Wild Iris

This is not a Hollywood "feel good" movie. It centers around a daugher, played wonderfully by Laura Linney, who abuses alcohol while she bickers with her mother. Laura Linney is one of my favorite character actors and turns in yet another exceptional performance as a bitter and frustrated mother and daughter trying to cope with the aftermath of losing a husband and moving back in with her mother.

This is a "slice of life" movie where we get the opportunity to see characters evolve through their life experiences. We come to care about the people in this movie and see them make mistakes and sometimes learn from them.

If you these plot-centered movies such as "You Can Count on Me", you will enjoy this movie.

Not a cheery film, but riveting. Rowlands and Linney are both brilliant, and Laura Linney is especially so. She equals or exceeds her performance in You Can Count On Me, and she should have won the oscar for that film going away. If Linney does not soon win an Academy Award, there is no justice. She is one of the best actors working today, ranking right up there with Meryl Streep. She is totally convincing and incredibly moving in this role; as Iris, playing once more against type. I stumbled on to this film on one of the Showtime channels late at night. I've seen no promotion for it, and I'm shocked that I haven't. In its way, and certainly in the Linney and Rowlands performances, it's as good as Dinner With Friends, which had its premiere on HBO earlier the same night. Dinner With Friends was promoted hugely. Wild Iris is equally rewarding. I can't imagine why the Showtime publicity engines have not been running overtime. I'd be very proud to have produced this film with these two principals.

This flick, which aired on Showtime under the title "Wild Iris", tells of a grandmother, her adult daughter, and a teenage son/grandson who live together in a SOHO wedding dress boutique. In spite of the pasty, made-for-tv "feel", "...Iris" showcases two excellent performances. Rowlands plays a mother in denial about her diseased relationship with her daughter, avoiding the truth while placating conflict with platitudes. Linney plays the daughter who tries to cope with good old mom using brutally frank honesty and vodka has her weapons of choice. Kudos to the pair of female leads.

Good performances can't save this terrible script, larded with every cliche in the chick-flick book. Both main characters are deeply unsympathetic, and the scene where Laura Linney's character reminisces about sex with her dead husband in front of her teenage son -- which I think is supposed to be poignant -- is just horrifying.

Gena Rowlands and Laura Linney turn in outstanding performances in this dark tale of mother-daughter love and hate. Built around small-town life, suicide, and failure, this story takes a few dark turns before finding the light. Linney is outstanding as the lost daughter who can't get her life back after her husband commits suicide. Gena Rowlands is (as always) excellent as the domineering mother who seems to thrive on her daughter's failures. Superior TV movie with good work from Fred Ward and Emile Hirsch as the boy who takes a drastic step to save all their lives.