Still Scorcese's only feature that focuses on a woman - you think he might've done more because this won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar and was a hit. It's a modern updating of old 30s women's pictures with modern trappings.
It's still Hollywood. Her husband is a dipshit who threatens to hit wife and child so we don't feel bad when he dies early on. She finds an act two guy Harvey Keitel who turns out to be a married dipshit.
Then act three she moves to another town and works in a diner and it becomes recogniseably Alice with Diane Ladd channelling Eve Arden and Kris Kristofferson as George Brent (he suited playing.a love interest, KK, because he seemed so comfortable in his skin and not overly charismatic as to pull focus). It really is a Joan Crawford movie. But it's lovely and done with empathy if a little long.
The kid is excellent. Jodie Foster rocks up again as a girl who befriends him. Wish her part had been better.
I'm surprised how populist it is. I mean it ends with a public declaration of love in a diner with extras looking on and clapping when they kiss. I mean, it was turned into a sitcom.
Mind you it's a Scorsese so there's still domestic violence - full on from Harvey Keitel, mild from Kris Kristofferson.
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