A Memory in My Heart

1999
6| 2h0m| en
Details

Jane Seymour stars in this made-for-TV drama as Rebecca Blake, a bookstore employee who lives contently in San Pedro, California with her construction-worker husband Joe (A Martinez). A chance meeting with a woman named Lynn Wyman (Cathy Lee Crosby), coupled with her recent nightmares and searing headaches (one of which has prompted a spectacular collapse at her local grocery store), lead Lynn to the inescapable conclusion that she is an amnesiac--and that she might be Abbie Stewart, who has another family in Fillmore County. Journeying to Abbie's hometown to learn the truth, our heroine is put off somewhat by the curiously mixed reaction of the man who might be her "other" husband, school principal Chase Stewart (Bruce Davison). The key to mystery may not be the surrealistic dreams experienced by Rebecca/Abbie, but instead that painful-looking gash in her head.

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Reviews

Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System
MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting
InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
edwagreen Jane Seymour is wonderful here as mother suffering from amnesia as a result of the beating she got from her husband, a wealthy school principal. He was able to go to court and charge abandonment and therefore obtain custody of the children. Finally, he tells the children that their mother is dead.8 years later, Seymour, who doesn't remember a thing, has a chance meeting with a fellow waitress. The latter fills her in on her life and of course, she goes back to Fillmore California. Naturally, she is threatened by her husband, a much older looking but totally effective Bruce Davison. Remember him in his supporting Oscar nomination for 1989's "Longtime Companion?" He was also the older Patrick in the 1974 Lucille Ball "Mame" vehicle.This terrific film just shows you what a brutal man can do when he has so much power in town.
AnnieLola I agree that Jane Seymour's now-mature beauty isn't shown to best advantage in this piece, and her distinctive crooked mouth is sometimes allowed to look like an actual distortion. It's agreeable to find that the plot isn't quite predictable, and one really can't help staying with the story to see the mystery solved, and (one hopes) all resolved. What did he do? Why did he do it? It's hard to say whether all questions are answered... I had difficulty with the chronology, since it's mentioned that Abbie married very young-- then one looks at the ages of the children and at Jane and ex-hubby and things don't quite add up, but really, one can just ignore that and go with the premise. It was quite needless, though, that when Abbie/Rebecca and her daughter are having a special moment finding some 'forget-me-nots', the flowers are obviously lobelia. Watch and see!
jotix100 Rebecca Blake, the attractive woman one sees at the beginning of this made for television movie, is having a hard time at her local super market where she collapses after she sees a young child , who obviously is a reminder of someone she knows. One realizes right away this woman has no recollection and no memory of who she is, or where she came from. Rebecca is happily married to Joe, a good man that clearly adores her.When she meets by chance someone on the street who greets her as Abby, she tells the woman she must have made a mistake, but that triggers in her mind a doubt. She goes back to this lady, who tells her how she met her and the area of California she was from. Rebecca pleads with Joe to let her go to unravel the mystery and all the tangled web in her mind.Harry Winer directed this story that supposedly is based on a true story, as most television movies are. The story is greatly helped by the heartfelt performances of the principals. Jane Seymour is Rebecca, the woman who lost her life through no choice of her own. Bruce Davison is Chase, her former husband who is the key player in what happened to Abby/Rebecca. David Keith is the sheriff of the small California town where Abby finds the missing pieces of her past. A. Martinez plays Joe, the new man in Abby's life.The film was totally shot in the town of Fillmore, California, which is the center of the orange growing industry and offers a magnificent setting for the story. Since it's a melodrama, prepare the Kleenex, but the film is worth watching thanks to what director Winer did with this story.
petershelleyau Executive produced by James Keach, Jane Seymour is Rebecca Vega, a bookstore worker living in San Pedro with construction worker husband Joe (A. Martinez), but she has headaches and nightmares. She meets Lynn Wyman (Cathy Lee Crosby) who knew Rebecca as Abbie Stewart with 3 children - Jenna (Amanda Barfield), Ethan (Colton James) and Lilly (Mika Boorem) - and Rebecca goes to Fillmore County to investigate her past. Seymour has a gash in her forehead which we later see is from being hit with a fireplace poker, and in her flashback memory her long hair is shoulder length and she wears virginal white. She is actually lit unflatteringly, looking tired and leathery, perhaps partly due to her traumatised state, so when her former husband school principal Chase (Bruce Davison) tells her how beautiful she is, it sounds odd. Seymour provides sobless tears, we see her handwriting, wears a stick in her hair worn up, overdoes a hesitation in opening a buzzed door, and has a campy panic-attack faint in a supermarket. The teleplay by Lindsay Harrison and Renee Longstreet, based on a true story, has a howler in Rebecca/Abbie to Chase `I've learned a lot from you. School's over.', and Jenna has a good line in sarcasm when she tells her mother to take her locket in case she loses her memory again, but director Harry Winer goes all out with the nightmare/daymare visions - black and white, tilted and subjective camera, whiplash editing, slow motion, stop motion, and lightning flashes, and fire - plus a choir in the music of Mark Snow.

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