Plot: This movie is a family drama revolving around a dying mother's final months in the care of her daughter. Ellen Gulden's (Renée Zellweger's) father rebukes her for not caring enough about her mother to quit her job, move back home to upstate New York, and leave her soulmate behind to fend for himself in their tidy New York City apartment. But, when she succumbs under the strain of guilt and does as he asks, it appears that he is too busy to carry his part of the load. In fact, it begins to look like Ellen's father is more concerned with who is going to keep his life running smoothly than who will tend to his poor wife as she struggles with cancer. George Gulden (William Hurt) is a gifted professor and English department head, but he is an unrealized novelist. His novel, "Come Back Inn", is still unfinished after many years of torturous self-editing and re-writes long after the advance he received from his publisher is spent. Still, he basks in the reflected glow of more famous and successful writers with whom he maintains tenuous ties. This realization humanizes him for Ellen, who has always revered her father as something of a literary giant in spite of his occassional daliances with graduate students. Kate Gulden (Meryl Streep), dying of cancer at only forty-eight, loves life, and loves her children and her husband. When her suffering finally ends from an overdose of morphine, the District Attorney (James Eckhouse) suspects Ellen of having helped her mother to end her life. In the end, though, it seems to be Kate who still nurtures them, somehow even from the grave.
Alternative Plot: Kate (Meryl Streep), the undervalued matriarch of the Gulden family, is diagnosed with cancer. Daughter and journalist Ellen (Ren
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