Scoop's notes, written in 2004:
The Turning is a movie adapted from a
play ("Home Fires Burning"), and it shows. It's a "serious drama" which
really has only five characters, in which stagy speeches are delivered
on claustrophobic sets.
A young man returns to his home town
after a four year absence. He doesn't seem to be a very happy fellow,
given his predilection for Nazi t-shirts and his ability to antagonize
everyone in town. His motivation for returning is gradually revealed to
be the simple-minded hope that he can keep his parents from divorcing,
and he plans to accomplish that by terrorizing dad's new girlfriend into
leaving. Ignoring the reality of his parents' broken relationship, he
reasons that the disappearance of the girlfriend will drive dad back
into mom's alcoholic, trailer-trash arms. The kid's world-view gives the
impression that he's not the brightest bulb on the family tree, but his
mother doesn't seem like a candidate for the Schweitzer Chair either. In
fact, she might have some trouble operating a rocking chair.
Blah, blah, blah ... Melodramatic
speeches made with knives at other people's throats. Etc. It seems like
one of those William Inge plays from the 1950s.
This film was made in 1992, pre
X-Files, and sat on the shelves unreleased for five years, waiting for
Gillian Anderson to become a big TV star, at which point it was released
to video in a box which featured a close up of Ms. Anderson tugging at
her bodice, even though she is the fifth lead, and has a part which is
not even essential to the story's main development. The film probably
would never have been released at all if Gillian had never become a
star. It has been more than a dozen years since The Turning was made,
and the auteur of this film never had another IMDb credit, either as a
writer or a director.
The film is memorable for only two
things: (1) it represented 24 year old Gillian Anderson's feature film
debut, and (2) it remained for fifteen years the only time Ms. Anderson
had removed her bra for art. Gillian did look ripe and sexy, but she did
not do an exceptional acting job in her small role, and her supposed
small-town Virginia accent is actually just some kind of Generic
Confederate via Foghorn Leghorn.
I love these facts from Gillian's IMDb
bio:
In
high school, was voted "Class Clown" and "Most Bizarre Girl". Was
voted "Most Likely to be Arrested" by her classmates in high school,
and was, in fact, arrested on graduation night for trying to glue
the locks shut at her high school.
I'll bet she is an
interesting person.
I'm certain she is more
interesting than this film.