Thursday, May 29, 2025

The Winter's Tale in (of all things) The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2; or, Serendipitous Shakespeare

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
. Dir. Sanaa Hamri. Perf. America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn, and Blake Lively. 2008. DVD. Warner, 2008

I regularly visit two "Free Books" shelves. One is at my local library and the other is in the hallway outside my office. I keep an eye on them both, and though I don't often find anything for myself, I occasionally move books from the one to the other if I think they'll find a more appreciative audience in the other venue. 

Yesterday, I grabbed a few DVDs from the library, including a double feature of The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Scarlet Letter, which must be from the "Films with the word 'Scarlet' in their titles" collection (the next volume probably has A Study in Scarlet and The Scarlet and the Black). I also spotted The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (it really was free—that $1 sticker must have been left over from a garage sale) and remembered a footnote or a list or something that mentioned Shakespeare in it. I took that film, too, just on speculation.

Having neither the time nor the inclination to watch the whole film, I did some quick searching and was surprised to learn that it involved a production of The Winter's Tale. Scanning through the film, I was surprised to learn that it had more than just a token Shakespeare scene. One of the four members of the Sisterhood was unexpectedly cast as Perdita. Here are the relevant scenes:


It's certainly far more the incidental, despite the obligatory Romeo and Juliet quote and the obligatory Julius Caesar joke. Lacking, as noted, the time or inclination to watch the whole film, I find I also lack the patience. But I did divine that the uneven nature of Perdita's performance is due to her uncertainty over whether Florizel genuinely loves her, her mother's going into labour during rehearsals, and the backstabbing by the blonde "friend" who is cast as Dorcas. In reading through various plot summaries of the film, I don't think the plot of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 mirrors the plot of The Winter's Tale in any significant way. Perhaps those of you who have had the time, inclination, and patience to see the film in its entirety can let us know in the comments whether there's something more!

In the meantime, I'll quote from Claudio Carvalho, who wrote the Storyline section of the IMDB entry for the film, so that you all can rest easy about the ending of the film: "In the end, the girlfriends discover that their friendship is real and amounts to more than just a pair of jeans."

Links: The Film at IMDB. The Film at Wikipedia.

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

1 comment:

kj said...

Note: The Perdita plot in the film is based on part of Ann Brashares' novel Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood (which, I'm afraid, I will not be reading in its entirety).

kj (Bardfilm)

Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

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