a5c7b9f00b Covering nearly fifty years of mid-19th-century turmoil, from the tumultuous Texas Revolution to the early women's suffrage movement, "True Women" is a gripping tale of endurance, love, and above all, gritty female determination. Starting off in 1836, after the fall of the Alamo, <a href=">Karen Arthur's Civil War-era epic based on <a href=">Janice Woods Windle's historical novel, pivots around the passionate Texan matriarch, Sarah Ashby McClure, her sister, Euphemia, and her friend, Georgia Lawshe, as they struggle to protect their families and survive in a male-dominated America. Covering nearly fifty years of mid-19th-century turmoil, from the tumultuous Texas Revolution to the early women's suffrage movement, "True Women" is a gripping tale of endurance, love, and above all, gritty female determination. . . . but its one flaw is too glaring to permit that. The problem: The plot is *insane*. Within the first twenty minutes of the movie, the main character, somewhere-around-ten-year-old Euphemia, has been orphaned and uprooted from her home, The Alamo has fallen to Mexican soldiers, and the wives and children of the Texan army have to high-tail it to . . . erm, somewhere else. The movie reads kind of like one of those stories written by bored fifth-graders who pass around a piece of paper, each putting down a sentence without being allowed to see what just happened, and it doesn't come close to making sense. What emerges in this case is a repeating sequence of menacing-looking guys showing up on horseback and causing, whether deliberately or indirectly, the demise of a handful of supporting characters.<br/><br/>What could obviously have been a seventeenth-rate TV movie was saved by spectacular performances from each and every member of the cast. Dana Delany is the ideal big sister, reassuring and confident, but allows us occasional glimpses at her fear and grief that save the role of Sarah from being stereotyped and make it touching and very real. Annabeth Gish endows her character Euphemia with just the right combination of sincerity, compassion, and stubbornness to keep her believable and endearing.<br/><br/>(NOTE: ONE SMALL SPOILER COMING UP IN THIS PARAGRAPH)I have never seen Angelina Jolie act in anything else (unless you count trailers), but her absolutely flawless performance here as Georgia has instantly made her one of my favorite actresses. She's flexible enough to infuse many of her lines in this very serious movie with a charming brand of ironic humor ("I'll be old before I'm twenty-five and dead before I'm thirty!") and convey absolute rock-bottom misery literally two scenes later. I have never cried harder than I did while watching Georgia struggle through her tears to sing her dying child to sleep.<br/><br/>(FURTHER NOTE: THE SPOILER'S OVER) I could go on and praise the specific high points of every actor in the movie, but suffice it to say that the performances are perfect and more than make up for the out-there plot and flat script. Even were it not for that fact (sorry, opinion, I guess), I strongly recommend - nay, I insist (lol) - that anybody with even a remote interest in costume see this movie. The pioneer women wear really boring clothes (except Euphemia once dons a very strange and very ugly hat), but spoiled plantation girl Georgia's gowns are real works of art. I was kinda looking forward to this movie, hoping for something at least close to historically accurate. What I saw was an overwrought, melodramatic, unnecessary-death-a-minute mess.<br/><br/>I only watched it all the way through because a couple of others in the room seemed to enjoy it, but I lost count of the number of times I said, "Oh, C'mon!".<br/><br/>It's a pretty movie (shot in the Texas hill country), but not a very good one.
Dewitade Admin replied
364 weeks ago