Word: bethe
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That happens to Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer) in The Deep End of the Ocean, adapted by Stephen Schiff from Jacquelyn Mitchard's novel. In a crowded hotel lobby, she leaves little Ben in the care of his seven-year-old brother for a few minutes, and when she returns he has wandered off--or fallen off the end of the earth. A kidnapping scenario has the makings of melodrama or piety, but this carefully complex movie, directed by Ulu Grosbard, finds urgency in more ambiguous family vectors...
...Beth's husband Pat (Treat Williams) and remaining son Vincent (Cory Buck at seven, Jonathan Jackson at 16) dare to pretend that life goes on. But Beth makes a career of her guilt and grief; she builds a mausoleum for her lost child and moves into it. She sleeps all day and leaves the tending of her infant daughter to the two males in the house. In a nice vignette, young Vincent comes home, sees that his sister is being ignored, picks up her rattles and puts them in the playpen, then walks through the foyer, knocking over a vase...
...Ryan Merriman) was happy with the folks he thought were his parents. And now that he's back "home," getting bear-hugged by strangers, he wants to return to the loving man who adopted him; the boy feels he's been kidnapped twice. But really it's Beth who vanished, from herself and her family. She was the ghost, sleepwalking for years, reminding everyone that the odor of catastrophe can't be Lysoled away. Now she has her boy back. Can she give him away again...
Deep End may remind you of a "quality" TV play of the '50s: it is conscientious, delicately acted, lacking in visual flair. It is so generous to all the characters that it tends to meander. Now it's Beth's story, now Vincent's, now Sam's. It has little interest in villainy: the backstory of the kidnapping takes just moments. But in a time when there are few serious family dramas--and when those few, like Stepmom, play it shrill and sticky--the old limitations can look like cardinal virtues...
...council, both under the leadership of current president Noah Z. Seton '00, and former president Beth A. Stewart '00, has championed an evaluation and reconsideration of the College's 1995 decision to randomize student placement into housing...