After "Our Sons" with Julie Andrews and Ann-Margret, this is my favorite AIDS movie. There's no need to lavish praise on an actress like Sissy Spacek; her gift is evident as soon as she enters a scene. Spacek uses her customary savvy and elan as Susan Lansing, a nurse who falls in love with and takes in an AIDS-afflicted infant whose mother has abandoned her. The nurse sets up her home with a nanny and her own son as standby only to have the mother return and reclaim her child. Her name is Linda, a bitter, spent drug addict, and she manages to make everyone in the Lansing household ill at ease, threatening to take her baby away. She is, of course, not in any position to care for her child, and Susan, realizing this, begs her to stay. An uneasy truce develops between all concerned for the baby Annie, and it is here that the movie moves us through Linda's disappointments and despair, and the only vestige of hope she has been handed--that Annie will not be touched by disease and have a mother like Susan to raise her.
Lightweight is the way I would describe Mary-Louise Parker's past work; I cannot remember any performance prior to this that was this vivid. She plays Linda like a wounded dog whose howl catches in her throat when she wants to cry. She's defensive and hostile, but her most touching moments are painfully stifled. Parker's presence runs dark and deep; she makes sure the undertow of Linda's grief lurks beneath every frame.
With Joan Plowright as the nanny, and Jack Noseworthy as Susan's son, David. Would that more parents had children like him?
