Lipstick & Liquor (2014) Reviews

• A superficial and slanted view of alcoholism

  mattnadler2014-12-30

  It would seem that outside of one tragic case, most of the director's subjects are very wealthy women who stopped drinking decades ago, married well and divorced, and live off the largess of their divorce settlements. Two of the subjects are good friends who are not directly presented as friends, but we can glean that from the clues given in their stories. It would seem that alcoholism is mostly a problems of very wealthy, white, blonde, comely divorcées who have successfully kicked the habit for most of their adult lives. The "documentary" doesn't bother with data to support its propositions, and has one "expert" stating that unlike men, women cannot share their feelings or discuss their problems - the exact opposite of most gender studies that indicate women are more wired for conversation and sharing. I suppose this was supposed to be a study of a few strong wealthy women who have succeeded (and one lower income woman who failed), but it's so skewed to a tiny portion of the true population of women that it comes off as personal passion project to showcase a few friends of the director.