Jane's House

This is a beautiful tv movie back when they regularly made beautiful tv movies. It is about a widower of two children who meets a single business woman and how they get married. What distinguishes this is a loving, realistic look at loss, marriage, and people being able to go on with their lives. The movie is called Jane's House, Jane being the dead wife. She is almost a character in the movie, represented by her beautiful, warm home which becomes a home of conflict as the children do not take well to a new mom. Most of all, the music is great and so is Anne Archer's performance of an interesting, beautiful woman who unexpectedly falls in love and the sacrifices she makes to help her husband move on with living. Over all, extremely well done.

This is a great film, were it in the box office it would have been a big hit. It plays like a classic 1950s melodrama. The various metaphors around the house resonate constantly. Part of its greatness is the machination of James Woods performance playing a house-dad with a haunted past being larger than the screen. His pain and resilience counters with the woman, who is one of the saddest characters I've seen. Middle aged romance has far different stakes that films seldom explore. There are so many subtle items of commentary here. The Barry Bonds cameo shows the power of love can do the impossible, that we are in a universe of miracles. The most powerful moment in the movie is entirely visual, it is the stark difference between his suburban home and the tennis star's gothic cathedral city flat; her place is like where the yuppies in the Devil's Advocate hang out. Further, every time we see her at work, she hates them. Counter this to how the major beats are in Woods' home, the boy hiding in the secret basement, their eventual ability to clear the house out. Such subtle commentary points to a bigger picture of her, beyond her being, just a little too perfect, an angel come out of heaven to solve his problems. The interesting thing about Woods' movies is that I can always see elements why they interested him. They are never just outright junk, there is always some level of art to it that he is bringing out.