Father Michael McKinnon goes from the UK to Boston circa 1935. For unknown reasons, he avoids at all costs the most prominent parishioners, Arthur and Eleanor Barret. Meanwhile Eleanor and Arthur desperately want to have a child, but Arthur is sterile, so they hire Harvard law student Roger Martin to impregnate Eleanor, but unfortunately Roger falls in love with her.
Acting
Branagh's priest—repressed, sweating, devastating.
Direction
Glatter makes period Boston feel suffocatingly intimate.
Costume
Eleanor's silks vs. Michael's collar—visual forbidden touch.
Director
Lesli Linka Glatter
Madeleine Stowe
Eleanor Barret
Kenneth Branagh
Father Michael McKinnon
William Hurt
Arthur Barret
Robert Loggia
Hannibal Thurman
Blythe Danner
Syril Danning
Ken Cheeseman
Wayne Fenton
Dee Nelson
Susan Vicar
Pamela Hart
Skip Taylor
Neil Patrick Harris
Roger Martin
Josef Sommer
Dryer
Dossy Peabody
Hannibal's Secretary
Wendy Feign
Maid
Thomas Downey
Torrey Harrington
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was Lesli Linka Glatter's theatrical feature debut after acclaimed TV work including Twin Peaks—explaining the dreamlike dread.
The 'stud fee' premise reflects real 1930s upper-class fertility arrangements, rarely depicted onscreen with this much class critique.
US
