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A film studies professor once told me that everything you need to know about a movie is revealed in the first five minutes. This is particularly true of The Stepford Wives. 


In the opening scene of Bryan Forbes’s 1975 original, Joanna Eber­hart (Katharine Ross) takes a long, scrutinizing look at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her reaction is one of mild surprise, then subtle resignation, as if she’s thinking, That’s me?…Oh, well. She appears wistful and intro­spective as she walks around the silent Manhattan apartment that has been emptied for her family’s move to the suburbs. Compare this to the start of Frank Oz’s 2004 version: Joanna (Nicole Kidman), a powerhouse network executive, struts like a supermodel up to a podium, delivers a ­self-congratulatory speech, and ­previews the coming season’s reality shows to a huge industry crowd. The mood is loud, flashy, and in-your-face. The dif­ference between the two scenes is night and day, and therein, as my professor foretold, is everything we need to know.

When i was 8, my father organized a present for my sisters and me to give my mom for Mother’s Day: a pressure cooker, wrapped up with other fun kitchen items like tea towels, pop-up sponges, spatulas, and an apron. It seemed like a good idea—Mom was the one who was always in the kitchen, and this was the day to celebrate her. But the minute she opened her present, even I knew we had the wrong idea.