Crimes of the Heart

When Meg (Lange) steps off the Greyhound bus, trailing behind her a blown-out singing career and a series of failed relationships, Babe (Spacek) has just emptied a gunful of lead into her noxious senator husband, and buttoned-up, neurotic Lenny (Keaton) is singing herself 'Happy Birthday' all alone in the kitchen. The stage is set for an escalating black farce on the theme of broken dreams; but all we get, sadly, is a meandering display of half-hearted Mississippi drawl as these three dizzy sisters wander from room to room trading reminiscence and recrimination. Symptomatically, it is only when Meg and her old flame (Shepard) take off to the bayou that the movie starts to sing. Elsewhere, Beresford fails to generate sufficient chemistry to bind the performances. Occasional bursts of delicious tragic humour nevertheless make this a not unlikeable 'feminist' mood piece.