A feminine take on a Cassavetes drama, the film focuses on a group of women who have gathered for a surprise baby shower. However, as the female guests arrive (the household males having adjourned to an afternoon football game), the off-screen mother-to-be goes into premature labour, leaving the bored invitees to sip spiked punch and discuss the dearth of available men until the drunken boys return home, thus setting the stage for male/female confrontations, confessions and clumsy acts of copulation-notably while standing under a shower. An exploration of the contemporary trappings of male/female sexual politics.
Will Loomis is living with his mentally handicapped sister Violet, who wants a younger child to play with, so Will 'kidnaps' one (and then another) child from the local children's home. The child is told it is dead and gone to heaven. Will and Violet try to make their farm a little piece of heaven for the kids, while the authorities wonder what has happened to the kidnapped children.
In 1935 Toronto, Jane Stuart's mother has taken ill, and the two of them have temporarily moved in with her rich, snobbish grandmother, where Jane is verbally abused and her mother bullied. Jane is forced into a private academy, in which the other girls tell her that her father, whom Jane believes to be dead, is actually alive. Soon after, Andrew Stuart sends word that he would like to meet his long-lost daughter, so Jane is sent by train to Bright River to stay with him, where she encounters an old mystery that she must help her father overcome, new friends, and the chance to bring her father and mother back together again.
A Harvard University student finds a strange letter that seems to be signed by George Washington. When trying to contact an expert (Prof. Chandler) to authenticate it, he is murdered but the letter disappears. Then Chandler, who does not know anything about the case, gets chased by the mafia and haunted by a TV reporter (Polly Bishop).
Andrew Angus Dalrymple's realistic portrait of a British soldier, his Irish lover and her twin sister amidst the strife of Northern Ireland.