A delightfully moving and realistic film!
Added 8/14/2002
This film is a delight, perfectly crafted, well-acted, excellent screenplay, a marvelous study of human relationships with a moving portrayal of the women who've suffered and survived on a Washington island (transplanted from another location in the original book). As a screenwriter, this film taught me a lot about how to create a movie on a limited budget, but with pure ingenuity and talented actresses. Holly Hunter is superb in the title role - what a shame this film didn't get the attention it deserved, perhaps because it was classified as a "chic flick" because it explores relationships rather than focuses on action.
6 out of 7 people found this helpful.
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She�s a woman in control of everything. Except her life
Added 9/23/2001
This Turner Pictures TVM directed by Martha Coolidge is an unqualified disaster, a mire of indulgent acting, overblown music score and second rate material. Set on an island off Seattle, it features Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand and Gena Rowlands as a family of women who have suffered from their husband's infidelities. The teleplay is by Gerald Ayres and based on the novel by Luanne Rice, which reads as pure soap opera, with Holly Hunter mistrustful of her husband Bill Pullman, who travels for his work, and Hunter enraptured with Julian Sands as a photographer who shoots her for her own work as a documentarian. Hunter's subject being "crimes of passion in the American family" creates a false expectation, and worse is the way she poses like a supermodel for Sands, which seems barely appropriate for someone who aims to be on PBS. Coolidge allows her actors way too much freedom, so that their performances wear very thin, the worst offender probably being Rowlands who stares blankly as we wait for some truth to emerge from her face. Hunter fortunately has technique galore to fall back on, using some very Beth Henley loony falling lyricism, though her partnership with is undermined by their disparity in height where she appears to be a child compared to Pullman, and his excessive inhibitionist acting, which climaxes in a big self-conscious argument. Sands sounds strangely stilted, even allowing for his character's interest in Hunter, though McDormand survives intact, probably because she doesn't have much tube time. Coolidge's indulgence with the actors makes the narrative pace to a crawl, making one identify with the men who chose to flee the lives these women offered.
2 out of 9 people found this helpful.
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