FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

Fried Green Tomatoes is a story of "friendship". At least I'd have called it friendship when I first saw it. Set in Birmingham, Alabama, and switching between the 1930s and 1980s, the film follows Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates), a mousy housewife trying everything to save her marriage to a clueless Ed (Gailard Lee Sartain). On a visit to Ed's cantankerous aunt, who lives in a nursing home, Evelyn strikes up a conversation with Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy).

Ninny is a woman with a tale to tell: the story of Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson), Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker) and the Whistle Stop Café. Idgie and Ruth's tale is one of loss and love, but like... love love. Although I admit, at the time I thought, "Of course you raise your best friend and business partner's baby. That's what friends are for." Through learning about these forgotten women, Evelyn learns that, rather than chasing Ed's love, she should focus instead on loving herself. If it sounds a little trite, it's because it is, but oh my God did I watch the bejesus out of this film as a teenager. It just took years for me to figure out why. For some, and for me initially, the "friendship" between Idgie and Ruth could be just that. Nothing more, although also everything. An intense, symbiotic bond that was the most significant relationship of both of their lives. All friends swim in their slips at midnight, drinking and playing poker, and kissing suggestively on the cheek.

When I was watching Fried Green Tomatoes, my identity was subtext even to me. Film was a part of that awakening as much as any interaction or missed heartbeat. It's flawed. I'm not going to say it's not. But it was like visiting an old friend, an old version of me. A version of me that, when it came to the midnight poker/cheek-kissing scene, finally turned to me in rapturous, dumbfounded awe and went, "Oh... I get it now!"

(Rachel Walshe, filmireland.net)