One True Thing

Ellen, a journalist in New York, learns her mother has cancer and is made by her father to come home and care for her. Ellen always admired her father and saw her mother as someone buried in housework. Over the months of care that ranking reverses. The film is not interested in the illness. It is interested in who actually does the work: the father is a respected literature professor, and only when the mother is withdrawn does it become clear that everything at home ran on her invisible labour. The film dismantles the father's standing piece by piece. The form is domestic: kitchen, hospital, small-town events and the turning of the seasons. The narrative opens inside an investigation, so a death has already happened and how it happened is in dispute. Carl Franklin directed, from Anna Quindlen's novel. He had made crime films like Devil in a Blue Dress and brings a coolness from that direction. Meryl Streep plays the mother and was nominated for an Academy Award; Renée Zellweger plays the daughter and William Hurt the father. Who it is for: viewers who like family drama and Streep's acting. Who it is not for: anyone avoiding accounts of serious illness. The final section shows a long and punishing period of care.