Curious movie, but overall very good. It was a bit disconcerting the way it is edited, because the first 40 to 45 minutes it skips back and forth and you have to guess what period you are in, and who the characters are, and what their relationships are. But if you stick with it, all becomes clear.
Charlize Theron is Sylvia, she is the manager of a restaurant on the Pacific in Oregon. She seems very tough and very efficient, knows her foods and knows her wines. But her weakness is a promiscuous lifestyle, performed in an almost matter-of-fact way. It is as if she has a low self-esteem, in spite of being smart and pretty.
Kim Basinger is Geena, a seemingly happily married mother of several healthy children. Her husband has a job that takes him on the road often and, since her surgery for breast cancer he seems unable to make love to her as he once did.
Their oldest child is Jennifer Lawrence as Mariana, probably 17. (She was actually 17 during filming.) She loves her mother, but doesn't like her at all when she starts to suspect she might have something going on, on the side.
John Corbett (Northern Exposure's "Chris in the Morning") is John, a chef at Sylvia's restaurant, married, and having an affair with Sylvia.
This is a very good movie, with an interesting and moving story of redemption.
SPOILERS follow: First off, when all is revealed Sylvia in modern times is the grown up Mariana, 12 years later. Her promiscuity is a result of seeing her mother's affair, then being responsible for her death, and the death of her lover, a man also with a family. Mariana suspected something so on her bicycle followed her mom's car to a remote area in desert-like terrain in New Mexico, and found their love nest, an old trailer they had fixed up. She loosened the gas supply, and set fire while the two lovers were in there, to scare them out and destroy the place, but it blew up and she killed both of them. Then she started an affair with the man's son, they had a child, Mariane ran away when the child was 2 days, went to Oregon, and changed her name to Sylvia. But they eventually found her and she went to Mexico, to be reunited with her daughter and her lover, now in the hospital recuperating from an injury form a crop duster crash.
Tessa Ia who plays her 12 year old daughter Maria is cute and also a good young actress.
Charlize Theron is Sylvia, she is the manager of a restaurant on the Pacific in Oregon. She seems very tough and very efficient, knows her foods and knows her wines. But her weakness is a promiscuous lifestyle, performed in an almost matter-of-fact way. It is as if she has a low self-esteem, in spite of being smart and pretty.
Kim Basinger is Geena, a seemingly happily married mother of several healthy children. Her husband has a job that takes him on the road often and, since her surgery for breast cancer he seems unable to make love to her as he once did.
Their oldest child is Jennifer Lawrence as Mariana, probably 17. (She was actually 17 during filming.) She loves her mother, but doesn't like her at all when she starts to suspect she might have something going on, on the side.
John Corbett (Northern Exposure's "Chris in the Morning") is John, a chef at Sylvia's restaurant, married, and having an affair with Sylvia.
This is a very good movie, with an interesting and moving story of redemption.
SPOILERS follow: First off, when all is revealed Sylvia in modern times is the grown up Mariana, 12 years later. Her promiscuity is a result of seeing her mother's affair, then being responsible for her death, and the death of her lover, a man also with a family. Mariana suspected something so on her bicycle followed her mom's car to a remote area in desert-like terrain in New Mexico, and found their love nest, an old trailer they had fixed up. She loosened the gas supply, and set fire while the two lovers were in there, to scare them out and destroy the place, but it blew up and she killed both of them. Then she started an affair with the man's son, they had a child, Mariane ran away when the child was 2 days, went to Oregon, and changed her name to Sylvia. But they eventually found her and she went to Mexico, to be reunited with her daughter and her lover, now in the hospital recuperating from an injury form a crop duster crash.
Tessa Ia who plays her 12 year old daughter Maria is cute and also a good young actress.