flashback?...
do you know?
| October 12, 1996 Abortion tackled straight on If These Walls Could Talk examines the issue without flinching By CLAIRE BICKLEY Toronto Sun Timidity, rather than true medical statistics, governs the outcome of most TV pregnancies. With rare exception, unwanted babies are dispatched by convenient miscarriages lest an abortion storyline inflame opponents and/or scare away advertisers. Set against that unrealistic and uncourageous big picture, HBO's film If These Walls Could Talk and The Movie Network's decision to air it deserve nothing less than a standing ovation. No mainstream broadcaster would have touched this uncompromising and sometimes grisly movie, premiering tomorrow night at 9 and repeating Oct. 20 at 11 p.m. Walls never cops out, never glosses over, never pulls a punch. It does have a point of view and it does take a side -- the side of the women whose stories it tells. No matter what decision they make about their pregnancies. The point being that whatever the era, whatever the political climate, abortion has always been, and always should be, one woman's personal decision. Three mini-movies with separate stories, casts and credits are set in 1952, 1974, and 1996, meant to represent the worst of times, the best of times and the most tumultuous of times in the abortion rights movement. Before narrowing its focus, a montage of news footage, headlines and interview clips charts the issue's progress, not to mention the standing of women in society, from then to now. Demi Moore, who used her clout as a producer to get this made, stars in the earliest segment as Claire, a widowed nurse pregnant from a brief and complicated liaison. Abortion is illegal. Her appeal for help from a doctor is met with condescension and scorn, her appeal to her sister-in-law rebuffed by the accusation that she's shamed the family. Desperate, she attempts to abort herself with a knitting needle. The scene, which prompted some audience walkouts at premiere screenings, is bite-your-hand horrifying, as is her eventual kitchen table operation and her story's implied ending. When middle-class married mother of four Barbara (Sissy Spacek) finds out she's pregnant in 1974, the climate has changed. It's two years after Roe Vs. Wade, abortion is easily available and her friends and family are not only supportive, they're urging her to put herself first for a change and abort the baby. To her teenaged daughter, she's practically a traitor to the women's movement if she doesn't. But Walls has a lot more subtlety than the rigid moral certainty of an adolescent. Barbara may have all the options, it makes clear, but such a choice is never easy. The final 1996 segment is directed by Cher, who also appears as an abortion clinic doctor. Young actress Anne Heche gives an outstanding performance as Christine, a college student who opposes abortion until an unexpected pregnancy from a dead-end affair threatens her promising future. "You get this abortion, and I swear to you, you are on your own," her anti-abortion best friend tells her. Which, again, is this movie's point, more important if less dramatic than its violent and fairly predictable conclusion. The straightforward message that abortion is, and should be, a decision a woman makes for herself has never before been told on TV in such straightforward fashion. |
