King Lear updated and upended from a feminist point of view. More exactly, King Lear as it might play out if re-set in the modern-day Midwest and if the deteriorating patriarch had molested his two older daughters in their early teens. Who were once bad, that is to say, are now good, and vice versa. Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer, our revisionist Goneril and Regan, may well constitute what is known in the world of sports as a "marquee matchup," but they are incurably miscast as lifelong farmer's daughters and, later, farmers' wives -- especially Pfeiffer, whose surgically chiselled visage would be easier to believe had sprung from the plains of Uranus than from those of Iowa. The trick shot of her single-breasted torso in the oncologist's office only inflames our suspicions. Lange, on the other hand, with her semi-operatic, semi-sloshed vocal style, is out of place mainly in manner. The latter handles the elucidating narration, while the former gets the best speech: the bitter spoonful of deathbed wisdom. Based on the novel by Jane Smiley; with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jason Robards, Keith Carradine, Kevin Anderson, Colin Firth, Pat Hingle; directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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