Five Wives, Three Secretaries and Me

Listening to filmmaker Tessa Blake confidently field questions during a supplemental 18-minute Q&A on this DVD-only release of her 1997 documentary about her father, I was impressed with her fundamental understanding of the key ingredients necessary for a successful documentary: interesting characters and strong narrative. In Five Wives, Three Secretaries and Me, unfortunately, Blake's blinders appear to be on, as she attempts to limn an impressionistic portrait of her octogenarian father (who passed away in 2001), a wealthy, skirt-chasing, racist Texan with an extended tangle of relations that Blake calls "exes, halves, and steps." Although the wives (including the fifth wife Muffet, whom other interviewees invariably mispronounce as "Muffie" or "Muffin") are briefly seen at amiable clan get-togethers, only Tessa's mom--wife number four, who married "Blakey" when she was 22 and he was 56--agreed to be interviewed, and she's a pleasantly garrulous woman who says both a lot and very little at the same time. With very sparse overlaid narration to guide viewers (we don't even find out what Tom Blake does until over halfway through the film--and then only in a very vague sense), it's like being dropped into the party from hell, with strangers (family, friends, and three secretaries from work) offering up some less than scintillating--let alone insightful--comments on the beloved, irascible, and--at least on celluloid--semi-incoherent patriarch. Only towards the end does the documentary truly come alive and find its focal point of "loving people you disagree with" when Blake poignantly struggles to build a bridge of understanding with her loving but unrepentantly bigoted father over the subject of her black lover. Optional. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)