Films involving Learning Difficulties

Learning Difficulties (Mental Retardation): Major Films no photo.

Title	About Sara (1998)
Alternative/Original Title
Disability	Learning Difficulty
Country	USA
Length	94
Genre	Drama
Rating	2
Director	?
Cast	Mary Steenburgen Kellie Martin
Notes	I'm fairly sure this was made for TV but haven't got confirmation. Watching this I had just seen Powder (see below) in which Steenburgen also stars and in which a poor lead performance makes a bad film worse. Steenburgen was her usual competent self in that film. Here she has the lead role of Sara, a grown-up woman with learning difficulties. At the beginning of the film Sara's mother has a stroke and dies and the rest of the film is about what will happen to Sara. Sara's sister arrives for the funeral and reading of the will and assumes that she will care for Sara. But the mother's will requests that Sara will be looked after by her daughter. That is, Sara's daughter, who is actually grown up and about 18 or 19. The grandmother's worry is that her second daughter would just put Sara into a home. Which is precisely what she tries to do. The dilemma for Sara's daughter, Bell, is that she wants to go to medical school and in fact she is accepted. A resolution is found by putting Sara into a group home which she shares with other people who have learning difficulties but where there is a high degree of autonomy. Now this sounds like a pretty good film but too be honest I felt let down by Steenburgen's performance. She simply isn't convincing either because she isn't a good enough actor, or she's hit the wrong note and nobody told her.

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