Mother Dearest

Film: One True Thing
Format: DVD from NetFlix on various players.

I don’t always closely monitor my NetFlix queue, which is why movies like One True Thing show up unexpectedly. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Renee Zellweger. In fact, I’ve pretty studiously avoided her films for the last six years, knowing that I’d have to get there eventually. Make no mistake here—Meryl Streep was nominated for her role in this, so she’s the reason I watched, but this is Zellweger’s film. I didn’t even know she was in it. When I discovered that a few moments in, I braced myself for what was to come.

This is one of those stories where the characters are desperately successful and desperately broken at the same time. Ellen Gulden, a Harvard graduate (yes, this is mentioned frequently), is working as a writer for a New York magazine. Her father George (William Hurt), is a former literary great, the winner of a National Book Award, and heading his department at the college where he teaches and claims to be working on another novel. Ellen’s brother Brian (Tom Everett Scott) is currently at Harvard and struggling with, amusingly enough, English literature. And then there’s Kate (Meryl Streep), the mother.