Penelope Mortimer

Bourgeois housewife Ruth Whiting is paralysed by triviality, measuring out her days in coffee mornings, glasses of sherry, and bridge parties, routines that barely disturb the solitude of her existence. Her husband spends his weeknights in town, their daughter, eighteen-year-old Angela, is at Oxford and their sons are at boarding school. Then Angela accidentally falls pregnant and Ruth must keep her own past from repeating itself.

The true story of Vita Sackville-West's tortured, public affair with novelist Violet Keppel. Though Vita and her husband, diplomat Harold Nicolson, knowingly cheated on each other throughout their 50-year marriage, it was her liaison with her childhood friend Violet that threatened the marriage. Frank and daring in its depiction of lesbian love, this release includes scenes cut from the original broadcast.

Anne Bancroft's cathartic lead performance anchors The Pumpkin Eater, Harold Pinter's harrowing, elliptical tale of marital dissatisfaction. Though much of the film concerns her character's fitful bouts with depression, Bancroft charges every moment she's onscreen, employing an array of subtle gestures and facial expressions to convey what her repressed character cannot. Pinter and director Jack Clayton never resort to facile satire or pat assignations...