''Clara's Heart'' is a 1988 American

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

, based on

Joseph Olshan Joseph Olshan is an American novelist. Life and career Olshan is the author of ten novels, most recently, ''Black Diamond Fall'' (Polis Books, 2018). His first novel, ''Clara's Heart'', won the ''Times''/Jonathan Cape Young Writers' Competition a ...

's novel of the same name, directed by Robert Mulligan, written by Mark Medoff and is also Neil Patrick Harris' debut role.

Plot

The film tells the story of a family in crisis. The mother, Leona (Quinlan), escapes to

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

to grieve the loss of her baby daughter, Edith, who died of sudden infant death syndrome. While there she meets kindly housekeeper Clara Mayfield (Goldberg). Clara pulls Leona out of her depression with a blunt, no-nonsense style. Leona is so taken with her that she brings Clara back to their home in Baltimore to be housekeeper and nanny to young son David (Harris). At first he is resistant and sees her as an intruder, but as the parents are completely wrapped up in their own grief and dissolving marriage, David comes to trust Clara and to depend on her. Clara harbors her own dark secret, which when revealed, serves to firm the bond between these two very different, but loving, characters.

Cast

* Whoopi Goldberg as Clara Mayfield *

Michael Ontkean Michael Leonard Ontkean (born 24 January 1946) is a retired Canadian actor. Born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Ontkean relocated to the United States to attend the University of New Hampshire on a hockey scholarship before pursuing ...

as Bill Hart *

Kathleen Quinlan Kathleen Denise Quinlan Abbott (born November 19, 1954) is an American film and television actress. She is best known for her Golden Globe-nominated performance in the 1977 film of the novel '' I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,'' and her Golden ...

as Leona Hart * Neil Patrick Harris as David Hart *

Spalding Gray Spalding Gray (June 5, 1941 – January 11, 2004) was an American actor, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and performance artist. He is best known for the autobiographical monologues that he wrote and performed for the theater in the 1980s and ...

as Peter Epstein * Beverly Todd as Dora *

Hattie Winston Hattie Mae Winston (born March 3, 1945) is an American film, television and Broadway actress and voice artist. She is known for her roles as Margaret Wyborn on ''Becker'', Lucy Carmichael in ''Rugrats'', ''The Rugrats Movie'', and the spin off se ...

as Blanche Loudon * Jason Downs as Alan Lipsky

Production

The film marked a return to the director's chair for industry veteran Robert Mulligan, who had not made a film in six years after the critical and commercial failure of ''

Kiss Me Goodbye Kiss Me Goodbye may refer to: * "Kiss Me Goodbye" (Petula Clark song), a 1968 song by Petula Clark * "Kiss Me Goodbye" (Buck Tick song), a 1990 song by Buck-Tick * "Kiss Me Good-Bye", a 2006 song by Angela Aki, used as the ending theme song for '' ...

''. Film editor Sid Levin describes Mulligan as being "a bit aloof" during their first meeting but coming across as "a caring, sensitive, decent man." Mulligan was tense during the shooting period, however, and grew angry when Levin expressed his concerns over the scenes involving actor

. Not until principal photography was finished was Mulligan willing to discuss alternative ideas with Levin in the editing room. They wound up finding common ground over one of the crucial scenes towards the end of the film, in which Clara confesses to David the truth about her son. When Mulligan realized that actress Whoopi Goldberg had improvised the sequence too negatively, Levin was able to edit the sequence in such a way to make it feel less dark. Filming included several locations in Talbot County, Maryland. The opening scene, a funeral, was filmed at the historic Oxford Cemetery in Oxford, Maryland. The mansion home of Bill (Michael Ontkean) and Leona Hart (Kathleen Quinlan), and her young son, David (Neil Patrick Harris) is found on Old Country Club Road, adjacent to Maryland State Route 33 near Easton, Maryland. Other locations included Saint Michaels, Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, New York and Port Antonio, Jamaica. This was the third and final theatrical production made by MTM Enterprises.

Reception

The film had a chilly reception with critics.

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

, In a 1 1/2-star review for the '' Chicago Sun Times'', praised Whoopi Goldberg's performance but panned the film itself, writing, "Goldberg is magnificent. The character belongs in a different film, even a different universe, from the rest of the ludicrous plot." Recent praise for the film has appeared in an online article by film professor Robert Keser, who writes, "Almost two decades after the release of ''Clara’s Heart'', the film looks dated only in its virtues. As commercial cinema, it represents a classical control and modulation of storytelling, spinning its emotional threads patiently with no hammering close-ups and little pandering to the decoratively picturesque. Equally, the film seems sweetly unconscious of consumer culture that seeks to define us by acquisition and consumption: no brand names are touted, no recreational shopping montages display products to suggest meaning." On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, ''Clara's Heart'' holds a rating of 50% from 16 reviews. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

the film has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "Mixed or average reviews".

References

External links

* * * {{MTM Enterprises 1988 films 1988 drama films American drama films 1980s English-language films Films scored by Dave Grusin Films based on American novels Films directed by Robert Mulligan Films set in Jamaica Films shot in Baltimore Films shot in Jamaica Films shot in New York (state) Warner Bros. films MTM Enterprises films 1980s American films