Films involving General Conditions

General: Minor Films no photo.

Title	Her Own Rules (1998)
Alternative/Original Title
Disability	General Terminal illness
Country	USA
Length	83
Genre	Drama
Rating	2
Director	Bobby Roth
Cast	Melissa Gilbert Jean Simmons
Notes	Let me say straightaway you can give this a miss because the dying friend is a red herring. Sepia prints, filtered sky lines, beautiful scenery, beautiful women and beautiful cars this is the alphabet soup produced from a BTB blockbuster. An American woman who runs a hotel chain comes to England to visit an old friend. But there's bad news from the friend "There's no easy way to say this, I'm dying". Well, there is, she's said it. Alas, she then drifts out of the picture dying or dead we don't know because this film is about the American researching her roots. The dying friend is black, the heroine is white and this dredging into her past with all its sepia flashbacks is about something mysterious and murky. But what a charming route she takes through the beautiful English countryside in her beautiful BMW sports car. At one point as she searches for her mother's grave she talks to a guy in a wheelchair sitting in the middle of a field of sheep. Fact one : getting a wheelchair across a field of grass under our own steam is pretty difficult. And wheelchairs crop up again because her mother isn't dead. And the found mother tells a rather complicated story of how she worked as a carer to a woman who was in a wheelchair after falling off a horse. Also this woman couldn't have children. Fact two: often women who use wheelchairs can have children (the wheelchair using woman in Notting Hill is also not able to have children). I think we deserve a gynaecological explanation for this to distinguish those in wheelchairs who can, and those who can't. Otherwise filmgoers are going to imagine that all women in wheelchairs can't have children and thus feel even sorrier for them. Anyway the woman got pneumonia, asked her carer to sleep with her husband and bear fruit. Even further plot twists follow but all ends well and mother and daughter are reconciled. Nice to see Jean Simmons. I've never read BTB but I'll bet horses feature in all her books. From novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford

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