Chantilly Lace (film)

Chantilly Lace is a 1993 American made-for-television drama film shot in Sundance, Utah, for the Showtime Network and eventually released on video via Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. The film was directed by Linda Yellen and features dialogue that was largely improvised by its ensemble cast.
Plot.
Over three seasons, seven friends gets together at a cabin in the Colorado Rockies to connect, grow and cope with life.
Production.
Inspired by Christa Wolf's "Cassandra", Yellen said she originally conceived of "Chantilly Lace" because of the preponderance of "incomplete roles for women, who are sketched instead of developed" in the movie business. She further developed it at the Sundance Film Institute, while Showtime provided production financing.
Yellen worked from a 40-page outline — instead of a screenplay — to extract improvisation from her performers.
The film, often compared to "The Big Chill", was shot over eight days. Parts of the film were shot at Sundance Resort and Provo Canyon in Utah.
In addition to the all-female ensemble cast, the film has to be considered notable for the complete absence of any men in the film whatsoever, except for the brief appearance of a pizza-delivery man, who remains faceless to the camera, while the song 99.9F, from the album of the same name by Suzanne Vega, is playing as the accompanying track during this vignette. Literally, there is no time in the film where a man's face appears.
Themes.
The Sundance director of feature film, Michelle Satter, said the film explores the landscape of contemporary women's issues with humor and honesty "unlike any American film" that she had seen.
Reception.
Ken Tucker wrote, for "Entertainment Weekly", that the film was "the only kind of feminist slant that gets much exposure on television: well-to-do white women grousing about horrible men and about their mostly unfulfilled needs to be creative."
Emanuel Levy gave it a C+ and described it as "Amiable, well-acted but middlebrow femme-driven melodrama".