Mildred Pearce! Avoid!

[Guest guest]

Oh My God! Why oh why did I do this??

I bought this HBO Miniseries for my mother as a gift for her birthday. I didn't

know anything about it, just that it won awards, and was a depression era

miniseries about a single mother. I thought it would appeal to her. It did. She

LOVED it. Loved it so much that she insisted on giving it to me to watch. Which

I just finished the third episode, and right now I am so sick to my stomach!

Read the below review excerpt to understand why. I GAVE THIS TO MY NADA!!!! She

already thinks it's all my fault and she's a saint and I'm the evil child. I

just gave it to her in film! Argh!

" The miniseries is the story of how Mildred (Winslet) goes from being a

destitute, divorced single mom to a successful (and promiscuous) businesswoman,

always struggling to win the respect and love of her horribly snooty daughter

Veda. And as played first by , then in the final two chapters by

Evan Wood, Veda is so radiantly unpleasant that only a complete sap would

fail to see that she's rotten to the core and not worth so much sacrifice and

angst. Parental love can blind you to your kid's faults for a while, but not for

year after year, not after everything Veda says and does over the course of the

story.

And as played by Winslet, Mildred is very far from a sap. She's a tough cookie,

savvy negotiator and survivalist - the material about her rise from desperate

waitress to thriving restaurateur is the miniseries' highlight - and she doesn't

even play her as if she has a blind spot for her eldest daughter. There's scene

after scene of Mildred looking like she knows just how toxic Veda is, yet the

demands of the story require her to again and again make decisions that fly

against what we can see on Winslet's face. It's supposed to be a tale of

maternal obsession, but instead 90% of the miniseries features a wise character

who randomly becomes self-destructively in thrall to her emotional vampire of a

daughter for the other 10%.