Word: lovely
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...neither should we think that Tyler's vision is limited simply because her novels' settings often are. Her aim is not to depict perfectly the manners of middle class marriage. Instead, Tyler is trying to make sense of love--how the hope of love can transform a life and the lack of it can ruin one. And she treats the topic seriously, realizing that we concern ourselves too much with it, that we cannot live without it and that for some it can be the focus of a lifetime. Maggie Moran in Breathing Lessons is one of those people...
...love Maggie pretends exists between Jesse and Fiona reflects the hopes she had for her marriage to Ira. Maggie is caught between what she knows about herself and what her husband tells her she is. For Tyler, love is seeing yourself in your lover's eyes and assessing that version against the person you would like to be. The problem is that we invariably erect barriers to prevent ourselves from truly communicating and from being vulnerable...
...Although love is mostly a failure in the lives of the Moran family, Tyler's consistent empathy for her characters is a persuasive note of hope. We try, she seems to be saying, and though we may not always be able to do what we know is right, or overcome our pride, hope remains. If not for love, at least for understanding...
...film chronicles the family's constant flight from the FBI. They move from city to city, changing their names and their identities each time. The central conflict occurs when Danny at the age of 17 Simultaneously falls in love and decides he wants to go to Juilliard. In what is obviously meant to be the film's Big Irony, Danny's parents are forced to choose whether to break up their family in the same way they did when they broke...
...finally, besides being a tearjerker, Running on Empty is a teen romance film, centering on Danny's falling in love with a high school classmate, Lorna (Martha Plimpton). Plimpton is down to earth and sarcastic in her supporting role. She gets some of the movie's best lines and plays them with a kind of sassy offhandedness. She's great fun to watch, but she's out of sync with the hyper-earnestness of everyone around her, especially Phoenix...