Review

  • Rule of thumb: if it sounds like a play it should also look like a play, which is why this two-character, one-act drama doesn't work on screen in the same way it might on stage. The setting is a grubby trailer park, where a bitter young couple (Jesse is pregnant; Hank is resentful) bicker and fight in generic Southern accents for 84 minutes, until Jesse goes into labor. A third character (Hank's teenage mistress) is brought in to stretch the film's running time to feature length and to add yet more meaningful, angry dialogue, little of which has any credibility because it was written for the theater, and simply transferring the play to an actual trailer park doesn't make it sound any less contrived. Even worse, the film demands a lot of sympathy for a spiteful, infantile, philandering jerk of a husband, and for a wife who in the end promises to honor and obey him, no matter how abusive he may get, so long as he touches her in that special way that brings her closer to God.