(2 of 3)
But not to worry. What may, at first, be a commercial inconvenience will surely, in the end, turn into an artistic coup. Terms of Endearment does work off the conventions that rule more ordinary movies, but only to enrich its own singular voice. Its quirky rhythms and veering emotional tones are very much its own, and they owe less to movie tradition than they do to a sense of how the law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective. Terms comes to at least glancing terms with almost every problem a person is likely to encounter in life, but it really has only one important piece of business in hand: an examination and resolution, in comic terms, of the relationship between a mother and a daughter. Everything else is in effect a diversionary tactic, a way of placing this brilliantly devised and disguised core of concern within the context of lifelike randomness.
As Brooks sees them, his movie's mother and daughter are actually sisters under the skin, connected not just by kinship but by subtle parallels of emotions and experience. Aurora appears initially to be no more than that familiar figure of satire, the American Mom as American Nightmare, all coy snarls and fierce demureness, while Emma, protected only by a thin skin of perkiness, seems to be her victim. "You aren't special enough to overcome a bad marriage," Aurora snaps on the eve of Emma's wedding, voicing her own fears about what might happen if she ventured outside her perfectly tended Texas house and garden. "I am totally convinced that if you marry Flap Morton tomorrow you will ruin your life and make wretched your destiny," she adds. As always with Brooks, locution is character.
But when Emma moves out, Aurora discovers that her child has no corner on inappropriate males. After Flap takes a job in Des Moines ("You can't even fail locally," cries Aurora, whose contempt for her son-in-law is her one immutable, hilarious quality), a plaintive note creeps into her obsessive phone calls to her daughter. Parent is now becoming a dependent, in need of a confidante, especially with that astronaut orbiting around her.