Um Lugar para Annie

A Place For Annie is one of those special films that takes a very sensitive subject like AIDS and does justice too it. Absolutely outstanding performances by Sissy Spacek, Mary-Louise Parker, Joan Plowright and Jack Noeworthy. Annie is a baby with the AIDS virus who is sent to a local hospital in which Sissy Spacek works as an RN. When the child is going to be sent off to die elsewhere, she decides to care for Annie herself, with the help of Joan Plowright's character. The mother of the child, now clean for 6 months, decides to come after the child. A powerful story of love.

I was sitting at home last Saturday, bored to tears, turned on the t.v. and for the next two hours sat entranced by this powerful and moving film that really did justice to the HIV-babies and their mothers that we hear so much about.

Top-billed Spacek and Mary Louise-Parker really shine in this film...Parker (who has full blown AIDS) comes back to reclaim Annie, her child, who she was forced to give up when the baby was six months old. Spacek adopted Annie and the film shows the tensions and struggle that the two ladies go through to see eye to eye in the care of Annie. The end may surprise a few people; the entire film is top-notch!

I grew up watching films produced by the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Their quality was often varying, but the general approach allowed for a certain dedication to storytelling. This is one such example. It's a straightforward story on the surface, something that could have easily been produced as a cheap, tear-jerking, disease-of-the-week movie. It's not as though this type of story is inherently cheap or meaningless, it's just that the potential for overwrought melodrama is only too often realized.

Here, the actors prevent that from happening. Sissy Spacek, Mary-Louise Parker, and S. Epatha Merkerson (three of my favorite actresses) perform with a level of real conversational interaction that I really appreciate. I must state, emphatically, that the script offers no individual brilliance whatsoever. This is a slice-of-life type story, one that is held together by performances and the direction of John Gray. I felt like I was watching real lives here, and maybe I was. In so much as film can ever be real, "A Place for Annie" is.

After "Our Sons" with Julie Andrews and Ann-Margret, this is my favorite AIDS movie. There's no need to lavish praise on an actress like Sissy Spacek; her gift is evident as soon as she enters a scene. Spacek uses her customary savvy and elan as Susan Lansing, a nurse who falls in love with and takes in an AIDS-afflicted infant whose mother has abandoned her. The nurse sets up her home with a nanny and her own son as standby only to have the mother return and reclaim her child. Her name is Linda, a bitter, spent drug addict, and she manages to make everyone in the Lansing household ill at ease, threatening to take her baby away. She is, of course, not in any position to care for her child, and Susan, realizing this, begs her to stay. An uneasy truce develops between all concerned for the baby Annie, and it is here that the movie moves us through Linda's disappointments and despair, and the only vestige of hope she has been handed--that Annie will not be touched by disease and have a mother like Susan to raise her.

Lightweight is the way I would describe Mary-Louise Parker's past work; I cannot remember any performance prior to this that was this vivid. She plays Linda like a wounded dog whose howl catches in her throat when she wants to cry. She's defensive and hostile, but her most touching moments are painfully stifled. Parker's presence runs dark and deep; she makes sure the undertow of Linda's grief lurks beneath every frame.

With Joan Plowright as the nanny, and Jack Noseworthy as Susan's son, David. Would that more parents had children like him?

Directing, editing, performance, music, adaption, message, everything is good.

This movie should have won best film and performance from Sissy Spacek and Mary-Louise Parker who are superb.

I almost watched this like 30 times, and every time I shed tears, this is first movie to make me that.

Sissy Spacek is always good in every single movie. Mary-Louise Parker should have recognized much earlier, as her fan, she always does her best even in nobody-knows movies.

More people should watch this. This is just a MUST-SEE.