MARTHA COOLIDGE

Bil’s rating (out of 5):  BBBB.5

USA, 1994.  Caravan Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Morra, Brezner, Steinberg and Tenenbaum Entertainment.  Screenplay by Todd Graff, based on the novel by Avra Wing.  Cinematography by Johnny E. Jensen.  Produced by Roger Birnbaum, Patrick McCormick.  Music by Jerry Goldsmith.  Production Design by Mel Bourne.  Costume Design by Jane Robinson.  Film Editing by Steven Cohen.  

Based on Avra Wing’s touching novel Angie, I Says, about an Italian-American girl (Geena Davis, in a role originally written for Madonna) who has grown up in Brooklyn with her father and stepmother after her mother ran away when she was a little girl.  Angie is now in a relationship with a nice enough guy (James Gandolfini) who doesn’t fulfill her idea of herself or her life. When she discovers that she is pregnant and talk turns to marriage, she decides to break up with him and have the baby on her own, despite the difficulties that this causes. Intelligent and probing, this is yet another case of how good a director Martha Coolidge really is, and she has assembled a marvelous cast to do her proud. Screenwriter (and sometimes actor) Todd Graff has also done a fantastic job of taking Wing’s internal monologue of a novel and fleshing it out to cinematic proportions without cutting out its intimacy.