lyrics," which opens Wednesday.

As we approach the most romantic day of the year, guys looking for Valentine's movies to share with their gals should consider the wisdom of the chick flick.

The simple act of attending a chick flick can be viewed as a gesture of incomparable self-sacrifice. But if you gauge who gains the most from this adventure, it's got to be the male of the species.

When guys get dragged to a chick flick, they know their gender group will receive a fair shake. Sure, the action will feature some male dastards. But they carry the benefit of making a date look kindly and selfless to his gal, at least by comparison to the big lugs on the big screen.

And as chick flicks start to also mean movies made by women, the genre is exerting a more profound pull on male audiences, as female directors bring out subtle dynamics in male performers.

Free spirits

Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong is one of the most fiercely talented moviemakers at work today. My favorite Armstrong movie is the little-seen "High Tide" (1987), which stars Judy Davis as a benign, lyrical drunk -- a backup singer for an Elvis imitator who winds up in an ocean-side Australian town. Davis has rarely been as accessible and funny -- or as chillingly ironic -- as she is here, answering the question: What does a free spirit do when she's a mother? And as a fisherman and painter who briefly offers her solace and security, Colin Friels, Davis' real-life husband, makes affability sexy.

Bit 'High,' bit 'Rough'

"High Tide" opened within weeks of another female auteur's marvelous debut: Clare Peploe's "High Season" (1987), a wildly original warm-weather comedy. It's about art and treason and the virtues of vacation: clearing your mind, letting go. Once again, the male and female cast members are beautifully matched, including Jacqueline Bisset (at her liveliest) and Kenneth Branagh -- here a masterly moonstruck comedian as a secret agent with a crush on her. Peploe's rowdy, enjoyable second feature, "Rough Magic" (1995), is a deliberately haywire high-wire act concerning uranium, drugs, Mayan sorcery, the hypocritical feel-good '50s, and Bridget Fonda and Russell Crowe. In "Rough Magic," Peploe offers a tender cut of Crowe and sums up what new wave "chick flicks" can offer to male audiences: multifaceted portraits of man at his best.

Getting under the skin

Perhaps because they can't fall back on buddy-buddy badinage or fall into macho competition, female directors bring out actors' other sides. Check out how that happened with Charles Grodin in Elaine May's "The Heartbreak Kid," with John Heard and Peter Riegert in Joan Micklin Silver's "Chilly Scenes of Winter," with Sean Penn in Amy Heckerling's "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and with Nicolas Cage in Martha Coolidge's "Valley Girl."

Babs gets it

Critics ridiculed Barbra Streisand for not giving Mandy Patinkin a single song to sing in her directorial debut, "Yentl" (1983) -- but that high god of macho John Huston thought it was "extraordinary," and Patinkin has never registered so strongly as a virile presence in anything he has done since. In the scenes where a cross-dressed Streisand rouses diverse feelings in Patinkin and in Amy Irving, the actor-director revels in the permutations of male and female sexuality -- and doesn't erase the differences.

And Streisand didn't win the praise she deserved for handing her "The Prince of Tides" scenes off to Nick Nolte and, as a director, turning this longtime Hollywood dauphin into a king of dramedy. Nolte has always been an expressive actor, but in "The Prince of Tides," without losing his wicked, muscular sardonicism, he let his lavalike emotions sneak up on you and then explode.