DVD Roundup

Searching for Debra Winger

"Can you have both?" asks director Rosanna Arquette – meaning, for women, an artistic career and a satisfying personal and domestic life. Half of Hollywood gives her an answer, as well as some internationally based female actors (Emmanuelle Béart, Julia Ormond). The result is an often absorbing documentary, screened out-of-competition at Cannes in 2002 and aired on cable. Now on DVD, Searching for Debra Winger suffers from its "insider" perspective – Arquette praises her subjects embarrassingly, digresses into a diversion about the supposed feud with sister Patricia, and talks ad nauseam about her own "journey" in filmmaking – but the subjects speak so engagingly to the matters of work-life balance, aging, and sexism that the film succeeds in spite of Arquette's self-fascination. It's worth a rental just to sit in on a chinwag at the now-closed Russian Tea Room with Kelly Lynch, Ally Sheedy, Samantha Mathis, Adrienne Shelly, and the unsinkable Martha Plimpton. Arquette's crew surprises Frances McDormand in the bathroom at La Colombe d'Or, and she gives good interview right on the spot; ditto Roger Ebert, who rails against the pitching of movies to adolescent boys while standing on a sidewalk in Cannes. (The film itself is so loaded that extras on the disc would be a joke.) Whoopi Goldberg is hilarious and candid, recalling her stand-up roots, and each time Winger chuckles, she reminds the film industry what a warm, earthy talent it lost when she retired.