One True Thing

　　这不是一部关于圣诞节的电影，但其中的圣诞场景会让你更贴近人物的心，更深地领会这个节日的精神所在。电影中，妈妈在病痛中挣扎、爸爸却难以接受一个不再能照料家庭的主妇；女儿突然发现，身为大学教授的爸爸是个如此自私的人……

Your heart will go out to the characters just as your hand reaches for a tissue. "One True Thing," an adult drama about how cancer changes the lives of a family, is a true weeper.

Told in flashback segments, the story centers on Ellen, a young political reporter for a New York magazine. Ellen finds her mother, Kate, a sort of embarrassment. Kate is always decorating Christmas trees, cooking terrific meals and in general being a supermom.

Ellen arrives home for her dad´s birthday party, which Kate has planned as a surprise costume event. Ellen´s dad George is a college professor and a writer himself. And it´s obvious that Ellen and her father share a closeness that she does not share with her mother. Ellen doesn´t want to be like her mother, so bustling with her cheerfulness and her women´s group projects.

When Kate goes to the doctor, she ends up having cancer surgery in a hospital. George demands that Ellen take a leave of absence from her job and come home to help care for her mother. Despite Ellen´s protests, she finally comes home, and finds that her mother really is critically ill. She also discovers that her father can be self-absorbed and that Kate has more depth and strength than Ellen ever imagined.

No one can bring tears to a viewer´s eyes like Meryl Streep, and her performance is sure to do just that this time -- in the audience in which I was a part, chokes and sobs were audible practically all the way through the show.

This is an interesting, true-to-life drama that examines a family trying to survive changes any of use could face someday. Rated PG-13, the show isn´t actually about Christmas, but there´s a wonderful Christmas scene that will bring the spirit of the season clsoer to your heart.

重点词汇

self-absorbed  a. 热衷于自己想法的

weeper  n. 哭泣者	tissue  n. 棉纸
cancer  n. 癌	flashback  n. 倒叙
bustling  a. 忙乱的	protest  n. 抗议
choke  v. 窒息, 哽住, 哽咽	sob  v. 呜咽, 哭泣