Review by clanciai

The issue here is too sensitive, delicate, outrageous and vital not to be discussed. Here it is all brought into the open in a most painful process, and the reason for the daughters to bring it into the open is their urge to move on and save their lives and marriages. The problem is, that bringing it into the open will not make the problem vanish. The two daughters will have to continue living with it through all their lives, a trauma like this cannot be stamped out or ignored, it is like a brand forever, and you will confront it every day of your life, no matter what proceedings are taken to do away with it.

The psychology here is extremely interesting. The younger daughter, like her brother, is happily married and comes down with a daughter, and there the problems start, as her old father gives a present to his granddaughter, which for some reason causes the fresh mother to get glimpses of long repressed memories, which won't leave her alone. She goes to her sister to get some explanation of unexplainable reminiscences, and the sister has corresponding memories. Then their brother has a five year old daughter, with whom her grandfather wishes to play... It's a marvellous script, almost built up like a Hitchcock thriller, it's a psychological drama of purely domestic concerns, but every actor is just perfect and totally credible: the old man as a successful prominent business man of some public influence, his wife the old mother who refuses to believe anything out of order, the happily married son who is walking in his father's footsteps suspecting nothing, the elder daughter who has had her life shattered by her childhood experience, and the new young mother, who is reluctantly brought to face the most difficult trauma that could occur in a family.

It's an important film for bringing up the issue and going through with it thoroughly, although there is no end to the consequences.