Stanford Advocate
By Christina S. N. Lewis
Staff Writer
January 5, 2004
A trailer for “The Stepford Wives” shows actress Nicole Kidman, a gold apron wrapped around her tiny waist, vamping for the camera as a giggling, obedient robot wife.
The preview, which is being shown before screenings of Miramax’s “Cold Mountain,” which also stars Kidman, offers audiences a first taste of the satire, which wrapped filming in the area in November.
Paramount shot scenes at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk, and in Darien and Greenwich. Scenes also were shot at private homes and on Main Street in New Canaan.
“The Stepford Wives,” which also stars Mathew Broderick, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken and Glenn Close, is a satire of the 1975 film about an idyllic town in Connecticut where affluent but timid husbands replace their wives with look-alike cyborgs.
The original film was a dark parody skewering the conformity of suburban married life, but the teaser suggests that the new film is more light-hearted.
To the tunes of ’50s-style ballroom jazz, the trailer shows about a dozen shots of men’s products, including a Christian Dior cologne, a Gucci briefcase, a space-age CD player, and a black Mercedes sedan. The narrator says, “This is your life. Everything you own is beautiful, perfectly constructed, ideally manufactured. Everything you possess feels, thinks and responds as if you’ve had it made just for you. Isn’t it time you had the ultimate in perfection?”
Then the camera focuses on Kidman, her blond hair cascading in soft waves around her sculptured face as she breathes “for the man who has everything.”
“Make one,” the narrator says.
“Some assembly required,” Kidman giggles.
The 1975 film was written by William Goldman and based on a novel with the same title by Ira Levin.
Merrill Bullis of Darien, who saw the trailer with her husband, Frank DeVita, during a Wednesday matinee, said the preview showed that the remake is funnier than the original. But that’s not what makes her want to see the movie.
“We would see it anyhow,” Bullis said, “just because it’s filmed in the area.”
The trailer can be viewed online at movies.yahoo.com/movies/feature/thestepfordwives.html.
