How to Make an American Quilt

Plot synopsis:
In the present day 26 year old history graduate student Finn contemplates marriage. She decides to return to Grasse, California for the summer where eight members of a quilting group, some of whom she is related to, are sewing a free-form crazy quilt for her wedding.
=== The Flower Girls ===
Sisters Glady Joe and Hy (short for Gladiola Josephine and Hyacinth) are sisters who live together now that they are both widowed. Glady Joe was married to Arthur Cleary, but as the years wore on they discovered that they had more of a platonic friendship and the two stopped having sex.
In their 50s, James Dodd, Hy's husband, became ill with ALS. He soon needs to be confined permanently to a hospital. Hy finds herself thinking that she hopes he will die soon and becomes frustrated with herself, abruptly leaving the hospital. She calls Glady Joe's husband Arthur and orders him to drive her as far out of town as possible. Watching her take a nap Arthur is struck by her similarity with his wife and kisses her. Hy awakens and the two have sex. They then return to Glady Joe's home where she immediately realizes what has happened and becomes infuriated with her husband, smashing things and throwing them at her husband. She then begins to tile the walls with the objects she has smashed. Finally feeling she cannot forgive her sister Glady Joe goes to the hospital intending to tell James about the affair but seeing him and her sister together she has a change of heart and decides to forgive Hy and Arthur.
=== Sophie Darling ===
When she is 17 and diving at a public pool Sophia Darling is spotted by Preston Richards, a young college student. He asks her out on a date and she takes him to a quarry where he watches her dive and then the two have sex. Preston believes that he has fallen in love with her and tells Sophia he wants to be a geologist while she dreams of travelling with him and swimming all around the world. However Sophia is impregnated after her first sexual encounter and the two settle down in Grasse and both have unhappy lives, never able to travel the way they wanted to. The couple have three children; Duff, who wants to go to school and have a career, Preston junior who is very close to his mother, and Edie, who, when she is 16 also conceives a child. Sophia tries to force Edie to marry the father of her child but when she refuses she sends her away to have the child and then give it up for adoption. In her 9th month Edie runs away to live with Duff who now works in Chicago.
=== String of Pearls ===
Constance Saunders is solitary woman who married her husband Howell in her early 30s. Accustomed to being alone she was happy when they had no children and moved around because of Howell's job as a travelling salesman. When the couple moved to Grasse Howell eventually retired and stayed at home and while Constance was initially annoyed she later came to enjoy this period of their life. However Howell died shortly after leaving Constance alone. Dean, Em's husband, began to stop by her house after Howell's death, initially on the pretext of helping her with things around the house but later just to reminisce as they were both born and raised on the East Coast and missed the changing of the seasons. Though the entire quilting circle believes they are having an affair they do not, however one night as Dean is going home he turns on his car radio and hears the song String of Pearls and dances with Constance in the street, whereas she realizes she misses physical affection and backs away from Dean for a brief period.
=== Umbrellas Will Not Help at All ===
Em Reed is eaten up by jealousy believing that Constance is having an affair with her husband Dean though her friends in the quilting circle try to reassure her. Unbeknownst to them Dean, who is a painter, repeatedly had affairs throughout their marriage, at first with one of the students at the community college where he taught and then with some other women. The second time he had an affair Em left him only to discover she was pregnant. Dean pursued her throughout her pregnancy and they reunited when she was seven months pregnant. Unable to bear the thought of him having another affair with Constance, Em decides to finally leave but before she goes she enters Dean's studio which she has never entered before. She comes across portraits of herself throughout the years and realizes she cannot leave a man who understands her so thoroughly.
=== Outdoors ===
Corrina Amurri and Hy Dodd have their firstborn children, two boys, within weeks of each other. The boys, Laury Amurri and Will Dodd, grow up like brothers. Corrina, who married her husband Jack just before the Second World War is proud of her son, but upset, when he goes to fight in the Vietnam War. Will, inspired by Dean Reed, defers to go to college as an art student. Away at school Will begins to call Corrina. Jack meanwhile begins sleeping outdoors as his son being at war is giving him residual PTSD. Laury goes MIA and Jack tells Corrina he hopes that he is not taken prisoner as that would be the worse thing. Corrina goes to dinner with Hy where Will is home on vacation. Though his parents disapprove of him and think he is on drugs Corrina thinks they are lucky to have him at home and alive. When Corrina becomes overwhelmed she goes out to the garden where Will tells her that he feels as if he is missing his better half now that Laury is at war and he calls Corrina because he misses him so terribly. Corrina decides to leave the party and walk home. She and Jack later learn that their son was killed in action.
