MOMMIE DEAREST (1981)
Melodrama horror telling the true story of a child’s attempts to escape her psychotic and abusive mother, the famous actress Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway).
This is one of the more powerful movie I’ve seen about child abuse. The real triumph here, I think, is the wonderful empathy shown to Crawford by Faye Dunaway and by the writer and director. It would be easy to portray the monstrous Joan Crawford as a caricature. But the movie manages to show her in all her complexity. And I think it bravely faces the depths of misery and darkness behind a mother’s abuse of her child.
