Wild Iris on AllMovie

A woman tries to make sense of her relationship with her mother -- who also happens to be her boss and landlady -- in this dramatic comedy. Iris (Laura Linney) has never had an especially warm relationship with her mother Min (Gena Rowlands), but after her husband committed suicide, Iris was emotionally shattered and had nowhere to go, so Min allowed her to move into the family home and help her out with her business, Bluebird Bridals. Eight years later, Iris and her son Lonnie (Emile Hirsch) are still "temporarily" with Min, and they're all still trying to make the best of an often combustible situation. Min finds herself fending off the advances of Mando (Miguel Sandoval), an elderly wedding photographer with romance on his mind, while Iris has to convince Erroll Podubney (Fred Ward) to pay for the wedding being staged for his daughter, whose nuptials have been given a special urgency by her pregnancy. And with no male role models around the house, Lonnie looks for advice from Lud (Lee Tergesen), a gas jockey at a local filling station. Wild Iris was produced for the Showtime premium cable network, where it premiered on August 5, 2001.