Just Like a Woman

Among the paths to female empowerment, belly dancing might not be the most common choice, but it serves as the catalyst here in Rachid Bouchareb's film about two women who abandon unhappy marriages and hit the road on a liberating, if sometimes disheartening, journey of self-discovery. Marilyn (Sienna Miller) and Mona (Golshifteh Farahani) are hardworking Chicago wives who take dancing classes in order to relieve stress. But when both suffer domestic crises—Marilyn loses her job and finds out that her husband is cheating on her, while Mona prepares the wrong dosage of medicine for her domineering mother-in-law, and fears she'll be arrested—they flee the city. Fortuitously meeting at a highway rest stop, the pair decide to head for Santa Fe, where Marilyn hopes to win a dancing contest and a spot in the sponsoring troupe. A subplot involving a detective (Tim Guinee) searching for Mona aims to build suspense but ultimately goes nowhere in this film that feels like a small-scale version of Thelma & Louise writ small, trying to tackle serious gender issues, but only winding up oversimplifying and trivializing them. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a photo gallery and trailers. Bottom line: a small extras package for a disappointing film.] (F. Swietek)