This is a confusing mess because of the different versions

I saw this originally on tv while I was doing other things, so I didn't get it all, but I was intrigued enough to look for the book on which it was based and read that. That intrigued me enough to go back and get the movie and watch it again, but I found the Alan Smithee 97 minute version which is missing some scenes I know were on the tv version I saw (part of). In particular, the part near the end where she is praying for a baby was missing.

I usually love everything with Holly Hunter, while Michael Moriarty is a little more iffy and Kiefer Sutherland has little besides 24 (okay, I like Three Musketeers and Young Guns but not necessarily because of him, and his Dark City character was unbelievable). Here the men were terrific but Holly had little to do besides look sane. Her character had problems with the breakup of her marriage for sexual reasons, and she got drunk once and lost it, but otherwise she's in perfect control and emotionless. She had more internal conflicts in the book that the movie ignored.

The book is not the greatest either, but overall it's a little better than the cover which makes it look like a plain romance novel. Boston and Catholicism and Irish pride and her parents (especially her father) play important parts, as does the loss of her husband to a man. The cast list had their names but they never appeared in the movie I saw, except maybe a picture.

Her motivations were pretty clear if you didn't peg her as evil - she had problems, she left Boston for New Haven and a new start, she didn't expect to fall in love but being on the rebound might have had something to do with it. She didn't like being pressured to have an intellectual life as if she wasn't worthwhile without it. She decided to leave after she got the pearls rather than the ring she expected. She was drawn to the artistic side of Wendell but didn't expect to fall in love with him either, again sort of on the rebound. She couldn't stay and choose one over the other so she went to the property she got in New Hampshire from her divorce. The book didn't make clear which man fathered the child but my guess is Wendell. She decided having a child was important to her (hear that biological ticking clock anyone?) and she had to do what she had to do, just like Wendell had to write poetry and Richard had to be an intellectual. Their rift is mended with her help (the movie is actually clearer on this point) and she probably is connected with but not suffocated by them.




I don't always say what Jesus would say.