A young girl's dangerous dance with dieting leads to near disaster in this exceptional made-for-television drama. In one of the earliest treatments of the subject, Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Casey Powell, the quiet daughter of an overbearing mother and milquetoast father. Feeling pressure to be the good girl of the family after her troublesome older sister gets pregnant, Casey retreats into her secretive world of self-starvation. When arguing fails to produce results, her parents (Charles Durning and Eva Marie Saint) send her to a hospital where she meets a spunky fellow patient (Melanie Mayron) and a caring therapist (Jason Miller). Casey's road to recovery is not as simple as merely eating though, and she and her family realize that together they must confront the deeply-rooted familial issues that lay at the heart of Casey's affliction. Jennifer Jason Leigh is utterly compelling in the lead role.
- editor rating
-
3.5
- user rating
- flags
-
- Suitable for Children
- genres
- sub-genres
- category
- Feature
- directed by
- countries
- USA
- released
- 1981
- run time
- 96 min.
- produced by
- Aaron Spelling Productions
by Bernadette McCallion
synopsis
- Anorexia-nervosa
- Eating-disorders
- Teen
- Mothers And Daughters
- Fathers And Daughters
- Doctors And Patients
- Only Human
- Starvation
- Peer-pressure
- Sickness
- Mental-illness
- Disease
- Illness
- Lunacy
- Nervous-breakdown
