Keeping Secrets

Actress Suzanne Somers wrote a bracing book recalling her early beginnings as an actress, and before that as a youngster growing up in fear and dread as the daughter of an alcoholic father, however this telefilm predictably doesn't dig as deeply as its source material. Somers plays herself throughout most of the picture, dating David Birney who plays her real-life husband Alan Hamel. It's like sensory deprivation, a tatty game of who's who. If this gamble doesn't pay off, at least the picture looks good, with fine location shooting in San Francisco and good cinematography by Sandi Sissel. The point of the story, that children of an abusive alcoholic can break the family pattern, is made quite well despite the fact the actors involved do not convince as a familial unit. This was an honest attempt at making a message movie (with Hollywood trimmings), but it ultimately seems too tame.