Living Out Loud

Living Out Loud (1998), directed by Richard LaGravenese, starring Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito and Queen Latifah, is a dramatic comedy about a woman (Hunter) finding an unforeseen companion in her apartment buildings elevator operator (DeVito). Judith Moore has recently divorced her doctor husband and is living, alone, in their Upper East Side apartment. All their friends were really his so she feel

s isolated, finding solace in the soulful singing of Liz Bailey (Latifah), often making the trip to the Upper West Side bar she performs at. After a few failed attempts at male companionship, a conversation with her buildings doorman, Pat Francato, begins what would become the driving relationship in the film.

The most poignant moment in the film is a ridiculous, over the top organized dance number that comes close to the films conclusion. While at a gay club, Judith and Liz move to the pulsing dance beats, lights in seemingly every color of the spectrum bounce and glow around them. The dance floor is so full of women that they all seem to combine into one, singular being. Judith moves to the music before breaking out in a synchronized dance with the women around her as the floor clears to give them space. The sequence ends when Judith finds her younger self on the dance-floor, as they embrace, the floor fills back up and the animal starts up all over again. This scene serves to show Judith that while she has been looking for herself since leaving her husband, she has always truly known who she is.

Through playful tricks like this, aimed at taking the viewer into Judith's mind by showing what she wants to do versus what she actually does begin awkward and out of place but by the end of the film serve as both a playful and poignant aspect of the film. In the begging, they feel like schizophrenic gimmicks, the film seemingly not able to make up its mind between being a continuos classical hollywood narrative and a discontinuous, almost semi-experimental piece. The film leaves the viewer, at times, questioning what’s real and what is fake as the viewer begins to be able to tell when the reality we are seeing is in fact not actually happening.

This film brings up social issues of a single woman as Judith stands up to her ex-husband and doesn’t act as a scared or weak patsy during the divorce proceedings, something that seems to often be portrayed as such in movies and television. By the end of the film she has realized she doesn’t have to be what she sees in the women around her, instead she can be who she wants to be. Ignoring the reactions of her neighbors towards her relationship with Pat she circumvents the norms society has set out for her as an upper class single woman. By returning to her roots, Judith is able to fully understand where she’s come from therefore allowing her to become who she needs to be by Living Out Loud.