Nude Celebs: April Mullen -

This excellent 2004 drama, on some levels a chick flick, is also a painful look at dysfunctional relationships, and at a mother's drive to be with her children. It is based on the very good novel by Dorothy Allison, and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, both noted for presenting stories of people undergoing life-changing events.

When her rocker boyfriend dies in a car wreck in California, a woman takes her daughter (by the boyfriend) and returns to Georgia, where she hopes to reunite with her two teenaged daughters. When her husband shot her twice in the head (but with a gun which he didn't realize was unloaded), she had fled leaving him and the daughters behind. They now live with their paternal grandmother, while the husband is living alone dieing of cancer. The grandmother has raised the girls as strict fundamentalists, and of course, to hate their mother.

The woman's battle to reunite with her now teenaged girls, one a religious zealot and the other a garden-variety small-town slut, and then gain acceptance from them, is an outstanding story, and solid acting by a good cast make this a very worthwhile if somewhat sad movie.