Battling cancer with flair and wit

BY DIANE WERTS | Newsday Staff Writer

October 23, 2006

Sarah Chalke in Lifetime's "Why I Wore Lipstick to My Masectomy"

Red lipstick isn't just "war paint" for the breast cancer patient at the heart of this movie, it's also a sassy symbol for the fighting flick itself. "Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy" is a lighthearted yet gutsy saga, brimming with joy and buoyancy, flair and fun.

A breast cancer drama that's fun?

It's not the cancer part - obviously - but the tack on it that's taken by Geralyn Lucas, a real-life Lifetime TV executive hit by the disease in her 20s. She resolved it wasn't going to end either her life or her liveliness. "The more my hair falls out, the shorter my skirts will get," she declares in the person of Sarah Chalke, the plucky Elliot of "Scrubs," who ranges far and wide here, from high-powered Manhattan exec to low-down lavatory barfing.

But she's always true to the valiant spirit expressed in both Lucas' bestselling book, and here early on, when Lucas' shocking diagnosis of cancer inspires her to a strip-club trip seeking "clarity and insight" as to the power of breasts in human culture. It's a little awkward when her narration switches gears to on-camera confessional - does anybody really want to make eye contact at a strip joint? - yet the intimacy plays to pull us deeper inside her inner circle of best buds, loving husband and supportive parents.

Forget the cancer, we should all be so lucky to have compadres such as these, which is one more fortune the film celebrates. She's got a great guy in Jay Harrington (Teri Hatcher's doctor pal last spring on "Desperate Housewives"), whose scenes with Chalke have an understatedly natural ease and understanding. He really does seem like the type who'd hold your hair back as you commune with the porcelain god. Her friends and family offer equal measures of confident sympathy and the kind of self-conscious caution we sometimes employ around those we love best.

They can only shadow her so far into the medical thicket, though, before she has to make her own decisions as doctors throw options at her "like I'm deciding between a side of cole slaw or potato salad." Despite seeing "famous doctors at famous clinics," she has the ultimate responsibility for her own fate, which the movie makes breezily yet brutally clear.

She's lucky enough, or open enough, to cross paths with "angels" who help her through those judgments, from a "crazy Cuban cab driver" to a porno-name-bestowing fellow patient (a Patti LaBelle cameo) to drag-queen wig kings and tattoo artists. All make sharp impressions in their short appearances under director Peter Werner ("We Were the Mulvaneys").

From diagnosis to surgery to chemo to a film-ending update on the real Lucas' life, it's inspiring to see how this fast-talking whirlwind "found my inner cleavage" as the outward representation changed shape.

"Every day, I dare myself to live up to my lipstick," she declares. Not a bad idea for anyone.

WHY I WORE LIPSTICK TO MY MASTECTOMY. Sarah Chalke plays a 20-something cancer survivor with gusto. TV movie premieres tonight at 9 on Lifetime.