SAVING MARY ALICE

Directed by Susan Bohl

With a strong performance by Carolyn Josephine Wright in the lead role as Diane, Saving Mary Alice falls entirely on her shoulders as a mother willing to do all it takes to protect her daughter, Mary Alice (Sarah Marie Currey) and she carries the film well. I feel her pain immensely. I understand what's led her to this point of purchasing that handgun and taking the time to learn how to use it properly (or so I thought).

Director, Susan Bohl does a great job with these performances and conveying these key elements of grief at the right times. There's also a very effective use of Flashback around the 7-minute mark that gives you all the necessary background to truly feel for these two women.

At its core, this film is about a battered mother being forced to watch her daughter make the same, if not worse, mistakes that she herself experienced. Pain passed down from one generation to the next. This portrayal of generational abuse is the film's greatest strength behind Wright's performance. I only wish by the end it had followed through on this journey, and arrived at a more deserved conclusion.

Ultimately, Saving Mary Alice was a difficult film for me to get through and this is almost entirely due to the edit I was presented with. The film unfortunately crawls it's way to an ending that plays out more like a political statement on guns in the home rather than a more natural, deserved conclusion. It doesn't help much that the abusive boyfriend is incredibly miscast. With the 'monster at the end of the book' approach the film takes building this character up, I feel like a little more care could've been put into his casting and performance. Going back to the political statement reference, this could have also been a dialogue issue.

However, Saving Mary Alice was not a total misfire. There's a good film in here somewhere, but a tighter edit and a narrower focus could have made it a great one. This remains a promising start (or continuation) for writer/director-duo Wright & Bohl. I'm truly looking forward to what they come up with next.

-DJ Ford