Never given quite enough credit for the very fact that it was directed by a woman (where was all this fanfare in ’96? Funneled into 2017’s Lady Bird, apparently), The Mirror Has Two Faces is arguably Barbra Streisand’s unsung masterpiece for manifold reasons. For starters, unlike past films including Funny Girl, The Owl and the Pussycat and What’s Up, Doc?, there isn’t even any attempt at making Rose Morgan come across as an “offbeat” beauty that just needs the right man to notice it. No, instead Rose is “chosen” by fellow Columbia professor Gregory Larkin (Jeff Bridges) precisely because he knows he will never see her as attractive, therefore not be hindered by the waste of time consequences that come with a sexual appetite.
So determined is he to ensure that he won’t be allured by the physical attributes of his potential “mate” (a primal word indeed) after losing his cool at a book reading he’s giving upon encountering his ex, he decides to put an ad out in the paper that will captivate a particular audience. That is to say, he knows that the erudite woman is not, generally speaking, synonymous with being “hot.” Even so, Rose is not the one to respond to the ad (she’s got better things to do, like watching It Happened One Night on repeat), so much as her more beautiful sister, Claire (Mimi Rogers, Tom Cruise survivor). As she phones him to set them up, she tries to warn him that she’s not exactly…bangable. To her surprise, he is all the more eager upon learning this information. Claire, at first sketched out, pushes her thoughts aside for the sake of getting Rose a viable date and gives him her number after bitchily ascertaining, “You have seen her picture, right?”
With the information about her being a fellow professor at Columbia, he decides to do a little “personality test.” Walking in on her discussion with her class and sneaking to the back to get a sense of her persona, he is riveted by her discussion of “courtly love,” as she goes on to describe how it “had nothing to do with sex. The relationship between a knight and a married lady of the court…and so they could never consummate their love. They rose above ‘going to the toilet in front of each other’ love and went after something more divine. They took sex out of the equation, leaving them with a union of souls. Think of this. Sex was always the fatal love potion. Look at the literature of the time. All consummation could lead to was madness, despair or death. Experts, scholars and my Aunt Esther are united in one belief: true love has spiritual dimensions, while romantic love is a lie. A myth. A soulless manipulation. And speaking of manipulation, it’s like going to the movies and seeing the lovers kiss… The music swells, and we buy it, right? So when my date kisses me, and I don’t hear strings, I dump him. The question is, why do we buy it? Because, myth or manipulation, we all want to fall in love. That experience makes us feel completely alive.”
Unfortunately, Gregory walks out of the classroom around this time to get somewhere, missing the crux of Rose’s entire point: that the passion of sexual love (billed as romantic love by the mainstream) is worth all the tragedy that comes with it. She continues in Gregory’s absence, “Our everyday reality is shattered, and we are flung into the heavens. It may only last a moment, an hour, but that doesn’t diminish its value. We’re left with memories we treasure for the rest of our lives. I read somewhere, ‘When we fall in love, we hear Puccini in our heads.’ I love that. His music expresses our need for passion and romantic love. We listen to La Bóheme or Turandot, or read Wuthering Heights, or watch Casablanca, and a little of that love lives in us too. So the final question is: why do people want to fall in love when it can have such a short run and be so painful? I think it’s because, as some of you may already know, while it does last, it feels fucking great.”
The Puccini allusion, of course, comes back in a big way later on in the film, as does Rose’s self-mockery about the archetype she fulfills of being “the faithful handmaiden.” Trustworthy, reliable–but never someone the prince wants to throw down into the hay of the stables and fuck till the rooster crows because he can’t contain his ardor. Gregory, to be sure, can very much contain his ardor, and, in fact, prefers it that way. It makes everything fit so much more neatly into a nice little intellectualized bow as he gets his orgasms from long conversations with Rose over dinner and in the park. She is, initially, somewhat charmed by what she assumes is his old-fashioned nature, exhibited by never trying to kiss or touch her in any way. Then, it dawns on her what is happening. The only mildly handsome man she has ever managed to finagle wants to have a platonic relationship with her–but also marry her. The expression of which is Gregory’s most pragmatic delivery yet, explaining matter-of-factly, “When I look at you, I see a woman unlike any other I’ve known before. Your mind, your humor, your passion for ideas. I’m very fond of you. When I’m with you, I feel as if I’m home. So I think we should get married.”
Rose, though somewhat hesitant to accept as a result of never even having kissed Gregory, quickly decides it might just be the best offer she’s gotten. Her overbearing and once glamorous matriarch, Hannah (the inimitable Lauren Bacall), warns her that she’s making a mistake, but Rose explains to her, “It’s not your average proposal, but let’s face it, they’re not standing in line for me. And we like each other!” Of course, had The Mirror Hast Two Faces (already a remake of a French film from the 50s) been made today, the climate of umpteenth wave feminism would hardly be rooting for Rose as much in the way of an inspiring protagonist. Like really, you want to get married to a pompous asshole just because no one else has been clamoring at your door?
Regardless, the uniqueness of the way in which the “makeover concept” is executed in this particular movie is in contrast to others of its era (e.g. Pretty Woman, Clueless, She’s All That) in that rather than assuring the male object of affection will finally equate his attraction to the girl in question’s mind with her body, Gregory is up in arms about Rose’s improved appearance. But his near outraged reaction is just what she wanted to get out of him so that she could say, “What does it matter how I look? You never look at me. If appearance doesn’t matter, what’s wrong with this appearance? Sorry if it upsets your mathematical equation. ‘Handsome, frightened man marries unattractive, desperate woman.'” Thus, in transcending from frumpy to fabulous (which, as per usual, entails losing weight and going blonde), Rose proves that appearance always matters, even if its from the inverse perspective of societal expectation.
Upsetting his delicate Victorian sensibilities, Rose finally finds the courage to admit to Gregory, “I settled for something that I didn’t want. I thought I could live with that. But I lied, to myself and to you. To be honest, I think your theory about relationships is bullshit. I believe in love, lust, sex and romance, not in a perfect equation. I want mess and chaos. I want someone to go crazy for me.”
The message that remains inherent in the film, however, is that it does take the altered appearance of a woman to at last get the appreciation her mind already should have gotten, which is perhaps why Rose wistfully asks her mother, “How did it feel? Being beautiful?” She rolls her eyes. Rose insists, “No, I mean it. How did it feel having people look at you with such admiration? Looking at yourself in the mirror with such appreciation? How did that feel?” Hannah finally capitulates, “It was wonderful.” So there you have it, even the most intelligent of women can be rather stupid when it comes to letting their looks get the better of them. And all to inveigle the fancy of an ultimately inferior man.
