User Reviews

I found this movie attractive, funny in parts, yet difficult to grasp. I certainly felt the disappointment in the husband's and sister's struggle for employment. Everyone in the movie was equally struggling for identity and the artist/mother, Aviva, at the center of it, was holding it all together.

At the beginning of the story, Aviva is asked by her dentist to undress to forgive a large dental bill. She refuses, but she does hear some encouragement to do a bit of prostitution from the other women in her life. Later she agrees to become a ghostwriter for her writing professor who's talent has dried up, by allowing him publish revised versions of her stories.

I suppose the movie makes clear the extent to which we attempt to subvert own greatest possibilities of success by making it subordinate to our internalizing the cares of those other individuals we identify most closely with.

After accepting the initial deposit for her stories to be re-marketed by her professor, Aviva soon shuts down all of her normal relations with her family, imperfect as they are, since she believes she no longer merits their esteem. The catharsis begins late in the movie, when Aviva's mother leaves Aviva's father. Aviva herself gradually realizes that she must stop selling herself piecemeal, acknowledges the powerful woman she is, and allows herself with the encouragement of her family to return to becoming a professional writer.