THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOLDS
The most relevant, thoughtful, provocative and timely film so far this year, TWILIGHT OF THE GOLDS will give you something to think about long after you have left the theater. Based on a play by Jonathan Tolin, this wonderful film is at once controversial and entertaining. . . controversial only because the moviegoer is forced into asking himself/herself, What should have been done? There are no easy answers.
Walter Gold (The lovable actor, director, writer Garry Marshall) and his wife, Phyllis (the equally famous Faye Dunaway) are the parents of Suzanne (Jennifer Beals) and David (Brendan Fraser). Although David is gay, his family has long ago made peace with themselves about his homosexuality; in short, he is their dear son and they love and accept him and his lifestyle.
The loving family is made further happy with the announcement by Jennifer and her husband, Rob (Jon Tenney) who is a geneticist, that Walter and Phyllis Gold will soon be grandparents. After a series of tests to reveal sex, birth defects, etc. are performed on the baby, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the baby has no inherited illnesses; the bad news is that the baby is carrying a gene which is found in 90% of gay men. The chances are very great that the child, a male, will grow up gay. As of this writing, there has been no medical breakthrough that reveals a specific "gay gene." However, for purposes of the movie, it fits in perfectly.
What to do? Do they opt to continue with the pregnancy and have a child who will suffer the same hurts that David has had to endure in growing up? (How about that some of the hurts may have been caused by the parents until they could "adjust?") Or should they in the best interests of their potential son (of course!) abort the pregnancy?
When David learns that there is that problem of the child being gay and that there is abortion under discussion . . . but by no means a final decision . . . he is hurt and furious, asking his parents, "Would you have wanted an abortion if you had known I was going to be gay?"
This is a "liberal" family but even families that are liberal and loving find that there are always tough decisions in life . . . and the Golds are now having the biggest they have ever had to face.
Among others in the cast are Sean O'Brien, John Schlesinger and Rosie O'Donnell.
A terrific film.
Durected by Ross Marks
4 Bytes
4 bytes = Superb 3 bytes = Too good to miss 2 bytes = Average 1 byte = Save your money
Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews