Tonight we re-saw another movie about the rebirth of a person trapped in a limited existence.  The movie is Cactus Flower, starring Ingrid Bergman, Walter Matthau, and Goldie Hawn  (who won a Best Actress Oscar), directed by Gene Saks and based on a Broadway screenplay by Abe Burrows.

This movie got a 7.2 on IMdB, and earned every bit of it.  It is the story of a middle-aged dentist Julian (Matthau) who does not want to be trapped into marrying his twenty-something girlfriend Toni (Hawn), and so tells her that he is already married with three kids.  When Toni tries to commit suicide, Julian is shamed into proposing to her on the condition that he will get a divorce, but Toni wants to meet his wife and make sure that she agrees to the divorce.  Julian gets his assistant/receptionist  Stephanie to play his wife, but Toni feels regret when she sees what a wonderful woman his wife is.  From there the plot and Stephanie blossom like the cactus on Stephanie’s desk, into a hilarious Shakespearean comedy of errors.

Ingrid Bergman gives a virtuosic performance as Stephanie playing the spurned long-suffering wife and mother, drawing on her own experiences as the loving assistant who is continually taken for granted.  In 1969, when the film was made, she is 54 years old and at the height of her acting powers, having already won three Oscars (amazingly not even a nomination for Casablanca).  Backed by strong performances from Matthau and Hawn, Bergman steals the show.

I am a sucker for these transformation stories.  Most of us have some sense of feeling trapped by work and family responsibilities, money concerns, and health issues, and the thought of breaking free and blossoming like a flower can carry the promise of (at least temporary) liberation from our cares.

Both the obligation and the liberation form the fabric of our lives.  Don’t they?