Actresses expect film debate

Bette Midler, Glenn Close, Nicole Kidman and Faith Hill star in the film.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The remake of the 1975 thriller "The Stepford Wives," which opens Friday, is a quick-witted dark comedy, but the actresses who play the spouses-turned-robots think it may still spark controversy.
"I think the idea of seeking perfection in people -- and feeling they need to be perfect -- is everywhere," says Nicole Kidman. "And the imbalance between that idea and actual reality creeps into everything in the culture."
"I have a feeling in my bones that for all its comedy and lightness, this movie's going to start a debate," says Glenn Close. "Having been in 'Fatal Attraction' -- which supposedly exposed what was going on between the sexes -- I said to ['Stepford' director] Frank Oz, 'People are going to have opinions, and see it with some sort of agenda.'
"'Fatal Attraction' opened a can of worms, and this may be another version of that."
Feminism backlash
"There's such a backlash against feminism going on now," says Bette Midler. "It seems like a conspiracy. The bottom line is about money: Get women back in their boxes and buying some products."
Yet, for Kidman, 36, the film was a chance to take a break from making dramas like "The Human Stain," "Cold Mountain" and "Dogville."
"This isn't the film I would have chosen if I'd wanted to make a big political statement!" she says with a laugh. "I supposedly made a statement with 'Dogville,' and I was like, 'No, ['Dogville' director] Lars Von Trier did.' As actors, we don't write the script, but we often have to explain it."
The new "Stepford Wives" follows the premise of the first version: Joanna Eberhardt (Kidman) moves from Manhattan with her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) and their family to the idyllic Connecticut town of Stepford. She soon discovers it is populated by husbands who replace their wives with buxom, empty-headed automatons.
Whereas the original Joanna (played by Katharine Ross) is fearful her sassy, independent streak will result in her being replaced, Kidman's Joanna, a TV executive, actually earns more than her spouse. Instead of targeting devious husbands, the new film satirizes overachieving, workaholic wives.
They can relate
Midler, 58, says the remake "throws a lot of ideas on the table." She, Kidman, Close and the singer Faith Hill -- who makes her film debut as a Stepford wife -- related to many of them.
"When women started going into the [workplace], they had to be a hundred times better than the men they were competing against," says Close, 57. "That's where that image of the striving, strident, ambitious woman may have come from."
"There may be a stand taken against women who are more successful than their men, but I don't think that's so important ultimately," says Midler. "I don't feel it in my own life, because my husband (artist Martin Von Hasselberg) is at home, and he's OK with it. We have a pretty great life. There must be tensions if people talk about it, but I don't feel it myself."
"I don't believe actually that you can have it all," says Kidman, who was married to Tom Cruise from 1992 to 2001.
"I worked intermittently in my twenties, and I loved it," Kidman says, "but [she and Cruise] wouldn't want to be separated for more than two weeks. I didn't want to sit in hotel rooms on the phone, saying, 'Gosh, I wish we were together!'
"And I wanted a baby from a very early age. [She and Cruise adopted two children.] I think it's an illusion to think you can have everything and it'll all be fine. I'm not saying you have to make choices, but it's hard."
Individuality issue
The film also addresses the clash between conforming and self-definition. Hill -- whose character, perhaps symbolically, blows a fuse during a barn dance scene -- has long been bedeviled by the issue of whether she's a country or pop singer.
"[The music world] has always had trouble with me," says Hill, 36. "Because I don't make my choices based on what people think of me. I'm an individual, I don't know any other way to be. Whether it's the popular choice or not, that's just what I am."