Word: lianna
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...Lianna--an attractive woman in her early 30's--gave up college to marry her professor. By the time the movie begins, she has realized that she cannot stand him. The realization is not surprising: Dick epitomizes chauvinist arrogance with no redeeming qualities. The mystery is why it took her more than 13 years to come to this conclusion...
Early on, the movie shows the none-too-subtle difference between Lianna and her husband. Theta, their eight-year-old daughter, refuses to finish her peas and demands to know why she must. Her father explains. "Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to clam up and eat." Lianna, somewhat more sympathetic, secretly eats half the peas...
...faculty party, Lianna spots Dick frolicking in a sandbox with one of his female students. When, later in the evening, she accuses him of indefidelity, he neither admits to not denies the charge. But the thin trickle of sand as he removes his shoe confirms his guilt. Lianna leaves him and moves in with Ruth, her night-school psychology professor. It's that simple. One day she is married, the next she has a female lover...
Linda Griffiths as Lianna does the lonely and pathetic look so well that we don't believe she could make such a radical change without a second thought. One expects, even wants, to see some moments of remorse or soul-searching. Lianna feels uncomfortable in the "My Way Tavern," a lesbian bar, for only a few minutes--soon she is dancing naturally, though not well, with the other women. In the bar she notices, sure enough, a member of the PTA; thus, director John Sayles points out unoriginally that anyone...
REACTIONS to Lianna's transformation cover only the extremes. Like her two children, Lianna's friends respond with either sullen avoidance or indifferent acceptance. The college football coach, a friend of Lianna's, does not mind homosexuality in his players as long as it doesn't affect their game. Lianna's female friend Sandy remembers with revulsion the time she held hands with Lianna. A colleague of Dick's, who discovers Lianna's new sexual orientation after she rejects him as a lover, asks no questions and tries to play it extremely cool. None of the characters bring anything...