the mirror has two faces

Director: barbra streisand

Actor: barbra streisand,jeff bridges,lauren bacall,george segal

Data Published: Fri Nov 15 1996

Genres: Comedy,Drama,Romance

Key Words: professor,remake of french film,directed by star,dating,lecture

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117057/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirror_Has_Two_Faces

Description: The Mirror Has Two Faces is a movie starring Barbra Streisand, Jeff Bridges, and Lauren Bacall. A shy, middle-aged professor enters into a romantic but non-physical relationship with an unlucky-in-love colleague.

Plot: Rose Morgan (Streisand), a shy, plain, middle-aged English literature professor at Columbia University, shares a home with her vain, overbearing mother, Hannah (Bacall). When her attractive sister, Claire (Rogers), starts making preparations for her third wedding to Alex (Brosnan), who used to date her, she begins to feel her loveless life is empty. Gregory Larkin (Bridges), a Columbia Mathematics teacher, feels sex complicates matters between men and women, since he seems to lose all his rational perspective as soon as he is aroused. After his last girlfriend dumps him after a last one night stand before she gets married, he decides to look for a relationship based on the intellectual rather than the physical, based on a suggestion by a sex-phone service, and places an ad in a newspaper. Claire reads the ad and answers on behalf of Rose. Gregory is intrigued when Claire tells him that Rose teaches English literature at Columbia, so he creeps in to her lecture about chaste love in literature, missing entirely the point she was making. After a series of mishaps, they begin dating and he is impressed by her wit and knowledge and seems to be fascinated by her quirks and mannerisms, which usually drive people crazy. She is also fascinated by the dashing math professor and even helps him improve his teaching techniques. He proposes marriage, on condition that it will be largely platonic, with occasional sex only if she needs it. The prospect of spending the rest of her life as a lonely spinster living with Hannah seems far worse than a marriage on those conditions, so she accepts. Rose's attraction to Gregory grows, and one night she attempts to seduce him, much to his annoyance. He had hoped that by then she had given up on the idea of sex, though he admits he initially raised its possibility. He abruptly breaks off their attempt at physical intimacy when he finds himself becoming truly aroused and fears that it will change the safe comfortable feelings he has towards her. When Gregory departs on a lengthy lecture tour, Rose embarks on a crash course in self-improvement: she diets, exercises, changes her hairstyle, learns to use makeup, and outfits herself in an updated wardrobe. When Gregory returns, he finds a very different woman waiting for him and is too startled to express his feelings. She admits that she made a mistake in accepting their passionless marriage, and leaves him. All the while, she realizes that everyone, including herself, is now behaving differently towards her altered self, though not always to her liking. Gregory and Rose realize their mutual love has been hindered, not by her appearance, but by his unusual theories on marriage and sex, and finally recognize their deep affection.