"profound look at motherhood"
Renowned photographer Anna Walters loves her work,
delights in being wife to college professor Eliot and
raising their daughter Lucy. Her only blight is the
abortion she once had. However, her idyllic lifestyle
begins cracking when Eliot fails to attain tenure. Anna
goes through a difficult birthing of their second child.
As baby Ellen remains in intensive care, Anna becomes
deeply depressed and nightmares about the child that
never was add to her misery and self loathing. When Cerise became pregnant in high school, she dropped
out to raise her daughter Melody alone as the father Sam
moved on to some other teen. To provide food and shelter,
she works as a cleaning woman at a nursing home. Cerise
liked her life with her little buddy, but lately an
adolescent Melody has become disrespectful, nasty, and
hangs with a bad crowd. Like her daughter who has found
solace in promiscuous sex and drugs, Cerise has an affair
that leads to a newborn Travis. As she struggles to earn
money once welfare to work kicks in and takes her off the
roles, Melody runs away. Not
long afterward Cerise meets and commiserates with fellow
lost soul Anna. Though the action is nonexistent, WINDFALLS is a profound
look at motherhood, but not through an apple pie lens.
Instead, the two protagonists are undergoing difficult
trials and tribulations that would test Job. The story
line contains the two subplots that merge when the lead
characters meet. Secondary players are not as fully
developed as Anna and Cerise as they only serve the
purpose of enabling the audience to scrutinize modern day
moms trying to mentally survive. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted March 1, 2004
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