Rachel, Rachel

Paul Newman is being honored tomorrow in Summer Under the Stars, and TCM has decided to include one movie where he doesn't appear, but one that he directed: Rachel, Rachel, which concludes his day at 4:15 AM Monday (August 14), so a little bit more in advance than I'd normally post an upcoming movie. But I'm also recommending one of the movies for tomorrow's star and that post comes tomorrow since the movie is fairly early in the day.

Rachel, Rachel was Paul Newman's directorial debut, and he made the film to give his wife Joanne Woodward a good starring role. Rachel Cameron is a teacher in a small Connecticut town where school is just about to let out for the summer vacation. Rachel is the old trope of the spinster teacher, but in Rachel's case it's more complicated. Her father (played in flashbacks by Donald Moffat) was the town's undertaker and died relatively young, leaving behind a sickly widow (Kate Harington) in an apartment over the funeral home. The man who bought out the funeral home lets mother and daughter stay on, although that's in part because he seems to want to put the moves on poor Rachel.

One person who wants to help Rachel is a fellow teacher and also single, Calla (Estelle Parsons). Calla, unlike Rachel, has a lot of friends, although all of them are in a fairly tight social circle as they're all members of the same church congregation. And this isn't one of those movie trope New England mainline Protestant churches, but a revivalist church that's rather more energetic. Calla thinks that perhaps introducing Rachel to her church might help Rachel, but Rachel is so repressed thanks in part to her mother that it's overwhelming.

So when an old childhood friend, Nick Kazlik (James Olmos), returns to town for a bit, Rachel jumps on the chance to meet him again. And when he wants sex, she's only too happy to do it because she's never really had love before and she knows this would really shock her mother. Rachel doesn't realize that Nick is just looking for a one-night stand, but things get even worse when Rachel doesn't have her period after sex with Nick.

The only good thing is that all of this has given Rachel the seed of a thought that perhaps she might finally want to move away. She's got a sister living out on Oregon who escaped Mom's clutches, and perhaps Rachel can move closer to her sister and start life anew....

Rachel, Rachel is really more of a character study than a movie with a fully-fleshed plot, although that's not to say the movie is plotless by any stretch of the imagination. It's more that I didn't realize going in that it was a character study, and if I had known, that probably would have tempered my disappointment somewhat as to me this was the sort of movie where I felt there's a whole lot of nothing going on, much like The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter from the same period. People who like less traditional movies will probably love Rachel, Rachel.

Paul Newman does a pretty good job directing although the movie does sometimes have the feel of a vanity project. The acting, however, is quite good throughout, especially from Woodward, but that shouldn't be surprising. Rachel, Rachel may not be fore everybody, but for the type of person who is into this movie, they'll definitely like it a lot.