HOME BEFORE DARK
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Hazelwood Films-Scout Produciton Director: Maureen Foley Writer: Maureen Foley Cast: Stephanie Castellarin, Brian Delate, Katharine Ross, Patricia Kalember, Helen Lloyd Breed
In this modest film which was introduced at the 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival (where it won the Grand Jury Prize), an 11-year-old girl submits a story to a contest sponsored by "Seventeen" magazine. The story is about her own childhood, about incidents which marred her happiness and caused her single-handedly to seek a resolution to the serious problems her family must bear. That narrative becomes, in effect, the film itself: a tale about a sad but intelligent and sensitive junior-high student at the time of the Kennedy assassination, an era in which bold changes were to occur in American society mirroring the surprises in her own adolescence. While "Home Before Dark" has the look of a TV soap, and one which could use some judicious editing to pick up its sluggigh pace, the film is redeemed by solid acting particularly by young Stephanie Castellarin in her first starring role in a feauture film. It also showcases the talent of Katherine Ross, best known to an American audience for her role in "The Graduate" as Dustin Hoffman's main squeeze and as part of a threesome with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
"Home Before Dark" takes place in a Massachusettes suburb which finds Nora (Stephanie Castellarin) attending a strict parochial school in the class of Sister Concilia (Helen Lloyd Breed), her studies hardly motivated by the tragic events in her home. Her mother, Dolores (Patricia Kalember), feels responsible the for automobile deaths of three of her sibs before Nora was born and is institutionalized after a suicide attempt. Forced to grow up before her time, Nora is sent by her stressed-out dad Martin (Brian Delate) to live with her Aunt Rose (Katharine Ross), a cold, prim Jackie-O lookalike who treats the girl as a daughter-substitute but is entirely too rigorous in her demands.
In her script, writer-directed Maureen Foley evokes the usual laughs in dealing with a Catholic education, picturing Sister Concila (Helen Lloyd Breed) as an overbearing disciplinarian who nonetheless has humorous traces of humanity. (In one scene, she catches some 11-year-olds smoking, sends them scurring back to the building, and takes a deep, satisfying breath of their secondhand smoke.)
Foley takes us through a pre-adolescent's usual rites of passage: first period, first kiss, competition with a classmate for the attentions of a cute boy. The year 1963 is perhaps the final year of American innocence, which was lost as a result of the Kennedy assassination, the onset of the Vietnam, and the introduction of the birth control pill. The urge to conform is present in the behavior of the beautician who ruins Nora's free-flowing hair ("they're all wearing it this way"), and the era's obsessiveness is well reflected in the behavior of the priggish Aunt Rose who is "driven crazy" by the way Nora's hair keeps flowing about the girl's face.
Brian Delate turns in a strong and believable performance as a dad who tries his best to pay his bills and bring up four children without the presence of their mother. Without Stephanie Castellarin's laudable dispatch of her sensitive role as an emotionally burdened girl, though, "Home Before Dark" would be quite ordinary, however heartfelt.
Not Rated. Running time: 110 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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