Richard Benjamin has not created a mother-daughter study like TERMS OF ENDEARMENT or POSTCARDS FROM
THE EDGE, but he has created a quirky comedy with depths of the English Channel.

Something about the film is beyond average, it's the chemistry of the stars playing the characters.

The film follows the Flax women. Rachel, the mother (Cher), Charlotte the teen daugher (Winona Ryder)
and Kate, the youngest daughter (Christina Ricci).

Rachel is a woman who was left by a series of men. She enjoys life on the road and she likes the unexpected.
She refuses to become a cookie-making housewife who depends on her husbands financial income. She makes
her daughters finger foods for dinner and doesn't keep her foul-mouthed hidden from them. She shows them what
it is like for he to be the woman that she is and she doesn't make apologies about it.
She isn't a bad mother. Her daughters, are well fed and they're treated nicely.

Still, they want more. And that's okay. Benjamin doesn't make the daughters melodramatic girls who are desperate
for the attention of their mother. If she taught them anything, it's to do what you want and get what you want.
She has rules, she just believes in the age-old belief of a wilder parent, that she's an adult and they, are children.

Charlotte is obsessed with nuns and Catholics. She dresses in a nun-like outfit and wears the boots her father
gave her as a young girl, even though they're rain gollashes and hideous. She also happens to be in the period
of girlhood where she wants a man, but her own taught beliefs and fascination with the saints causes her to punish
herself for her longings, her desires. She is an unforgettable character played by Winona Ryder, who I believe, is
the only girl who could carry this off and I think it's the best performance of her career and forever will be.

Kate is an expert swimmer who doesn't see the wild ways of her mother as wrong. Rachel has Kate closest to her
because she realizes Charlotte is going through her own discovery. We don't really know if this is why Charlotte is
the way she is. Of course, she's embarassed of her mother's flippant sexual persona, it explains why she feels so
guilty and is terrified of becoming a sexual woman. That all changes when she meets the caretaker to a Catholic
nunnery, who provides her with the possibility of a man other than Jesus. She lets herself become easily obsessed
with his past and his overall, quiet mysteriousness.

The movie isn't exceptional. It isn't life-changing. But it's extremely funny and entertaining and makes you feel good
when the somewhat scattered characters come to resolutions. A happy ending is promised by the grounds of it being
pre-cliched. But, we get a greater depth with the characters of Rachel and Charlotte and how they are alike in so many
ways, and how of course, the mother knows it already- and of course, the daughter rejects it.

A great film with great scenes and Award-Calibre performances from it's two female leads. It's also a step-by-step
adaptation from the novel, I also loved.

Recommended: Yes