She's Been Away

Lillian has been held in a mental institution for sixty years. She was shut in there as a young woman. In the twenties she did not behave as a woman was expected to. She did what she wanted and paid no attention to what anyone thought. What was done to her was not treatment but punishment. Years later the institution is closed. The old woman has nowhere to go. Her wealthy nephew Hugh takes her into his house. Hugh’s pregnant wife Harriet lives there too. At first Lillian speaks to nobody. She keeps herself at a distance from the family. Then something forms between her and Harriet. The younger woman is alone in that house as well. Her husband is a cold and controlling man. Each of them understands the other’s loneliness. Peggy Ashcroft and Geraldine James appear in the hundred and three minute film, a British production Peter Hall finished in 1989.