AllMovie

Bobbie is determined to lose her virginity on the day of her 17th birthday, but she will lose more than that. Serious, humorous, and intimate, THREE BIRTHDAYS follows a left-leaning, academic family in 1970 as each of its members wrestles with the contradictions of the sexual revolution in the era of the Vietnam War. When Bobbie discovers her mother’s infidelity and acts out furiously, she sets off a chain of confrontations that forces her father and mother to face their own insecurities as accomplished middle-class intellectuals. On each of their birthdays, hopes are dashed, and secrets revealed. Culminating on a day of national reckoning, the film sits right in the middle of that uncomfortable place where the personal and the political collide.