I saw this movie when it was released. Something about it resonated with me because flashes of it kept coming back years later. I finally purchased the DVD as I cannot find it online anywhere.
In brief, the story follows the life of Rita Walden (Joanne Woodward), a troubled upperclass housewife with too much time on her hands. After an interesting start with a day in the city with her mother (Sylvia Sidney) in which Rita seems to be the recipient of every nasty barb that the mother can think of (and many of them are extremely witty and laugh-worthy), the mother dies of a heart attack. This puts Rita in the position of facing her own mortality, something that is very hard for her to do. The story then splits into encounters/memories/fantasies of moments with her gay son (very bold for this day and age), her angry daughter, her loving husband (Martin Balsam, who was touching and believable, despite his long-winded war-memory speech), and her sister, who, along with her daughter, is aching to get their hands on the dead mother's farm.
We are then thrown into Europe where the husband has some sort of conference, Rita has a nervous breakdown, the two of them fight, argue, have a moment of reconciliation when the husband breaks down and recalls his time in the war, and then, finally, it seems they will find a way to make their lives work, despite Rita's emotional inability to connect with others.
There are some great one-liners in here as we sort of careen with Rita through her privileged life. Joanne Woodward is wonderful, with what she is asked to do, but the problem is, this is basically an emotionally troubled woman's inner journey. It is hard to connect with her, because it is hard for her to connect with herself. While I found myself laughing heartily at the one-liners (especially Sylvia Sidney's, who seemed like a parallel-universe version of Bette Davis), I did not find myself caring enough about these people to want to invest emotionally in them.
I think the shocking thing, at the time it was released, was the obvious gay relationship between the son and what looks like a ballet dancer, in a charged scene where Rita walks into the son's room at an inopportune moment.
There were layers and worlds going on in this story, but somehow they weren't really captured. Perhaps worth a one-time watch, but that's all.
In brief, the story follows the life of Rita Walden (Joanne Woodward), a troubled upperclass housewife with too much time on her hands. After an interesting start with a day in the city with her mother (Sylvia Sidney) in which Rita seems to be the recipient of every nasty barb that the mother can think of (and many of them are extremely witty and laugh-worthy), the mother dies of a heart attack. This puts Rita in the position of facing her own mortality, something that is very hard for her to do. The story then splits into encounters/memories/fantasies of moments with her gay son (very bold for this day and age), her angry daughter, her loving husband (Martin Balsam, who was touching and believable, despite his long-winded war-memory speech), and her sister, who, along with her daughter, is aching to get their hands on the dead mother's farm.
We are then thrown into Europe where the husband has some sort of conference, Rita has a nervous breakdown, the two of them fight, argue, have a moment of reconciliation when the husband breaks down and recalls his time in the war, and then, finally, it seems they will find a way to make their lives work, despite Rita's emotional inability to connect with others.
There are some great one-liners in here as we sort of careen with Rita through her privileged life. Joanne Woodward is wonderful, with what she is asked to do, but the problem is, this is basically an emotionally troubled woman's inner journey. It is hard to connect with her, because it is hard for her to connect with herself. While I found myself laughing heartily at the one-liners (especially Sylvia Sidney's, who seemed like a parallel-universe version of Bette Davis), I did not find myself caring enough about these people to want to invest emotionally in them.
I think the shocking thing, at the time it was released, was the obvious gay relationship between the son and what looks like a ballet dancer, in a charged scene where Rita walks into the son's room at an inopportune moment.
There were layers and worlds going on in this story, but somehow they weren't really captured. Perhaps worth a one-time watch, but that's all.