Stars: Gabriel Byrne, Claire Danes, Lena Olin
This is a story about a chain smoking, blue-collar Polish family living in Detroit. There’s so much smoking in this film, in fact, that I’d swear it was financed by the entire tobacco industry.
The mother and daughter are both promiscuous and we follow their various antics, the mother with her lover and the girl with her young cop love interest.
It’s a tedious journey to the end that’s definitely not worth the trouble and the whole thing is a tremendous waste of acting talent. Gabriel Byrne plays the father, a baker, who occasionally kneads dough but mostly sits around chain smoking and does little else. It is one of the most useless performances ever filmed. Lena Olin is the mother, playing a cleaning woman, and Claire Danes is the hapless daughter. Olin actually has the meatiest role and she’s an enormously attractive woman. But the story is incredibly dumb and I kept wondering how this film got made and why.
Lotta says unless you’re Polish, or chain smoke, or have a thing about Olin or Danes, don’t bother. And even if you’re any of the above, don’t bother.