=== Tears Like Diamond Stars ===
Anna Neale is a mixed raced child of black and white parentage who is raised by her aunt Pauline who works as a domestic for a wealthy couple during the 1930s. Pauline has a family quilt which shows the history of the family which is called The Life Before. The Mrs of the house covets the quilt but Pauline refuses to sell it to her. She eventually caves when Anna is a teenager as she wants to buy her a telescope to foster her interest in astrology. Anna is horrified and Pauline comes to regret her choice, especially as the Mrs has the quilt mounted and Pauline must look at it every day as she cleans. When Anna is 16 she takes the quilt and runs away.
Anna goes to work for wealthy ranchers. When their young son who is Anna's age comes to visit he is enamoured of her and the two sleep together resulting in Anna becoming pregnant. Knowing that, because he is white, the rancher's son will never marry her she leaves again. She goes to Grasse where the Reubens take in "wayward girls" until they can have their children and give them up for adoption.
The Reubens have two children, Glady Joe and Hy. Glady Joe tries to befriend Anna and eventually succeeds, reading her Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, which Anna enjoys, and other works by white authors like Henry Miller and Leo Tolstoy which Anna does not. Pauline begins sending Anna stories by Zora Neale Hurston and other black writers and Anna reads them to Glady Joe.
Anna has her baby, Marianna, and does not give her up. She gets a job working as an accountant but is bored. When Glady Joe marries and has children she asks Anna to come to work for her and the two eventually form the quilting circle with Anna as the head quilter. Years later as they are looking at old family pictures together Anna regrets not allowing herself to be photographed more as she realizes that, despite her reluctance, she has come to be heavily involved with Glady Joe and her family.

Tags: romantic, flashback

Review:
When Berkeley graduate student Finn decides to spend some time away from her live-in boyfriend, and moves in with her grandmother and great aunt for the summer, while finishing her master's thesis, she gets an important and heart-warming lesson about love and commitment.
Finn's grandmother and great aunt are members of a quilting bee, and their group (whose members have known each other for a long time) decide that their latest project should have the theme of "where love resides." As the quilt is made, each woman remembers significant events in their lives which relate to love and the joy and pain that it brings.
Some of the women have been cheated on, some have done the cheating, while others just let love die.Along the way, Finn faces temptation in the form of Leon, a smoldering hunk who pursues her in spite of knowing that she is taken.
At the same time, Finn must come to terms with her parents' failed marriage, as she decides whether to accept her boyfriend's marriage proposal.Inspite of the pains that the women have suffered in the name of love, the movie does not in any way bash love or marriage (which has recently become popular).
The thing with American Quilt, which you will especially notice if you have already read the book, is that it has a lot of contents to deal with in the ranges of a feature film.
But Jocelyn Moorehouse obviously wanted to pack all the magic of the small stories of the women into this film, she wanted an entire quilt, full of bits and parts.
The serious young eccentric, a worried, messed-up hippie girl, confronts her future, her past and her present (dealing with gorgeous Johnathon Schaech chasing her with smiles and strawberries), when she dives into the life- and love stories told to her by the women in her grandmother´s quilting circle.
See the torture of love, the journeys of women and the revelations of grief and new beginnings, see what they hold dear, what will always stay with them, and learn what Fynn eventually comes to terms with: That life is not about perfection, it´s about balance, about putting the small things together, just like a quilt.
As she takes the summer away from him to write a thesis and stay with her Grandmother and Great Aunt, she finds them in the middle of making a quilt for her wedding.
For me it was never more than a series of plot devices stitched together (ha ha) to form an unsatisfying story.Winona Ryder is always a pleasure to watch.
