WRITER/director Thom Fitzgerald’s dramatic road-movie comedy begins in Maine in a clapboard house where Stella (Olympia Dukakis) and Dorothy (Brenda Fricker) have for 31 years enjoyed a committed loving relationship undiminished by Dorothy’s blindness.
After falling from bed during a frolic, Dorothy comes to the attention of bureaucracy which commits her to a hospice. Stella’s not standing for that. She removes Dorothy and the pair set off in a red Ford ute with the intention of getting married in Canada.
En route they pick up young hitch-hiker Prentice (Ryan Doucette) trying to get to his mother’s funeral in Nova Scotia. The film becomes pretty much a three-header. Stella’s a feisty lady who rejects masculine intrusion into her life. One of the film’s best passages is when, hitchhiking while Prentice drives Dorothy through Canadian border control, Stella tells like it is for her in the matter of the engine driving her sexual life, using vocabulary a family paper cannot repeat.
Not enough people know that in 1992, George Miller brought Dukakis to Oz to make “Over the Hill”. A relatively late bloomer, she carries strong films with distinction. Her sardonic comic style is worth bottling.
“Cloudburst” has won numerous audience and jury awards. It looks good, the story is warm and engaging and the cast is first rate. And its portrayal of lesbian emotions is convincing, which is a good reason for men to see it.
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