Diane fills her days helping others and desperately attempting to bond with her drug-addicted son. As these pieces of her existence begin to fade, she finds herself confronting memories she’d sooner forget than face.
Pam says: This is an emotionally haunting tale of a mother’s guilt intersecting with responsibility as she attempts to help her son with his drug addiction. Never has a film so beautifully captured the myriad number of feelings a mother has as she avoids focusing on her own life and needs. Time is so fleeting, but we never realize it until it has ticked away. Place’s performance is a quiet one, accentuating her skills as a master performer. Her familial and friend relationships feel authentic, comforting, and established, finding a place for humor and hope as well as a few tears. Andrea Martin shines in this role and while Lacy’s sometimes stiff performance throws the pacing slightly, it’s not enough to negatively impact the film and its impact.
Chuck says: This proves to be a major surprise as director Kent Jones accurately captures the sort of quiet, heartbreaking lives so many of us lead, lives that seemingly have little purpose yet have a profound impact on all of the others they touch. This was written especially for Mary Kay Place and she shines in the title role as a woman who has punished herself for years because of a single sin, living a life of service to others as a sort of self-imposed penance. While this has the air of a tragedy, in the end this comes off as a portrait of a life well-lived. The irony is that Diane herself does not realize it. Powerful, poignant and haunting, this is the sort of movie that won’t leave you anytime soon.
