Mal à l'âme

This is a touching very realistic drama about a woman caring for her dying mother in law.Colleen Dewhurst is superb and Farrah Fawcett is as good as she was in "The Burning Bed"'Not widely known but is definitely worth a look.Very well done and not the least bit sappy and quietly effective study of losing a loved one.

Lovers Michael Nouri and Farrah Fawcett can't get any time together alone because of his wheedling, overbearing mother (played to the hilt by Emmy-winner Colleen Dewhurst). This monstrous mama, a perfectionist who comes between her son and his wife on more than one occasion, is at times a fascinating character--but a little of her goes quite a stretch. The lovebirds share a few tender moments, but it isn't long before Fawcett realizes Dewhurst is never going away and that husband Nouri is unable to stand up to her (he matches wits with his mother but can never win an argument). When Farrah finally blows off some steam, it's a relief to us--and yet the wife's sudden surge of spunk is immediately shot down, and soon we're back at the beginning. There's a great deal of realism in these family arguments and personality clashes, and the acting is uniformly terrific, but this kind of issue movie doesn't entertain as much as it leaves viewers in knots. ** from ****

The film does explain the cause of Dewhurst's overbearing nature and there is resolution to the story, though to be more specific than that would be to "spoil." I agree that the tension for most (but not all) of the picture is grueling, but the end product is one of the most realistic portrayals I've seen of what it is like to provide in-home care for a family member. I was glad that the characters weren't Hollywood-obvious "good" and "bad" and that the plot wasn't tied in a neat and tidy (tiresome and clichéd) manner. The choice of opera in the soundtrack and the inclusion of W.B. Yeats poem, "The Second Coming" is especially powerful.

There's a lot between-the-lines here too about vulnerability in the guise of brashness, masking insecurity with micro-management, and how the sins of one generation are spilled to the next. This is a film worth watching several times.

This movie, though I saw it when it first came out has never left me. It is often difficult to minister to those we do not care for but we find that our responsibility for them and our guilt take over and we "do what we have to do". The scene where Amy is removing the hairs from her mother-in-laws chin is so powerful it still evokes tears when I think about it. I think that this is the turning point for them both and I feel that they accepted one another then. I have had the responsibility of looking after my father-in-law for a short time and my remembrances of this movie have helped with my own struggle with that time. The rewards of that experience will never leave me.

It was hard to like the great Colleen Dewhurst's character in this movie, but her worth to Farrah Fawcett's character was endearing. This was a good movie. It was sweet. There is a scene where she plucks the whisker out of her stroke-victim mother-in-law's chin...a woman that tormented her, but she wanted to be the better person. No, that's not right, she didn't want to be better, she wanted to be a good person. She was.

Farrah Fawcett was a good actress remembered for an icon poster and Charlie's Angels. Ultimately, she was a good actress.