Shirley Valentine (1989)

and the Woman Who Didn't Get on the Plane

A Liverpool housewife of 42, treated more like a servant than a wife, goes to Greece and doesn't come home. What it shows about a woman who disappears without anything dramatic happening, the women who tell her to go, a romance that isn't the point, and a husband who calls her choice menopause, then walks right past her.

Shirley Valentine (1989). Directed by Lewis Gilbert, screenplay by Willy Russell from his own play. Pauline Collins as Shirley, Tom Conti as Costas, Bernard Hill as Joe, with Alison Steadman as Jane, Julia McKenzie as Gillian and Joanna Lumley as Marjorie.

At 42, she was a housewife in Liverpool, treated more like a servant than a wife.

At the airport, she turned around.

This page belongs to Plot Twist. It is a refusal, and the gentle issue after the hard one before it, Fried Green Tomatoes. It is also the first film in the series about a woman in midlife who leaves nothing dramatic behind, no violent husband and no scandal: only a life that has quietly shrunk to fit everyone but her.

Like every entry on the Plot Twist page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. Joe, her husband, is not a villain. He is ordinary, tired and used to her. The film is warm and funny, and the pattern it holds up is one of the most common in this series and one of the least discussed: a woman who gradually disappears into the role of wife and mother, until nobody, including her, remembers who she was.

No line of the film’s dialogue is quoted on this page. There is no quote page for it that could be checked, so everything here is drawn from the plot of record.

The Story

Shirley Bradshaw is 42, a working-class housewife in Liverpool. Her marriage, once good, has settled into a narrow rut. She has few real friends. Her childhood dreams are gone. Her husband and children treat her more like a servant than a person.

Then her flamboyant friend Jane wins a trip for two to Greece, and invites her. Shirley, for once, puts herself first and says yes. She nearly doesn’t go. What tips her is encouragement from two women she didn’t expect it from: a snobbish neighbor who turns out to respect her, and an old school rival who admits she’d always envied her.

In Greece, Jane abandons her on the first day for a holiday romance. Shirley is left alone, and finds she likes it. While the other British tourists want British food, she falls in love with the place. She meets Costas, who runs a small tavern, and he helps her fulfil a long-held dream: drinking wine by the sea in the country where the grapes were grown. He promises not to try to seduce her. On a day out on his brother’s boat, she decides she doesn’t want him to keep that promise.

Afterward, she tells the audience she hasn’t fallen in love with Costas. She has fallen in love with the idea of living.

At the airport, she turns back. At the tavern, she finds Costas trying the same approach on another tourist. She isn’t upset. She asks him for a job.

At home, Joe calls again and again, telling her it’s her place to come home, that she’s embarrassing him, that this is a midlife crisis, or menopause. Finally their son tells him to stop phoning and go and get her. Joe flies out. Shirley is sitting by the sea at sunset with a glass of wine, and when he walks past, he doesn’t recognize her. She calls him back. The film ends with the two of them drinking wine by the sea.

Pauline Collins, who had played Shirley on stage in London and on Broadway, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

The Story Before the Story

Willy Russell wrote Shirley Valentine first as a play, and Pauline Collins played her on stage before she played her on screen. The film lets Shirley speak straight to us, as if we were the only people in her life who were listening. The film’s theme song, nominated for an Academy Award, has a title that says the whole story: “The Girl Who Used to Be Me.”

What It Gets Right

A great deal. It takes a middle-aged housewife’s inner life seriously, and lets her be funny about it. It shows that a woman can lose herself without anything terrible happening, just year by year. It gives her women who help her go. And it doesn’t make a man her rescue: the romance is a door she walks through, not the place she was going.

What It Teaches

1. She disappeared into the job

Nobody took anything from Shirley. She wasn’t beaten, cheated on or robbed. She just gave, year after year, to a husband and children who came to treat her like staff. Her friends drifted. Her dreams went quiet. The girl she used to be became someone she mentions in the past tense.

The Decoder’s Card 49, Identity Erosion, is “Slowly dissolving your sense of self,” and it is usually written about control. Shirley’s version is quieter, and more common. Many women never had anything dramatic happen to them. They just woke up one day unable to say what they liked, and nobody around them had noticed they’d gone.

2. The women who told her to go

Shirley almost doesn’t go. What changes her mind isn’t a man. It’s two women: a neighbor she thought looked down on her, who turns out to admire her, and an old rival from school, who admits she’d always envied her.

This series keeps meeting the same truth: women often get each other out. Sometimes it’s a friend who comes to get you, as in Fried Green Tomatoes. Sometimes it’s someone you barely know saying, at the right moment, go.

3. Left alone, and fine

Jane, who invited her, abandons her on the first day. For a woman who had spent decades organizing her life around other people, it could have been a disaster. Instead, it’s the first time in years Shirley has had a day to herself, and she spends it falling in love with a country.

Many women dread being alone because they’ve never been allowed to find out what it’s like. Shirley finds out it’s where she starts to reappear.

4. It wasn’t about him

Costas is charming, and he helps her do something she’d dreamed of since she was a girl. She sleeps with him, by her own choice. Then she tells us, plainly, that she hasn’t fallen in love with him. She’s fallen in love with the idea of living.

And when she catches him using the same approach on another tourist, she isn’t hurt. She asks him for a job. It is one of the most quietly radical moments in this series. Almost every film here made a man the reward for a woman’s escape. This one lets a man be part of the scenery of her new life, and not the point of it.

5. “It’s just menopause”

Joe’s calls from home run through every tactic a man in his position might reach for. It’s her place to come home. She’s embarrassing him. And then the one that tries to make the whole thing small: it’s a midlife crisis. It’s menopause.

The Decoder’s Card 18, Minimization, is “Sizing your experience down until it can be dismissed.” Calling a woman’s decision to reclaim her life a hormone is exactly that. It turns a choice into a symptom, so it can be waited out instead of heard. The card’s answer is the one Shirley gives by staying: “It’s a big deal to me.”

6. He walked right past her

When Joe finally comes to Greece, he walks past his wife without recognizing her. She has to call him back.

The film ends there, with the two of them drinking wine by the sea, and it doesn’t tell us what happens next. But notice who called whom. For once, it’s the husband who has to come to her, find her, and meet her where she is now, in the place she chose, as the person she’s become.

Finding Herself, Side by Side

	Runaway Bride (1999)	The First Wives Club (1996)	Shirley Valentine (1989)
What she’d lost	Her own tastes, one fiancé at a time	What she built, to a husband who left	Herself, to a family that stopped seeing her
Who helped	Weeks alone	Two old friends	Two women who said go, and a country
Where the man ends up	She proposes, once she knows herself	Two are turned down; one is forgiven	He has to come and find her

Three films about women finding themselves after years of disappearing into someone else’s life. In only one does the man walk past her without recognizing her. That’s how far she’d come.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us watched this with our mothers, and understood it better years later. Nothing on this page asks you to stop loving it. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Is there a girl you used to be, whom you now mention in the past tense?
Who in your life would notice if you disappeared a little more?
When were you last alone, by choice, somewhere you loved?
Has anyone called a decision of yours a phase, a mood, or a hormone?
What is your wine by the sea: the small dream you’ve been postponing for years?

Shirley turned around at the airport, and stayed where she was alive. When her husband came, he had to look twice to find her.

You’re the audience now. The girl you used to be is still in there.