If These Walls Could Talk

"If These Walls Could Talk" (1996) is an HBO television film you can watch online on iFILM. Three women. One house. Forty years apart.

The story moves in three chapters: in 1952, a recently widowed nurse faces an unwanted pregnancy with nowhere legal to turn. In 1974, a mother of four discovers she is pregnant again and can barely feed the children she has. By 1996, a college student arrives at a clinic for an abortion — and the doctor is shot dead in front of her during the procedure. Demi Moore, Sissy Spacek, and Cher each carry one of the segments; Cher also co-directed the third.

HBO released the film to wide attention, and it ranked among the most-discussed television events of the mid-nineties. What keeps it from being a polemic is its discipline: each vignette trusts one woman's specific circumstances to do the arguing. Stream "If These Walls Could Talk" (1996) online on iFILM.