Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Rebecca Wells’ best-selling novel of the lifelong friendship of four southern women, and its effect on the adult daughter of one of them, is filmed by writer/director Callie Khouri (Thelma and Louise) with a high-caliber cast (Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn, Ashley Judd, Maggie Smith, Fionnula Flanagan, Shirley Knight, James Garner, Angus MacFadyen). Khouri, directing her first movie and writing only her third, loses control of the story after about fifteen minutes, and the point of the book—the growth of womanly strength and wisdom over decades, and the conferring of it onto the next generation—gets lost while she fumbles with five time periods and three sets of actors playing the characters at different ages. Still, the actors are all pros, and individual scenes are put over with relish.