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Waiting
for the Light
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I'm not sure if the pertinent international release dates verify the hypothesis, but Waiting For the Light may just be the first post-Sweetie (1989) film to come out of America. (Another is Bodies, Rest and Motion, 1993.) It has a vaguely similar combination of kooky character vignettes, tensions bubbling under the surface of a familial, suburban/small town everyday milieu, and (more into Neil Jordan territory) a delicately ambiguous fix on miracles and catastrophes shaking up the status quo. Ingeniously written and directed by Christopher Monger, it weaves early '60s atomic bomb fears into the travails of a single mother (Teri Garr) and the rituals of a conservative community. And it gives Shirley MacLaine a part which – incredible as this may sound – more than makes up for the memory of Steel Magnolias (1989). MORE Monger: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain © Adrian Martin November 1991 |
