Writer-director Paul Schrader tells his story against a working-class background in Cleveland. The parents (Gena Rowlands and Jason Miller) have worked hard for their share of suburban respectability. The children (Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett) play every night in a rock band, and although Fox has a daytime job in a factory, Jett's life is on hold until the sun goes down; she says rock 'n' roll is the most important thing in the world, and she means it.
Because she means it, life is not very healthy for her little boy, a son born out of wedlock by a father she refuses to name. It is this child that has driven the wedge between mother and daughter. And soon he becomes the focus of her relationship with her brother. When their band goes on a tour - sometimes playing for no more than a few bucks and free drinks - the child is left in cheap motel rooms, and Fox doesn't approve of that. Jett, filled with anger and defiance, won't listen to his objections, and Fox stands by helplessly, trying to be all things to all people.
His family clearly is a matriarchy, a battleground between two strong women. The father, played by Miller as a sensitive wimp, long since has given up, and now Fox is trying to play the peacemaker, the responsible one, almost the parent. He obviously idolizes his sister (and, in a way, his mother), and so there are painful moments, very well acted, in which he hurts because he cannot help these people he loves.
The movie is subtle in its construction. Schrader doesn't telegraph his ending in the first half-hour, and indeed the movie's one fault is that it sometimes seems without a clear direction.
At first the film seems to be a blue-collar story. Then a family drama. Then a rock 'n' roll movie. But then we see the rock band is going nowhere, and the center of the story turns back to the family, after the mother becomes seriously ill. And it's the illness that provides the payoff, in strong and painful bedside scenes between Rowlands, Fox and Jett.
This mother may be sick, but she knows exactly what she's doing, and Rowlands' acting is powerfully, heartbreakingly effective. The mother uses love, truth, insight and a measure of cynical calculation in an attempt to control what will happen to her family if she dies.
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