Woods Hole Film Festival 2009

Inga (Marcia Gay Harden) is a poet and mother to a young daughter (Eulala Scheel, Ms. Harden's real life daughter). Inga is drawn to a house that reminds her of her childhood home, and here she realizes that many things in her life are coming full circle. She wants to buy and restore this old house but her distant husband Hermann sees little value in old houses or many of the things Inga loves and writes about.Inga's barren marriage is in stark contrast to her closeness with her 8 year old daughter with whom she shares her hopes, fears and innermost thoughts. By day their relationship seems magical, full of cloud watching, kite flying and lazy summer drives. But at night Inga is troubled by her marriage, it's lack of intimacy and her fears of her own mortality.Inga's childhood was marred by her mother's illness and use of morphine to control her pain. Now facing recent breast cancer Inga is using alcohol in much the same way. And just as she watched her mother, her daughter is now anxiously watching her. Like many artists Inga's struggle is reflected in her poems which she writes on scraps of paper and then discards. But it is in her own poems that she hears the echo of what her mother must have gone through and it is this revelation that allows Inga to transform.