THE DIVORCED WOMEN'S FILM FESTIVAL: NO FAULT AT METROGRAPH 

 

A Program of Films That Challenge and Re-Invent "Happily Ever After" Curated by Author Haley Mlotek, with Mlotek and Guests in Attendance for Special Introductions

 

Series Features 35mm Showings of THE FIRST WIVES CLUB and WAITING TO EXHALE, 4K DCP of AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, and More, Plus Opening Night No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce Book Signing

 

Beginning February 21

Metrograph In Theater

 

A Program of Films That Challenge and Re-Invent "Happily Ever After" Curated by Author Haley Mlotek, with Mlotek and Guests in Attendance for Special Introductions

 

Series Features 35mm Showings of THE FIRST WIVES CLUB and WAITING TO EXHALE, 4K DCP of AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, and More, Plus Opening Night No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce Book Signing

 

Metrograph presents The Divorced Women's Film Festival: No Fault at Metrograph, a spirited program of destructive romances and toxic flirtations curated by Haley Mlotek on the occasion of the publication of her first book, beginning February 21 at Metrograph In Theater. 

 

"In my book, No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce, I tell a story about how I spent the first years of my divorced life as if I was programming a Divorced Women’s Film Festival. I watched my favorites on a loop, collecting and sending recommendations like assignments. I was not ready to talk about what I was going through, but I was always wanting to talk about which movies felt truest. When my friend told me Martin Scorsese considered The Age of Innocence the most violent movie he’s ever made, I knew I had found a soulmate; when my sisters and I watched The First Wives Club, we had found a way to laugh about something we recognized but weren’t old enough to understand. Jill Clayburgh dancing in An Unmarried Woman, Angela Bassett lighting a fire in Waiting to Exhale: these are classics not because they are reflections of life, exactly, but because they can be visions of our feelings." —Series curator Haley Mlotek

 

The Divorced Women's Film Festival: No Fault at Metrograph runs from February 21 to February 23, with select encore screenings to follow.

 

Titles include The Age of Innocence, The Brood, The First Wives Club, An Unmarried Woman, Waiting to Exhale, and The War of the Roses.

 

Following the screening of The Age of Innocence on Friday, February 21, a book event for No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce will take place in the Metrograph Lobby with books for sale and Mlotek in attendance to sign copies.

 

순수의 시대 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

dir. Martin Scorsese, 1993, 139 min, 4K DCP

 

One breathtaking composition follows another in Scorsese’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece about social mores (and taboos) amongst New York’s viperous moneyed classes in late 19th-century New York, brought to life by an all-star lineup of craftspeople including cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, production designer Dante Ferretti, and composer Elmer Bernstein. In front of the camera there are Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer suffering beautifully as wealthy lawyer Newland Archer and Countess Ellen Olenska, the divorced pariah whom he yearns for. 

 

“In No Fault, I write about my friendship with the film critic and labor organizer Teo Bugbee, and how they taught me so much about movies; it was Teo who first told me that Martin Scorsese considers Innocence the most violent movie he’s ever made, and when Countess Olenska asks Newland Archer where they can go to be free of what people think about their love for each other, it really is as brutal as any mob movie.” —Haley Mlotek 

 

 Introduction by organizer and critic Teo Bugbee on Sunday, February 23. 

 

브루드 THE BROOD

dir. David Cronenberg, 1979, 92 min, DCP

 

In The Brood, the bitter divorce between the mentally disturbed Nola (Samantha Eggar) and her ex-husband Frank (Art Hindle) was pretty messy, so it should be a good sign that she’s finally getting professional help from the renowned Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed)—but Frank can’t help but notice that people on Nola’s long list of enemies keep dying at the hands of asexual, dwarfish assassins, and so he starts to wonder what exactly the experimental therapy practiced at Dr. Raglan’s Somafree Institute consists of… Written while Cronenberg was in the midst of his own divorce and custody battle, The Brood is a brutal, bracing airing of anxieties gussied up in grindhouse trappings. 

 

“Most movies about custody and divorce focus on the emotional horror, for good reason—it can, of course, be an intense and traumatic experience for all involved—but David Cronenberg took it one step further by incorporating his particularly vicious kind of body horror. Apparently he wrote it after finding Kramer vs. Kramer too ‘"optimistic,’" and the last time I tried to rewatch it I had to stop it multiple times just to steel myself against the gore; so, consider yourself warned.” —Haley Mlotek  

 

Haley Mlotek in pre-screening conversation with Hazel Cills, writer and editor, and Doreen St. Felix, writer and critic on Friday, February 21. 

 

퍼스트 와이프 클럽 THE FIRST WIVES CLUB

dir. Hugh Wilson, 1996, 103 min, 35mm

 

A sleeper smash on its release, Wilson’s curdled revenger’s comedy brings together Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and (briefly) Maggie Smith as a quartet of old college pals reunited in middle-age by tragedy, discovering they each plagued by marital troubles… and then deciding not to get mad at their spouses, but to get even with them. 

