After their separation, she and Brown are back together (with two-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina) and bickering mostly about who made the first move to reconcile. If Houston is getting her movie career on a fast track, she also seems to be trying to get her personal life back in order. And she defends Exhale against charges it's too tough on black men: "How come men can tell stories about women the way they want to tell them, and then when women tell stories, it's male bashing?" Houston, who confesses that she never finished McMillan's novel ("I kind of got halfway through"), sees the film as a breakthrough for the image of black women because it presents them both as professionals and as caring mothers. Says author McMillan: "She's going to be a really better actress when she starts seeing herself as an actress and not a singer who acts." Bassett has most of the showy scenes (in one, her character sets her adulterous husband's belongings on fire), while Houston's scenes are quieter, less demanding (an emotional phone call to her mother, a slow dance at a party). In Exhale, she wisely works as part of an ensemble that includes Angela Bassett, Lela Rochon and Loretta Devine. Houston has not yet made the same mark with her acting. "When Whitney does a project," he says, "it sets a tone for the record in general, and it becomes her record." "I wanted this to be an album of women with vocal distinction," says Houston, "that you could say their first name but you don't have to say their last." For Babyface, the key first name was Houston's. She was an enthusiastic advocate of the idea that the album should feature only women-a popular concept these days, with such recent all-female CDs as the pro-choice compilation Spirit of '73 (with Rosanne Cash and others), the MTV-sponsored Ain't Nothin' but a She Thing (with Annie Lennox and Melissa Etheridge) and the Christmas album Mother and Child (with Amy Grant and Martina McBride). Yet Houston more than holds her own, particularly on Why Does It Hurt So Bad, with its masterly balance of pop zip and soulful melancholy.
performers as Toni Braxton, Aretha Franklin and Mary J.
Along with Houston, the album features numbers by such highly regarded R.-and-B. The Waiting to Exhale sound track is a virtual Who's Who of divadom, as compiled by Houston and the album's producer-composer, Kenneth ("Babyface") Edmonds.
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