THE WASH
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1988 Jeff Meyer
I, for one, like my melodramas small. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but following the average ups-and-downs of a human life, or lives, aren't a draw by themselves. Acting, dialogue, setting and photography are major factors in grading a film, and if these four elements are not particularly outstanding, I'm left with the basic plot. In that case, the last thing I want to see is a "personal problems" movie blown up to epic proportions, like setting it in Africa and giving it an eight-digit budget and putting Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in it (I think we can see see the whipping boy here, hmmm?).
THE WASH is another film sponsored by the American Playhouse group, and they are really putting together a track record of small-budgeted pictures which act as "slice-of-life" stories set throughout the U.S. None of these films is immensely memorable, but they are both thoughtful and thought- provoking, and I've never been bored at one. A FLASH OF GREEN dealt with a small community in Florida being picked apart by real estate developers; SILENCE AT BETHANY is staged around a Pennsylvania Mennonite community during the early 1940s. THE WASH deals with an elderly Japanese-American couple and their two daughters who live in an unspecified urban area (LA? Sacramento? I'm not sure it was ever specified). The father, a silent curmudgeon, lives in the family home, while his wife has moved out of the house and is living in an apartment. His domineering, sullen behavior has driven her to a separation, but she still stops by once a week to drop off groceries, pick up the laundry (hence the name of the film), and make a stab at reestablishing communications with her husband.
The film details the effects of her beginning to date another man on her husband, her daughters, and finally herself. One daughter is straight-laced, rather uptight and convinced that her mother and father will eventually get back together (ignoring the rocky ground her own relationship is on). The other daughter has been ostracized by her father for marrying a black man, and is reluctant to help or hinder the situation between her parents. For the most part, the film concentrates on the relationships between these people with few embellishes, besides some comic relief at a restaurant that the father frequents.
Since these AP films tend to work at being as Spartan as possible in describing their characters, I usually end up grading the films on the acting and how well the characters resonated for me. Both the performances and the plot were good without being very good, except for the actress playing the mother, who was splendid. She conveys the confusion and happiness her new boyfriend brings her (at 60), and the scenes between them are very fresh. Her work pushes my grade to a satisfied (if not enthusiastic) thumbs-up; a good Saturday afternoon movie, and a definite recommendation when it appears on PBS's AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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