 

“My sisters and I, as I write in No Fault, absolutely loved this movie. We were way too young for it, probably, but I think we were responding to the incredibly funny slapstick elements that keep the balance pitched just right between satire and seriousness. Every performance in the film is perfect to me, and every actor gets at least one completely, devastatingly, hilarious line of dialogue. Trust me, I’ve memorized the entire script.” —Haley Mlotek 

 

Introduction by writer Rachel Handler on Saturday, February 22.

 

결혼하지 않은 여자 AN UNMARRIED WOMAN

dir. Paul Mazursky, 1978, 124 min, 4K DCP

 

A bruising, emotional gut-punch, Mazursky’s heartbreaking character study puts the viewer right in the shoes of Upper East Sider Jill Clayburgh, so we’re blindsided right along with her when husband Michael Murphy breaks up their 16-year marriage to run off with a Bloomingdale’s tie seller. Commiserating with female friends or starting a new affair with lover Alan Bates, Clayburgh gives one of the defining performances of the American 1970s cinema.

 

“This was the movie I watched the most when I was first divorced, and I still revisit it as often as I can. Pretty much everything about An Unmarried Woman lends itself to repeat viewings, particularly Jill Clayburgh’'s performance, but lately I like to pay special attention to Dr. Penelope Russianoff, who plays a therapist in the film (Claudia Weill recommended her to Paul Mazursky) much like the therapist she was in real life.” —Haley Mlotek 

 

Introduction by writer Jamie Hood on Sunday, February 23.

 

사랑을 기다리며 WAITING TO EXHALE

dir. Forest Whitaker, 1995, 124 min, 35mm

 

Whitaker, adapting Terry McMillan’s bestseller of the same name, brings together Angela Bassett, Lela Rochon, Loretta Devine, and Whitney Houston—who sings “Exhale (Shoop Shoop)” on the film’s stacked, Babyface-produced soundtrack—as four Phoenix women who regularly convene to discuss their lives and loves, finding a strength in sisterhood that equips them to face the world individually.

 

"The last time I watched Waiting to Exhale in theaters was with three friends, in an audience full of groups of friends, too. I write about that night in No Fault, as well as author Terry McMillan's place in the canon of divorce literature adapted into beloved movies; it's an ideal film to watch shoulder-to-shoulder with your loves." —Haley Mlotek

 

장미의 전쟁 THE WAR OF THE ROSES

dir. Danny DeVito, 1989, 116 min, 4K DCP

 

DeVito co-stars in his sophomore directorial outing as a lech lawyer caught in an acrimonious tug-of-war struggle between Oliver and Barbara Rose (Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner), an influential corporate lawyer and his soon-to-be ex-wife, battling one another tooth-and-nail over who will retain ownership of their tony Washington, D.C. home. An acidly funny celebration of loathsome behavior. 

 

“My mother used to say this was her favorite divorce movie, and as a family mediator who worked out of our basement while I was growing up, she comes by this opinion honestly. As I grew up, I learned more about Polly Platt’s involvement in Roses (she almost directed it herself, before becoming executive producer) and highly recommend reading Rachel Abramowitz’s Is That A Gun In Your Pocket? to find out more about Platt’s career and the role this film, along with so many other excellent movies that she worked on, played in her life.” —Haley Mlotek

 

NO FAULT: A MEMOIR OF ROMANCE AND DIVORCE

 

Published by Viking

Hardcover | 304 Pages | 5-1/2 x 8-1/4

 

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025: Vogue, Vulture, Bustle, Lit Hub

 

“Enigmatic, opalescent, so precise.” —Jia Tolentino

 

An intimate and candid account of one of the most romantic and revolutionary of relationships: divorce

 

Divorce was everything for Haley Mlotek. As a child, she listened to her twice-divorced grandmother tell stories about her “husbands.” As a pre-teen, she answered the phones for her mother’s mediation and marriage counseling practice and typed out the paperwork for couples in the process of leaving each other. She grew up with the sense that divorce was an outcome to both resist and desire, an ordeal that promised something better on the other side of something bad. But when she herself went on to marry—and then divorce—the man she had been with for twelve years, suddenly, she had to reconsider her generation’s inherited understanding of the institution.

 

Deftly combining her personal story with wry, searching social and literary exploration, No Fault is a deeply felt and radiant account of 21st century divorce—the remarkably common and seemingly singular experience, and what it reveals about our society and our desires for family, love, and friendship. Mlotek asks profound questions about what divorce should be, who it is for, and why the institution of marriage maintains its power, all while charting a poignant and cathartic journey away from her own marriage towards an unknown future.

 

Brilliant, funny, and unflinchingly honest, No Fault is a kaleidoscopic look at marriage, secrets, ambitions, and what it means to love and live with uncertainty, betrayal, and hope.

 

No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce will be available for purchase at the Metrograph Bookstore. 

 

Haley Mlotek is a writer, editor, and organizer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Nation, Bookforum, The Paris Review, The Columbia Journalism Review, Vogue, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, Hazlitt, and n+1, among others. She is a founding member of the Freelance Solidarity Project in the National Writers Union, teaches in the English and Journalism departments at Concordia University, and is the editorial lead at Feeld. Previously, Haley was the deputy editor of SSENSE, the style editor of MTV News, the editor of The Hairpin, and the publisher of WORN Fashion Journal.