Birthpsychology at the Movies

If These Walls Could Talk
Reviewed by Vicki Jeter

Spanning three generations of middle-class American women, If These Walls Could Talk brings viewers into hauntingly intimate contact with the kaleidoscope of issues, perspectives, and emotions involved in unwanted pregnancies.

Demi Moore, Sissy Spacek, and Cher lead three separate, superb casts in bringing to light the complex considerations and seemingly impossible choices that simply must be made in the face of their varying and deeply human circumstances, each intensified by the deceptively subtle societal pressures of the day.

The first scenario, set in 1952, profiles a young married woman caught between the effects of war-torn grief and the influence of alcohol, leading to a landslide of tragic circumstances

The second scenario, set in 1974, profiles a middle-aged woman with a well-established family of four children and a policeman husband. She has just begun stretching to re-discover herself and her life beyond motherhood. She faces choices: launching her career is the head start to sending her children to college. A new baby would radically change the course of all of their lives.

The third scenario, set in 1996, brings the more contemporary "right-to-life" attitudes front and center. A young college student is carrying the child of her married professor/lover. When he spurns her, she is thrust into a double-bind between her idealistic views on abortion, and the actual prospect of motherhood for which she has no adequate means of support.

All the while, the denominator brilliantly demonstrating their common ground of humanity is the houses in which they each live--actually, the single house, one and the same, which beholds them all.

This film is highly recommended to anyone invested in the dilemma of unwanted pregnancy.



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