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Susan Granger's review of "A Walk on the Moon" (Miramax Films)
This finely etched family drama is seductively reminiscent of 1969, the year of Vietnam protesters, flower power, Apollo astronauts, Woodstock, and the sexual revolution. But it was just another summer in the Catskills for the Kantrowitz family. Diane Lane plays 31 year-old Pearl Kantrowitz, a loving mother and conscientious kosher housewife, who fears that life is passing her by. She's stranded at Dr. Fogler's Bungalows, an isolated Jewish resort on the borsht belt, with her angst-ridden adolescent daughter, Anna Paquin ("The Piano"), her precocious young son, and their nagging, superstitious, tarot-card reading grandmother (Tovah Feldshuh), while her dull husband (Liev Schreiber) toils in New York as a hard-working TV repairman. The monotony is relieved only by the weekly visit by Viggo Mortensen, as the Blouse Man, a soft-spoken hippie who peddles "bargain" discount fashions from his gypsy van. On one particular weekend - while Neil Armstrong is walking on the moon -! Pearl enjoys a liberating, if overheated fling with this seductive, uninhibited proponent of free love and drug experimentation. But then what? Discovery, betrayal, anguish, compassion, forgiveness. Directed by actor Tony Goldwyn, inspired by some of writer Pamela Gray's childhood memories and produced by Dustin Hoffman's company, this film boasts excellent performances set within a strong sense of atmospheric authenticity. And, yes, that's unbilled Julie Kavner's raspy voice on the public address system. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "A Walk on the Moon" is an amusing, romantic, evocative 8, a sophisticated woman's picture that could appeal to men as well.
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