Dugowson delves deeply and often hilariously into their insecurities as the years pass. Dugowson keeps it light with a refreshing aural and visual audacity. Ethel is invoked as an alluring vamp, while Mina is conjured as a stern young rabbi. Ethel is already acquiring the tools to survive. To be a female is to be a prey.
Chicks always side with the guys.
Jumping ahead to 1989, Mina and Ethel are still inexorably bound together in ways they do not understand. Mina, now the nearly successful artist, is living with a young painter who admires her talent and dark intensity. Ethel, meanwhile, has conquered her weight problem, and has nearly perfected the art of manipulation. Invoking the spirit of Rita Hayworth, she knows how to throw her head back and laugh emptily to insinuate herself into a job as, of all things, an art critic. That sets the stage for a conflict that, in turn, pushes the story towards tragedy.