The Trip to Bountiful

The Trip to Bountiful (1985) is available to watch online on iFILM. Director Peter Masterson's quiet drama gave Geraldine Page the role that finally won her the Academy Award for Best Actress — a performance precise enough to make you forget there's acting happening at all.

Carrie Watts is trapped in a cramped Houston apartment in the 1940s, caught between a hen-pecked son and a daughter-in-law who runs the household on her own terms. Carrie has one wish: get back to Bountiful, the tiny Texas town where she grew up. The people she knew are gone; the house is probably empty. She buys a bus ticket anyway. John Heard and Rebecca De Mornay round out the cast.

Horton Foote adapted his own 1953 play for the screen, and his ear for Texas voices gives every line its particular weight. This is the kind of film that asks very little of you and then, somewhere in the second act, quietly takes everything. Stream The Trip to Bountiful (1985) online on iFILM.