MERMAIDS

his is yet another coming-of-age story, the title referring to the three central characters (a mother and her two daughters) who float like flotsam and jetsam between two worlds as opposed to being anchored in one place. Mrs. Flax (Cher) is a true eccentric; a free-spirited and often irritatingly independent woman who lost any sort of stable homelife when her husband walked out on her and her children years before. She has drifted from man to man and place to place and her latest move to the small Massachusetts coastal town of East Port in 1963 marks her 18th. Not only must Mrs. Flax cope with her own immaturity, she also must try to deal with the problems of her daughters, teenaged Charlotte (Winona Ryder), and nine-year-old Kate (Christina Ricci), a swimming champ who is obsessed with the water. The family relationships are further complicated by the fact that Mrs. Flax is so wrapped up in her latest romance with Lou (Bob Hoskins) that she virtually ignores her children. In the mean time, Charlotte lusts after young Joe (Michael Schoeffling), the groundskeeper at a nearby convent. At the same time, she wrestles with her strong religious convictions--she wants to become a nun, even though she is Jewish. Torn between her conflicting feelings, Charlotte is close to a nervous breakdown, while Kate suffers a near-fatal accident. The inability of her mother to come to grips with any of these realities further enrages and confuses Charlotte, and the relationship between mother and daughter grows steadily more strained. With the help of Lou, the members of the unconventional family try to overcome their difficulties and to reach some sort of a tenuous understanding.

This is an intermittently entertaining human relationship story, it's strongest points being its actors. Cher, Ryder, and Ricci combine their ample talents to deliver a uniformly bang-up job of delineating the vagabond mom and her two at-loose-ends daughters. Since Ryder has the most complicated role she tends to steal all the scenes in which she appears. Hoskins is fine as Mrs. Flax's shoe salesman love interest, while young Schoeffling is quite impressive. Actor-turned-director Richard Benjamin (MY FAVORITE YEAR, MY STEPMOTHER IS AN ALIEN), however, struggles with story structure, allowing the film to meander along at a too-leisurely pace. Character motivation is sometimes muddled, and Benjamin never seems to decide whose story he is telling. Moreover, the film features many mood swings (melancholy, comic, pathos, sweet), but the swings are so abrupt that it gives an uneven feel to the overall effort. Still, the picture's strong characters and acting carry it to at least a partial success. Sadly, the film had all the elements to be a very captivating experience, but it fails to bring those elements together into a strong whole. (Adult situations, sexual situations, profanity.)