Just the Way You Are (VHS)

I first saw this wonderful movie about 20 years ago, and fell in love with it. A well-written script, with excellent, enjoyable characters, Just The Way You Are introduces us to a young classical flutist, Susan Berlanger (Kristy McNichol) and her skewed concept of her life living with a visible handicap. Susan is a very lovely young woman with a wry sense of humor and a great personality whose life seems to be ruled by the fact that people (men in particular) see her as an object of pity. As in many cases where people must deal with the way others see them, she doesn't realize that it is the way she sees herself that counts.

While on a world concert tour, Susan has an epiphany of sorts...she notices that, while people treat her like she is handicapped wearing her pathetically clunky leg brace, people wearing casts on their broken legs are virtually ignored! She resolves to put her lame leg into a plaster cast, and go on vacation in a ski resort area, where she will blend in completely with dozens of other "gimps" wearing similar casts. While limping along the train platform to board the train to her vacation spot, she is irately told to "get a move on", where the leg brace would have instantly elicited offers to help her board. Heartened by this casual treatment, and grinning, she turns to tell the "ski-goddess" behind her that she is doing the best she can...and runs head-on into a drop-dead gorgeous hunk of a sports photographer, Peter (Michael Ontkean) headed for the same destination to do a magazine layout on the ski-goddess (who is an international ski champ.

When Susan arrives at the frightfully expensive inn where she will be staying, she discovers that the current occupant of the room is not willing to vacate, and so, to save money, she offers to share. That way she can stay longer! She and her lovely roommate Lisa (Kaki Hunter) go to a party given by the ski-king, Rossignol, and Susan is asked to dance. Never having tried dancing for obvious reasons, she refuses, but is dragged onto the floor by Peter, and after realizing that she can get by with the cast without looking foolish, she begins to enjoy herself, and loses her self-conscious fear of making a fool of herself. Susan finds out that Rossignol had a car crash that lost him one of his legs, and doesn't quite know what to think of his loss, since she has lived her entire life with a handicap. She is shocked that he skis, dances, and is unafraid to show his own "handicap". He even is willing to enter into a romantic interlude with Lisa, her French bombshell roommate.

It is a wonderful film, filled with humor and tears, and some wonderfully hilarious moments, like when Susan joins the "gimp race" for those who have broken legs...climbing onto a single ski and trying to get through a slalom of flags on a fairly steep slope. In her new frame of mind, and moving in a social circle populated by the beautiful people of the ski scene, she is swept along, finding that she really CAN enjoy herself, and that people like her just the way she is...until reality settles back into place when she finds herself falling in love with Peter. Terrified that he will discover her "secret", she pushes him away, and refuses to tell him the truth.

It is a fine treatise of self confidence, and believing you are loved "Just The Way You Are." Now out of print, it is a rare find, and well worth the bucks. I recommend that you buy it...watch it often!