A mathematician, two men, and a life of her own
It’s My Turn is a quiet, intelligent romantic drama directed by Claudia Weill, and it stars Jill Clayburgh as Kate Gunzinger, a mathematics professor at a Chicago university who is, by any ordinary measure, successful — respected by her colleagues, devoted to her work, and in a long-term, comfortable relationship with Homer, played by Charles Grodin. Then her life is disrupted by two arrivals: a job offer that would take her to New York, and a new man, Ben Lewin, played by Michael Douglas, the son of her former mentor, who is charming, attentive and very different from Homer. Kate must decide not merely which man she loves, but what kind of life she wants — and whether the life she has built is the life she still wants to live.
Clayburgh is ideally cast as Kate. A mathematician is not an easy role to play convincingly: the character must be brilliant without being a caricature, passionate about abstract ideas without seeming cold, and emotionally intelligent without losing her intellectual edge. Clayburgh manages all of it. She plays Kate’s love of mathematics as a genuine pleasure — she lights up when she explains a problem, she argues with colleagues with delight, she treats her students with warmth and rigour — and she plays Kate’s romantic confusion as a real dilemma, not as a plot device. She loves Homer, in his fussy, familiar way, and she is drawn to Ben, in his open, adventurous way, and Clayburgh refuses to make either man a villain or a fool. That refusal is the film’s strength: Kate’s choice is difficult because both lives on offer are real, and both men are, in their different ways, worthy of her.
Claudia Weill and a woman director’s perspective
It’s My Turn is notable, among other things, for being directed by a woman, Claudia Weill, at a time when very few studio films were. Weill, who had made her name with the independent film Girlfriends (1978), brings to It’s My Turn the same attention to female friendship, work and daily life that made that earlier film so admired. She films Chicago with affection — the university, the lakefront, the apartments and restaurants where Kate’s life unfolds — and she directs Clayburgh with a trust that allows long, unhurried scenes in which Kate thinks, talks and changes her mind. The film’s pace is gentle, almost novelistic, and it rewards viewers who are willing to spend time with a character rather than rushing her towards a decision.
The supporting cast is excellent. Charles Grodin, one of the great comic actors of his generation, plays Homer with a mixture of neurosis and tenderness that makes him far more sympathetic than the “safe boyfriend” stereotype would suggest. Michael Douglas, just before his breakthrough as a major star in Romancing the Stone and Fatal Attraction, plays Ben with a relaxed, boyish charm that makes Kate’s attraction to him entirely believable. The scenes between Clayburgh and each man are beautifully calibrated: with Grodin, the comedy comes from familiarity and irritation; with Douglas, it comes from novelty and excitement. Clayburgh is the constant in both, and she adjusts her performance subtly for each — warmer and more teasing with one, more guarded and more curious with the other — in a way that shows a complete understanding of how people behave differently with different partners.
Kate Gunzinger and the question of ambition
At its heart, It’s My Turn is a film about ambition — not the ruthless, careerist ambition of so many Hollywood stories, but the quieter ambition of a woman who wants her work to matter and her life to be her own. Kate’s mathematics is not a hobby or a backdrop; it is a vocation, and the film takes it seriously. It shows her teaching, researching, arguing about proofs, and finding in mathematics a kind of beauty and order that her personal life, at the moment, lacks. Clayburgh, who was not a mathematician, conveys that love of order without ever making Kate seem remote. She makes us understand why a woman might hesitate to leave a good job and a good man for an uncertain future, and why she might, in the end, decide that uncertainty is worth it.
The film’s title is its thesis: it is Kate’s turn — her turn to choose, her turn to be the protagonist of her own life, rather than the supporting player in someone else’s. That theme connects It’s My Turn directly to Clayburgh’s great roles in An Unmarried Woman and Starting Over, and it is no accident that she was drawn to it. She had become, by 1980, the screen’s foremost interpreter of women at a crossroads, and Kate Gunzinger is another such woman, played with the same intelligence, humour and emotional honesty that defined her best work. The film was not a major commercial success, but it has aged well, and it is now regarded as one of the most thoughtful romantic dramas of its era.
Revisiting it today
For modern viewers, It’s My Turn offers a rare pleasure: a film about a brilliant woman that respects both her brilliance and her feelings, and that refuses to suggest that she must choose between them. Clayburgh’s Kate is a reminder that romantic comedy and drama can be about adults — people with jobs, histories, mortgages and minds of their own — and that a love story is more interesting when the heroine has something to lose besides the hero.
Watch it, too, as a showcase for Clayburgh’s range. In the space of three years she played Erica Benton, Marilyn Holmberg and Kate Gunzinger — three women, all divorced or divorcing, all intelligent, all funny, and all entirely distinct. That is a remarkable run, and It’s My Turn is its thoughtful, understated conclusion: a film that says, quietly but firmly, that a woman’s turn will come, and that when it does, she should take it.