The Alfre Woodard story is the only variation, and as a result, the only interesting one among them.And of course Winona Ryder's Finn has a similar problem.
There are only two reasons to watch this film: Winona Ryder's wonderful (as usual) performance, and Janusz Kaminski's spectacular cinematography.Ryder breathes life into Finn Dodd, portraying her as a charming, intelligent, and highly sensitive young woman struggling to define what love and commitment mean to her.
Like The Joy Luck Club and Waiting to Exhale, this film portrays men as little more than duplicitous, moronic, emotionally immature children who are incapable of either expressing true love or loyalty.
It is a completely shallow look at adult human relationships and has nothing new or profound to say about anything.As a male supporter of feminism and feminist artistic expression, it saddens me that films like this are, first of all, even made, and then marketed as movies that modern women should see and even cherish.
This adaptation by screenwriter Jane Anderson (novel by Whitney Otto) presents us with a character named Finn Dodd (Ryder), a 26-year old college student who has just gotten engaged to her long-time sweetheart Sam (Mulroney).
During her tenure, she continues working on her master's thesis (a project of which she continuously changes her topic), all the while listening to the quilting bee's romantic horror stories as they craft Finn's wedding quilt.
Little does she know that these two young women will remain in her life for years afterward, their interest and skill in the art of quilting mounting over the years by Anna's guidance.There is also the story of Hy and Glady Jo themselves and their unspoken bitterness towards each other - we learn that Hy is the reason for Glady Jo's `self-expression' all over the walls of the laundry room.
Where as once I could not relate, I find myself agreeing with many of Finn's thoughts and opinions on marriage upon becoming engaged - this includes a question in the very beginning that Ryder's voiceover poses to the audience: `How do you merge into this thing called 'a couple', and still keep a little room for yourself?
Winona Ryder is so-so (as she is in most of her movies) as Finn but she does manage to touch a few nerves with her dark and luminous eyes - those pretty peepers are half of her dramatic capacity.
Dermot Mulroney always seems to play a nice guy that gets taken for granted (The Thing Called Love, My Best Friend's Wedding, Point Of No Return, etc.) and he does it again here - actis repeatus, you might say.
Maya Angelou does fine as Anna and some of Gen X's more popular faces make brief appearances in supporting roles (Claire Danes, Samantha Mathis, Jared Leto and Jonathan Schaech).This film is a fairly even script-to-screen production and will please many that seek a decent character study.
Based off the Whitney Otto novel, How to Make an American Quilt shows the audience a confused woman and the journey she takes to find herself as she talks to the women in her knitting group.
If you like those kinds of "girl power" movies like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood or Fried Green Tomatoes, you'll definitely want to watch this one.I don't happen to like those kinds of movies, so despite the large cast—Winona Ryder, Afre Woodard, Jean Simmons, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Maya Angelou, and Kate Nelligan—I didn't like this movie.
Winona Ryder spends a summer with her aunts while writing her thesis and deciding whether to marry her fiancée Dermot Mulroney.
The real pleasure is seeing a bunch of pros (Ellen Burnstyn, Anne Bancroft, Winona Ryder, etc) act with a talented then-unknown cast (Jonathan Schaech, Claire Danes, Mulroney, etc etc)...
I like romantic and affecting movies, and can even support feminism if it's presented in the right way, but it was obvious right from the start that this film was aimed at the fairer sex; especially women who are 'survivors'.I felt totally excluded.
An effort to try and make it appealing, regardless of what group you identify with, would have gone a long way.The only reason I tuned in initially was for a glimpse of the lovely Miss Ryder, most likely the source of that minimal male enjoyment I was talking about earlier.
From the needle of a great, star-laden ensemble, the patterns have been carefully but imaginatively sown into the wool - from a powerful exploration of human relationships to the torture of love, the journeys of women and the revelations of grief and new beginnings - there are many materials and colours used to form this quilt, and there is something that will appeal to everyone.
Just like an American quilt, you too seem to become apart of the amazing, cathartic story lines, which weave together to make this cinematic masterpiece.
