The Cavedweller

8-10 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 17
Showtime

Life-altering circumstances can lead to momentous decisions, and the results can be both surprising and revealing, especially when played out in a well-formed TV movie like Showtime's "The Cavedweller." Methodical in its pace and subdued in its cinematic palette, this is a carefully rendered story that stoically resists any temptation to give in to gooey sentimentality. As a result, you may not come away entirely satisfied, but you can't help but admire the integrity of the work.

Kyra Sedgwick dons a rural Southern accent and a gritty, determined demeanor to star as Delia, a woman twice burned by ill-considered choices in men. As a young woman in small-town Georgia, she married and had two girls with an abusive and possessive wretch, played here by Aidan Quinn. When the girls were still small, she fled for her life on the touring bus of a rock group that stopped in town only because of a mechanical breakdown. The subsequent union with the leader of the group, played by Kevin Bacon, resulted in the birth of Delia's third daughter, but, for different reasons, the relationship proved nearly as dismal.

At the film's outset, the rock singer meets an early end. For no logical reason, their 11-year-old daughter, Cissy (sensitively played by Regan Arnold), blames Delia for his death. Feeling a void in her own life, Delia decides the thing to do now is leave L.A. with Cissy and return to the pitiless, drab town she barely escaped a decade earlier and reclaim her two daughters, now ages 14 and 15. Once back, she finds that she is as welcome as a hitchhiker with a cough. Her two girls, one a Bible thumper and the other a hell-raiser, are less than eager for a reunion.

Delia, ever the patient one, restores the pieces of her shattered life even as she begins to understand her own motives. The theme is in some ways so similar to the kind of transformative story patented by Hallmark Hall of Fame presentations that you almost expect a greeting card commercial at each break. Hallmark stories, however, typically reward the viewer with a clear idea of where things will proceed after the final credits roll. In this tale, adapted from Dorothy Allison's novel, the conclusion is more open-ended and ambiguous.

The cast is solid from top to bottom, starting with Sedgwick, whose contained performance gives the film a great and quiet intensity. Director Lisa Cholodenko shows the sensitive side of each character but manages not to cross the line into mawkishness. The production design cloaks the entire movie with a joyless atmosphere that makes even modest inroads of reconciliation stand out starkly by contrast.

CAVEDWELLER
Showtime
Showtime Original Picture
Credits:
Executive producers: Orly Adelson, Kyra Sedgwick, David Yudain
Producer: Michael Levine
Co-producer: Valerie Stadler
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Teleplay: Anne Meredith
Based on the novel by: Dorothy Allison
Director of photography: Xavier Perez Grobet
Production designer: Phillip Barker
Editor: Amy E. Duddleston
Music: Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Germano
Art director: James Oswald
Set decorator: Elizabeth Calderhead
Casting: Mary Gail Artz, Barbara Cohen, Stephanie Gorin. Cast:
Delia: Kyra Sedgwick
Clint: Aidan Quinn
M.T.: Sherilynn Fenn
Rosemary: Jill Scott
Cissy Pritchard: Regan Arnold
Amanda Windsor: Vanessa Zima
Dede Windsor: April Mullen
Randall Pritchard: Kevin Bacon
The Rev. Hillman: Dan Lett
Grandaddy Byrd: Myron Natwick
Grandma Windsor: Jackie Burroughs