FALLING ANGELS

There are four ways in which the film, based on Barbara Gowdy's novel of the same name, improved on the book.

Firstly, the scene where the father comes home with the new car, promises to build a new rec room and tells the story of how he and the mother met. The book had mentions, but not scenes, of times when life was remotely happy in that household. Showing us in the book as opposed to telling us would have been better for Gowdy to do.

Secondly, Sandy's response to Lou, "I could never kill a baby." This helps further cement Sandy as the one most likely to break the cycle.

Incidentally, in having an abortion in the book Lou did the same thing as the girls' mother did to their brother.

Third, making Tom American. Gowdy gives us no real indications of his Englishness. He doesn't use Britishisms, he isn't especially fond of English cultural touchstones, he doesn't talk about British politics or social issues, and their isn't even much from his parents, who we hardly see anyway, that the family is English. They go to a British pub every Wednesday, but so what. I picture Tom as being from an upper middle class family from the mid-Atlantic states.

Fourth, the scene where the mother runs away and is found by Lou outside a church. This being a typically cynical work of Canadian literature, "Falling Angels" the book has no real points where the girls run into anyone who could help them, whereas if Lou had accepted the congregants' offers of help their situation might have had a chance to improve.

However, the movie left out a lot of things from the book which would have been helpful if included.

First, the filmmakers should have included the chapter from 1959 featuring Christmas, Mom's hangover flu and the boy with the metal plate in his head. It makes far more sense the girls would have found out about their dead brother from their bratty cousin spilling the beans and that Norma, Lou and Sandy's parents would have learned that the girls found out than the way it happens in the film. Little Jimmy really isn't even the point of the story anyway: the girls' abusive childhoods and how they end up reacting to them is.

The flu and Lou's encounter with the crazy boy would have helped to show the viewer how terrible these sisters' lives were even from childhood. The movie mainly shows them as teenagers.

The chapter about them running away would have been helpful in the film. That was the one time they tried to escape and the one time they ran into someone whom they told about their living situation.

The full chapter about the fallout shelter should have been in there, including a montage of Norma and her father building the thing. In the film, the full horror is only hinted at, albeit the whole chapter doesn't make sense in the first place. How could the neighbours not have noticed the car was still in the driveway and how could they not have noticed the trailer Dad was taking the family to Disneyland in wasn't there?

The character of Sherry should have been in the movie. In the film, Lou was kind of one-dimensional. A bit more of Lou's abuse of Norma would have been helpful in the viewers' forming a picture of Lou as well.

Likewise scenes of Lou babysitting the six month old would have achieved this purpose of rounding her out.

The part where Sherry steals Tom, Lou gets pregnant and subsequently has an abortion should have been included.

It probably would have been helpful to include the part where Norma comes on to Stella and Stella subsequently ends their friendship.

I don't know whether I like the end of the film or the end of the book better.