Reckless

Rachel is a housewife who has everything she could wish for, a husband, children and a home. One day she discovers a man staring at her through the window. When her husband later tells her that he has hired a murderer to liquidate her, her life collapses. She runs away from home the day before Christmas, wearing only her night-gown, to begin an Odyssey across America. The journey spans several years, with as many Christmas', in her search for security, health and Santa Claus. ''In the best of worlds...'' Much like a contemporary Candide, Rachel experiences a series of unbelievable accidents and coincidences during her journey of renunciation. She also meets a series of bizarre characters. A suspiciously sympathetic social worker called Lloyd invites her home for the weekend. Here she meets his deaf and dumb wife Pooty. Rachel immediately adopts them as a surrogate family, and tries to piece together her life again. She starts working at Hands Across the Sea, a humanitarian organisation, which results in an awful encounter with a homicidal book-keeper. After this she seeks help from a sceptical psychiatrist who insists that Rachel's nightmares are only dreams, figments of her imagination. Rachel leaves her surrogate family and continues her journey across a slightly pill-coloured USA. She meets a manic talk show host, a nun with a mysterious past and an insomniac student who may be her last link with the past, and her only hope for the future. She decides to help him in his search for his missing mother. It is only when she has no where to turn, and no reason to continue that she stops for reflection. Reckless is a comic Odyssey, a black comedy. Rachel's conception of the world stems from post-war America - meaning an inability to see life's bad points - which is her big dilemma. She travels across the country, ignoring everything negative, until she finally reaches understanding. The film captures the desperate celebration that Christmas has become, with it's high expectations for family happiness. But not everything is perfect and will never be. Not even the Christmas tree is perfect: there's always a silver ball hanging in the wrong place and then it sheds it's needles everywhere - if it's not a plastic one, of course. As the director Renè says: ''Life is reckless with people, and we have to face the good and the bad, not just pretend everything is a beautiful Christmas-tree''.

Premiärstatus
Europeisk premiär: Medverkande
Mia Farrow, Scott Glenn, Mary Louise Parker: Producent
Amy Kaufman: Manus
Craig Lucas: Foto
Fred Elmes: Talat språk
English