Generally when somebody screws up, they go through three sets of filters in the course of attempts at correction. The first order of social control is usually the family. When Dad spots a roach clip on his son's dresser, well, they sit down and have a good talk about it. Mom may ground her daughter for not doing the chores. The second order of control is the social network the screw-up belongs to -- the friends, the peers, the community. Friends try to talk sense to the guy. The community gossips about him (or her). Among the Old Order Amish, you get "shunned" if you don't straighten up and fly right. At West Point you get the treatment. In high school nobody wants to go to the prom with you. The third order of control involves secondary institutions -- the police, psychiatrists, or, quien sabe?, the National Security Agency.
In the case of Marie/Audrey/Robbie/etc., all three systems failed for a long time, simply because it seemed so hard to believe that a woman would kill her husband and try to poison her own child for insurance that was no more than modest. And, after all, Mom HAD taken her ailing daughter to hospital after hospital. In light of all this, how could she have "done it"? Well, she was able to do it precisely because she estimated just how extensive the parameters of normal behavior would be under these conditions. Of course the insurance policies weren't exactly grand. They couldn't be -- not if she were to escape suspicion. What would the control agents think if you took out a million dollar life insurance policy on your husband and he shortly blew up? Likewise Audrey/Robbin/Holly/Mildred/Gladys/Candy HAD to take her ailing daughter to hospitals. You don't find arsenic poisoning if you're not looking for it, whereas everyone who watches Oprah knows that you can anorexize yourself to death.
What makes this story more than ordinarily interesting is the fact that Mom was able to slip past all three levels of social control with such facility. She was finally identified as a no-goodnik by secondary institutions but seems to have done not much more than dye her hair and scoot away to Florida, where she was able, without a great deal of trouble, to seduce and marry an over-sized deadhead and finagle him into moving to Vermont. ("I like snow.") THEN -- and this really bespeaks contempt for agents of social control -- she confides to friends and husband that she has an incurable blood disease and must go to Texas for treatment. She does. And "passes away". It isn't long before hubby gets a phone call from Audrey's TWIN SISTER, and then a visit from her, and then a roll in the hay too. Can you believe the arrogance of this woman? She actually believes that she can pass for her own sister? And can you believe the community in Vermont? They ACCEPT HER for what she claims to be. Even her widow/lover believes she's a twin sister, even after they begin living together! "How stupid can you get?" asks one doubting thomas who worked with Robbie, the original, one-and-only first wife. And that's what finally does Emily/Audrey/Mabel/Ginger/Xanthippe in -- the second level of social control, community gossip. Some residents of this town in Vermont (Brattleboro, nice place in the Fall) check into her story and find it full of holes. The police and FBI are notified, and that's that. Guilty as charged.
The courtroom scene only last five or ten minutes. I wish it had been longer. I'd have liked to see the prosecution build its case, and the defense too. The justice system is a secondary institution too, and it would been nice to see a shift from lying and gossip and arguing between individuals to conflict mediated by officials representing us.
The performances are okay and the direction is functional. No more than that. Judith Light, I'm afraid, isn't unattractive, or, as Randolph Scott once said about a knockout beauty in one of his Westerns, "She ain't ugly." She is, though, endowed with facial features that are uniformly sinister: a firm, wide jaw; a tall thin forehead; and two glowering eyes that seem sunk deeply into their shadowy orbital sockets. (Does she ever blink? I don't know.) She is a good enough actress to pull off some cool switcheroos, too. She's giving one of the doctors a couple of strokes, "Tulane? Why that's a fine school!", all sweetness and pecan pies, and then suddenly a bear claw, "Are you telling me I can't take my own daughter home?" A bit more law and a bit less gossip would have improved this "based on a true story" film, but it's so bizarre that it's interesting despite its weaknesses.
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