The couple involved seem like a typical middle class couple. She is a registered nurse with plans to go to medical school. Her husband - I don't think the film ever mentions his legitimate profession. But he is at the beginning of an eight year sentence in a federal penitentiary for gun running.
When we first meet the young couple they are talking in the visiting room at the prison. You can touch and embrace when you first meet, but NO KISSING! She is trying to encourage him. She will put her plans on hold so she can talk to him every night and see him every weekend. She tells him to keep one phrase in his head "five years good time", the shortest sentence he can do if he just stays out of trouble. Since the gun running was his only run in with the law, she figures this is a piece of cake. But it isn't.
So much of the film is just the camera pointed at the wife - her face is so expressive you almost don't need words. You see the daily ennui of her life. You see her dealing with her dysfunctional relatives, doing a job she is good at - registered nurse - but wanting more, going through papers she has neatly filed away readying for his release. And then some good news. After just four years there will be a parole hearing. At first their original lawyer says she is not available. The truth is she wants half of the money upfront. This is just like a lawyer. They want to sweep unpleasant confrontations based on capitalism under the rug, but Ruby (the wife) gets the truth out of the lawyer, and gets her to agree to appear at the parole hearing. Ruby manages to scrape together the money the attorney wants.
The parole hearing is a disaster. Apparently Ruby's husband Derek has been involved in one assault and is named as the instigator in a second. Then comes what Ruby was not prepared to hear. Derek has been sexually involved with a now fired female guard. We never see or even hear Derek's side of things. His lawyer just keeps mentioning "no charges were ever filed" as Derek's defense. It's artful how the film lets the audience fill in what happened. Here is a middle class guy, with probable minimal street smarts, among men who probably did not get here by dropping out of Sunday school. So his parole hearing is basically civilized people in civilized society measuring Derek's behavior in prison by civilized standards when prison is the law of the jungle.
This is where the actress playing Ruby should have won an Academy Award. With just the expression on her face, at the parole hearing, she goes from the optimism of somebody about to greet someone returning from a long journey, to the dazed face of someone who realizes she has endured four years of deferred dreams and celibacy for somebody she might not even know anymore. Her face falls like a cake in an oven. Hey, if Luise Rainer could get Best Actress in 1936 for what amounts to one phone call in "The Great Ziegfeld", what about this?? The next time Ruby and Derek meet - and it is a few weeks - Ruby is a changed woman. She has a harder look on her face, and even a harder looking hairdo. Before she has been all smiles - almost angelic in appearance. Not anymore. What transpired since the parole hearing? What does she tell Derek? I'll let you watch and find out. Highly recommended.
When we first meet the young couple they are talking in the visiting room at the prison. You can touch and embrace when you first meet, but NO KISSING! She is trying to encourage him. She will put her plans on hold so she can talk to him every night and see him every weekend. She tells him to keep one phrase in his head "five years good time", the shortest sentence he can do if he just stays out of trouble. Since the gun running was his only run in with the law, she figures this is a piece of cake. But it isn't.
So much of the film is just the camera pointed at the wife - her face is so expressive you almost don't need words. You see the daily ennui of her life. You see her dealing with her dysfunctional relatives, doing a job she is good at - registered nurse - but wanting more, going through papers she has neatly filed away readying for his release. And then some good news. After just four years there will be a parole hearing. At first their original lawyer says she is not available. The truth is she wants half of the money upfront. This is just like a lawyer. They want to sweep unpleasant confrontations based on capitalism under the rug, but Ruby (the wife) gets the truth out of the lawyer, and gets her to agree to appear at the parole hearing. Ruby manages to scrape together the money the attorney wants.
The parole hearing is a disaster. Apparently Ruby's husband Derek has been involved in one assault and is named as the instigator in a second. Then comes what Ruby was not prepared to hear. Derek has been sexually involved with a now fired female guard. We never see or even hear Derek's side of things. His lawyer just keeps mentioning "no charges were ever filed" as Derek's defense. It's artful how the film lets the audience fill in what happened. Here is a middle class guy, with probable minimal street smarts, among men who probably did not get here by dropping out of Sunday school. So his parole hearing is basically civilized people in civilized society measuring Derek's behavior in prison by civilized standards when prison is the law of the jungle.
This is where the actress playing Ruby should have won an Academy Award. With just the expression on her face, at the parole hearing, she goes from the optimism of somebody about to greet someone returning from a long journey, to the dazed face of someone who realizes she has endured four years of deferred dreams and celibacy for somebody she might not even know anymore. Her face falls like a cake in an oven. Hey, if Luise Rainer could get Best Actress in 1936 for what amounts to one phone call in "The Great Ziegfeld", what about this?? The next time Ruby and Derek meet - and it is a few weeks - Ruby is a changed woman. She has a harder look on her face, and even a harder looking hairdo. Before she has been all smiles - almost angelic in appearance. Not anymore. What transpired since the parole hearing? What does she tell Derek? I'll let you watch and find out. Highly recommended.