The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 36

6 Tuesday December 14 1999 The Guardian Women TV and books pitch at the 'modern woman' market. So why aren't we up on the big screen, asks Hettie Judah is a British romantic comedy released earlier this month. Set in Yorkshire, it follows the tribulations of a thirtysomething romantic novelist whose husband leaves her for a younger dominatrix. Having taken him for granted for years she realises too late that she wants a baby and sets out on a quest for no-ties sex and healthy sperm. Written and directed by Kay Mel-lor (responsible for the popular television series Band of Gold), the film features excellent central performances by indie favourites Ray Win-stone and Kerry Fox, sharp, rather risque dialogue, plenty of of-the-moment in-jokes and enough of a Wuthering Heights fixation to keep the AustenFielding parallel-text brigade happy.

Casablanca it isn't, but it is a decent piece of entertainment with fashionable concerns; after the startling success of Ally McBeal and the boom in modern romantic fiction, one would have thought its audience was assured. So why did it bomb? The film received a poor critical reaction and sunk without trace, lasting only a week in many of the cinemas it opened in. According to Sarah Kennedy, senior editor of Cosmopolitan, it is the negative critical reception that often cripples such ily readers that you are, you will of course be aware that singletons are strictly last year's story; the phenomenon has slipped off the chat shows and features pages to be replaced by "models who sell their eggs!" or "women who shag their bosses or whatever new social phenomenon is bending the popular ear that week. If you are not a single working woman of the appropriate age it must be easy to forget that beyond the hazy mash of outdated catchphrases and redundant social tags those girls are still there, all three million or so of them, with their steady incomes and romantic ideas. It does not take a marketing genius to work out that this very pub-Iicly identified demographic slice represents quite a tasty potential audience.

While women make up just over half of the total British cinema audience, in the 25 to 34 age group they fall significantly behind men. Why then does the film industry seem so determined to ignore such a lucrative area? And why is the critical eye of cinema so out of touch with young female viewing tastes? Consider the recent fate of a film apparently hand-tailored for the Bridget Jones brigade. Fanny Elvis Glamour mama Victoria Beckham out and about with baby Brooklyn. But women feel pressured into returning to work 'not by Posh Spice, but by their own employers or the simple matter of the mortgage' PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN GLADWIN ALL ACTION J1 DmnmacuDalte misconceptions A survey reveals women feel pressured by celebrity mums looking slim and calm with a newborn. Don't blame the Spices, says Angela Phillips it WV Jjr is not universally welcomed.

Three quarters of the women surveyed felt that choosing to be a full-time mother was now socially frowned on, while a third believed women arc too embarrassed to give up their jobs to look after a baby. More than half said that glittering role models, far from being inspirational, make them feel even more pressured. Arc women really so vulnerable to the demands of fashion that we look to celebrities for an idea of what motherhood should be? Or are we simply seeing the continuing battle over the status of women being carried out via a different set of images? biological clock strikes midnight, a gorgeous hunk to father your child. For younger readers there is the Posh model: Victoria Beckham, with sacks full of cash and a football hero to change the nappies. Then, to cap it all, along comes Chcric Blair to prove that even fortysomethings who thought they had left it all behind can get in on the celebrity mother thing.

Motherhood has never been so fashionable. So where does that leave woman who don't have telephone-number salaries or partners who score goals for England? Johnson Johnson surveyed 1,000 mothers and found that the rising profile of career mothering ole models arc back in the headlines: a poll by baby nnwilpr mnnllfnotlirprfi Intincnn sucsL: that (H) mothers are pressured by the examples of celebrity mums. Last year Emma Thompson was held up by the government as the role model every young woman should aspire to, as an antidote to teenage pregnancy. This year -whoops as the unmarried mother of a baby girl, she's slipped from that particular pedestal. Now she's being promoted as a role model of a different kind, an example to the Bridget Jones generation that you can have it all: glittering career, bags of dosh and, just before that.