At a recent screening of the movie Mothers and Daughters, Tantoo Cardinal, one of the "mothers" in the movie gave a short talk in which she told us that the movie was not tightly scripted; rather the actors worked out their own characters and then improvised the dialogue as they went along. This would explain the intensity of the mother-daughter interactions—watching the movie feels like being at the center of a series of mini-tempests—and the rawness (and wonderfulness) of the acting. The shot of the back side of Gabrielle Rose, who plays an agitated middle-aged, middle-class mother who has left way too much of her life up to her husband, as she retches into the kitchen sink with complete abandon, is not one I will soon forget and the unforgiving confrontations between the characters played by Babz Chula (the mother) and Camille Sullivan (the daughter) made me glad I have three sisters with whom I share my mother’s attention.

In fact, one of the things I took away from this film is the burden that is carried by only children (none of the three daughters in the movie has siblings): imagine having no one to commiserate with when your mom (or dad for that matter) is being completely unfair, unreasonable and whacked out!