If These Walls Could Talk (1996)
Three half hour movies with three distinct casts (each featuring a superstar) and each tied together by occurring in the same house, each twenty years apart. In each episode, a woman needs an abortion, and with great realism and sometimes great drama, they deal with the problem in terms of the era they were born into.
The first is the best, and features Demi Moore as a woman in 1952, when abortion is not only illegal but utterly shameful to consider for most people. But Moore's character is a sympathetic one, and if you feel she should "just have the baby" as some in the movie do, she could only do so at great sacrifice (if losing your job, your friends, and your current life by having a baby and giving it away is a sacrifice). She eventually tries to get a fly-by-night provider.
The second episode is also really strong, and has a vivid, realistic depiction of a 1974 household. This is when abortion has been made emphatically legal by Roe v. Wade, and so the mother of four played by Sissy Spacek finds herself pregnant. The issue then becomes whether or not have a legal abortion. Her husband and others (including a feminist teenage daughter) advise and pressure her. It's now become a legitimate "choice" in the true "pro choice" sense of the word.
The third episode is a dud. That's not to say it's dull. But the first two segments were filled with internal, intimate dilemmas and decisions. They depict contemporary life and make real the problem women faced in those terms. Here the "family" is a pair of college-aged roommates, one of who can't act. The other is pregnant and goes to the local woman's clinic to check it out (and possibly have the procedure). Outside are some protesters. So far so good—this is the more recent 1996 reality, and it fills out the set.
But the mood shifts to politics and social circumstance, and to sensation. Furthermore, the star actress is not the one who is pregnant, but the clinic doctor, played by Cher (who also co-directed this segment). It seems far too gratuitous, and since it comes at the end of the movie, it undermines the subtle power of the first two thirds.
Still, overall, director/writer Nancy Savoca deserves a bow. She takes on a tough issue and more or less tells it like it is. Her stance is clear—she's for women's rights, and not sympathetic to the protesters and naysayers—but she deals with both sides fairly. (I'm sure an anti-choice viewer might disagree here.) And Demi Moore gets credit for pushing the whole idea for years beforehand. The usual studios wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, and it took a youthful HBO to give it a run.
The movie taken whole is, in a way, pro life. That is, it's for what is "best" in the normal sense, the same sense that my mother was pro choice and chose to have me.
Three half hour movies with three distinct casts (each featuring a superstar) and each tied together by occurring in the same house, each twenty years apart. In each episode, a woman needs an abortion, and with great realism and sometimes great drama, they deal with the problem in terms of the era they were born into.
The first is the best, and features Demi Moore as a woman in 1952, when abortion is not only illegal but utterly shameful to consider for most people. But Moore's character is a sympathetic one, and if you feel she should "just have the baby" as some in the movie do, she could only do so at great sacrifice (if losing your job, your friends, and your current life by having a baby and giving it away is a sacrifice). She eventually tries to get a fly-by-night provider.
The second episode is also really strong, and has a vivid, realistic depiction of a 1974 household. This is when abortion has been made emphatically legal by Roe v. Wade, and so the mother of four played by Sissy Spacek finds herself pregnant. The issue then becomes whether or not have a legal abortion. Her husband and others (including a feminist teenage daughter) advise and pressure her. It's now become a legitimate "choice" in the true "pro choice" sense of the word.
The third episode is a dud. That's not to say it's dull. But the first two segments were filled with internal, intimate dilemmas and decisions. They depict contemporary life and make real the problem women faced in those terms. Here the "family" is a pair of college-aged roommates, one of who can't act. The other is pregnant and goes to the local woman's clinic to check it out (and possibly have the procedure). Outside are some protesters. So far so good—this is the more recent 1996 reality, and it fills out the set.
But the mood shifts to politics and social circumstance, and to sensation. Furthermore, the star actress is not the one who is pregnant, but the clinic doctor, played by Cher (who also co-directed this segment). It seems far too gratuitous, and since it comes at the end of the movie, it undermines the subtle power of the first two thirds.
Still, overall, director/writer Nancy Savoca deserves a bow. She takes on a tough issue and more or less tells it like it is. Her stance is clear—she's for women's rights, and not sympathetic to the protesters and naysayers—but she deals with both sides fairly. (I'm sure an anti-choice viewer might disagree here.) And Demi Moore gets credit for pushing the whole idea for years beforehand. The usual studios wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, and it took a youthful HBO to give it a run.
The movie taken whole is, in a way, pro life. That is, it's for what is "best" in the normal sense, the same sense that my mother was pro choice and chose to have me.