How to Make an American Quilt is a nice comfortable movie, and unlike so many other films belonging to the 'coming of age' genre, it doesn't leave the viewer feeling emotionally drained.
This evokes something different for each of the women, all of whom - in artificially contrived tete-a-tetes - explain to Finn the story behind their contributions to the quilt.
None of the characters were boring, but they were predictable.This is the story of a young woman named Finn, who is working on her third attempt at a Master's thesis and has just been proposed to by her boyfriend.
Her grandmother, aunt and their quilting circle get together to make Finn's wedding quilt, and share stories of their past (and current) loves.Some of the acting is quite good; I especially liked Gena Rowlands and Anne Bancroft.
I'm sure the movie didn't do the original story justice.On the positive side, there is the nice use of flashbacks into different times and places; and I think this movie was just as much about how men relate to women as it was about women trying to deal with their men.This film also features Winona (once again) narrating herself; a technique that is beginning to wear on my nerves.
Though it seems apparent that this film could have gone in one of many directions, the director chose an enjoyable and fairly plausible one.Every one "cheats" in their marriage is pretty much the theme, but forgiveness completes the circle broken by infidelity.The story telling devices are simple---easy to follow and on some level "wonderous" to behold.
Filled with veterans, (Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, Jean Simmons) recognizable character actors, (Rip Torn, Holland Taylor, Esther Rolle, Alfre Woodard), hot young adult stars (Winona Ryder, Dermot Mulroney, Samantha Mathis), some up-and-comers (Jared Leto, Claire Danes, Johnathon Schaech), and a poet (Maya Angelou), How to Make an American Quilt is an inspiring movie about a young college student staying during the summer at her aunt's house with many of that aunt's friends sewing a quilt while sharing memories of their young lives that provide material for the young woman's college paper.
Bride-to-be Finn Dodd (Winona Ryder) hears tales of romance and sorrow from her elders as they construct a quilt.Is this a chick flick or something more?
Then as the main plot line draws to a conclusion, the thread that binds these stories together resolves each individual facet, to complete the whole.Quilting as I understand it, is bringing many contributions together to create a final product.
(i.e. the "where love reside" them of the quilt.At the end of the day, I expect a movie such as this to tell a good story.
So putting all the artistic crap aside, this movie had a nice little story, and it was a decent way to spend a few hours..
They talk about Finn's quest for discovery, or lessons she learned but fail to tell you what the lesson is.Most of the women in the movie have been cheated on.
Finn suspects her fiancee is cheating (but the movie never bothers to find out for sure) Finn's aunt slept with Finn's grandfather (both aunt and grandmother are in the quilting circle) One woman's husband is a serial cheater, and one of the other women in the circle is one of his conquests.
Who would you choose?"The movie takes many flashbacks as it tells the stories of the various women's heart breaking pasts.
Quilts are patch works, but I would like a story to have better flow.Finn is a mess of neuroses.
I spend most of the movie wishing Finn would move the story along quicker instead of talking about essentially the same thing over and over again.
You find yourself both loving and hating the choices that Finn, and the many other women in the film have made.
The film portrays in narrative and relatively long flashback sequences, the life stories (from the 1940-1990 time period) of the various characters weaving a quilt for the main character, a young soon-to-be-married girl.Several story lines were a little sad, but there was a reality to the portrayals.
Winona Ryder, Maya Angelou, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Alfre Woodard, Rip Torn, Kate Nelligan, Samantha Mathis...
Winona Ryder plays a 26-year-old Masters student who decided to take a break from her fiance by finishing her sociology thesis on American culture and writing it on her grandmother's (Ellen Burstyn) quilting bee.
She plays Finn Dodd, a Berkeley grad student writing her thesis on the lives of the quilt makers while debating a marriage proposal.
From a woman's point of view-and this film is clearly from a woman's POV-I suspect she is correct.The quilt symbolizes the human institutions and the social and political bonding that enable women to collar their animal nature and live in harmony with others.Memorable are the oaks and the orange groves and the rolling hills of the California countryside; a black crow that hops; a wind devil that tumbles a white plastic chair and blows the pages of Finn's thesis out the door; and an old Ann Bancroft stoned on marijuana and cognac.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!).
