Apropos - The Good Mother 1988

 

A clip is shown while the host is introducing the film's theme: A mother and her daughter. Diane Keaton plays Anna who is divorced and tries to bring up her daughter in a natural way. When she gets to know Leo she discovers a passion she's never had with her husband. Molly, her daughter should grow up without being ashamed of her sexuality. When she tells Anna's former husband that she has seen Leo naked, her ex-husband files a lawsuit against her.
Director Nimoy: "She's not a heroine who fights the system for a good cause. In the opposite. She must find a possibility to live with it... What the mother and her friend experience in this film is the experience of people who are living with the moral attitudes of the sixties, but who are living in the eighties. They are confronted with the mentality and the legal system of the eighties. In this film the jury represents the society of today. And something which was more acceptable in the sixties is judged now."

"I think the films says: We are going back more into tradition. We have become more careful when it comes to directness and openness. It is about whether we are ready to accept motherhood and sexuality in the same person. If a couple gets divorced and the father and husband moves out and the child stays with the mother, we accept that this man will be sexually active further on. We have a vague image of the woman as the mother only. We don't see her as a being with her own sexuality. This is why it is a very important theme the film is talking about."