Word: spinsterhood
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Theresa's home it's Deirdre (Robin Mosely) who causes trouble. Her IRA husband is in jail for murder and she feels hemmed in by her life with her three young children. Her sister Joan (Susan Pellegrino) is a neat freak on the way to spinsterhood...
...adequate. The quirks and unexpected twists of life are examined with care that exposes layer upon layer of meaning. Loving family relationships, studied unsparingly, pulse with hidden resentments. Social conventions--"exchanging commonplaces and untruths"--are scrutinized to reveal the complexity beneath cool facades. Courtship, marriage, remarriage, cohabitation, bachelorhood and spinsterhood--all achieve an encompassing inventive dimension...
...this perfect little film, a literary- philosophical interpretation of their lot. The human characters could possibly supply some self-explanations, but they don't bother. William is a perversely perky little man, hesitantly alert. Neaera has a closed ferocity about her, as if she may be contemplating spinsterhood but finds the idea just too commonplace for a woman of truly unfettered mind...
When Sarah, Macon Leary's wife of twenty years, runs out of the house leaving her wedding rings in the soapdish, Macon's first instinct is to return to the childhood nest, the domestic asylum where his three sisters, all doomed for spinsterhood, still live. The tragedy which initiates their estrangement--the freak murder of the Leary's twelve year-old son, Ethan, that occurs while he is away at camp--lays bare the stasis their marriage has reached. When Sarah openly seeks comfort in her grief, Macon's only solace is the reminder that he, with his usual caution...
...keep the Father on the straight and narrow. Played with great enthusiasm by Louise Latham. Margaret is as eminently predictable as the other characters, but at least succeeds in engaging our attention; dishing out mashed potatoes with the air of a martyr, she is the very image of virtuous spinsterhood--faithful, honest, and pitifully boring...