How To Make an American Quilt is a 1995 movie whose plot is based on a novel.
The idea of Finn is to take a time to think and escape her grandmother's house over the summer with a plausible excuse, for working on her master's thesis.
The movie is not only focus on Finn but also on the stories of several women.
During Finn stay the house, she is told and shares their story.One bad thing of this movie is that it is not for males because it is mostly about woman.
The quilt is a gift for Finn's wedding, and is a labor of love among a group of women whose lives are intertwined in the northern California wine country, each of them sewing a panel that expresses the theme, "Where love resides." But love resides in many different places among these women  from sisters Glady Jo and Hy, entertainingly played by Bancroft and Burstyn, who are exactly the kinds of aunts anyone would like to have in their family, to the prickly Em (Simmons), and the unconventional Constance (Nelligan).
This movie centers around a young woman, named Finn, who has cold feet about getting married and so cheats on her fiancé.
You see the grandmother and her sister belong to a group of women who are making a quilt for Finn.
Near the beginning of the movie, Finn (played by Winona Ryder) offers this rather drab and depressing observation: "love sometimes dies." Well, sure - and I suppose most of us have been present at its death at some point in our lives, but I don't know that I want to have to be in on the autopsy afterward.
Finn is a young college student writing a master's thesis who gets engaged and then promptly heads off to stay with her grandma and aunt and their friends for an entire summer while they make her wedding quilt.
They've all failed at love in one way or another (or, more usually, the men they loved failed them) and they end up getting poor Finn to the point of wanting to back out on her own wedding.From my perspective none of the performances here were particularly memorable (including Ryder's) and the characters not all that interesting or memorable.
Finn learns how making life choices is much like making a quilt..
It really is an exceptional story and the movie treats it very well.The main character is played by Winona Ryder who unfortunately is often known mainly for her shoplifting conviction, but she is a good actress.
The ladies are making the quilt for Finn but at the same time she is uncertain about her choices.
That distraction was of course the stories of the magnificent women of her grand-mom's quilt making beehive.One thing I didn't like though in the film was how self absorbed and immature the leading character is.
At movie's end, Finn presumably decides it's time to fergit all about that there professorin', settle down and have some babies.The problem with this film is obvious.
When writer Winona Ryder goes to visit her grandmother (Ellen Burstyn) who is living with her sister (Anne Bancroft), she becomes involved with the women who are part of an annual quilting bee.
This sweet and touching drama is the story of these group of women who help Ryder through a rough batch as she decides whether or not to return to her fiancé (Dermot Mulroney).
Ryder learns each of these women's stories, usually involving the men in their life, and each of those tales surrounding their influence in their parts of the quilting will be an influence for her as she discovers her own destiny.The Oscar Winning Burstyn and Bancroft are gems together as sisters, facing their own past as Bancroft married the love of Burstyn's life and watched the two of them fall back together.
The dignified Maya Angelou tells of her aunt's own quilt, which surrounded the crow that lead her to the love of her life.
Women's own film about love and relationships, commitment and infidelity.
Unless you point to her and say, "that's Ryder", I wouldn't know her at all.Of course, this movie answers the question "can men and women be friends"?
I realized that this movie has a kinda of "Steel Magnolias" & "Ya-Ya Sisterhood" feeling about it: phenomenal ensemble cast (who more than outweighed the lackluster performance of the "lead"), diverse story lines, and I also like the fact that not every 'story' had a "happy ending" in the traditional way, but that every woman did come to a place where she felt comfortable experiencing her own version (good or bad) of 'where love lives' - be it in a daughter's heart, a lover's arms, a sister's forgiveness, a mother's admission of her faults, a stranger's kiss, or even in your fiancé's van..
Finn Dodd is spending the summer with her grandmother, great aunt and their quilting bee supposedly to finish her master's thesis, but in reality to think things over after her boyfriend proposes.Once she arrives she finds the quilting bee is making her a quilt based on their own experiences with love.
It is never clear why Finn makes the choice she does, and this is the ultimate weakness of the movie, along with the fairly predictable flashbacks showing the various ways these women have been wronged by men.