Start the week with a film: In ‘Dolores Claiborne’, a woman wonders if her mother has killed – twice

“Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to.”

Dolores Claiborne isn’t known to mince her words. She doesn’t hold back when she is accused of killing her husband. When she is accused once again of murder, this time of her employer, Dolores has a thing or two to say to her daughter and the police investigators trying to prove her guilt.

Taylor Hackford’s thriller Dolores Claiborne is a riveting portrait of an unapologetic woman. Her name is straight out of a classic black-and-white movie. Her actions and behaviour are a definite shade of grey.

Dolores (Kathy Bates) works as a housekeeper for the wealthy, bedridden Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt). Vera has died suspiciously. An eyewitness points the finger at Dolores. The investigating officer Mackey (Christopher Plummer), who wasn’t able to prove that Dolores had killed her husband years ago, rubs his hands in glee.

Dolores’s estranged daughter Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh) doesn’t know whom to believe. The 132-minute movie unfolds as a confessional interspersed with flashbacks, each one coloured by Dolores’s experiences as a wife and mother.

Tony Gilroy’s screenplay is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Dolores Claiborne came out in 1995, before it became fashionable for movies to have female protagonists whose backgrounds...

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