Feelings Film Festival

My princess is not very emotional.  She doesn't cry easily, and doesn't get into drama.  I tease that she has ice water running through her veins.  So last summer, I set out to find a movie that would make her cry (because what quality mother doesn't spend the summer trying to make her teenage daughter cry?)  I put my request on Facebook, and friends suggested the saddest movies of all time.  We watched them all summer.  Here are a few of the things I learned during this adventure. . .

1.  Although I've seen it dozens of times, the funeral scene in Steel Magnolias still makes me cry every time.  I have a guttural reaction to it, producing sobs that sound like a dying animal.  I'd like to say it's only because I am a mother, but I believe I reacted the same way almost 25 years ago, when the movie first came out. 

It does not, however, produce the same reaction in teenage girls.  At least not mine.

2.  Fried Green Tomatoes keeps its place on my Top 5 Movies of All Time.  It is funny, thoughtful, and sad, all the things a movie should be.  The cast is perfect, from Mary Stuart Masterson's maybe-lesbian hero, to Kathy Bates's insecure southern wife.  My daughter liked it, but didn't love it, and it didn't make her cry. 

3.  Most of the movies, in fact, did not make my princess cry. . . not Debra Winger's tearful death in Terms of Endearment, or Sophie's gut-wrenching choice.  It was the story of an eleven-year-old boy with an allergy to bees that finally touched her heart.  During the funeral scene in My Girl, I glanced at my daughter, who had tears streaming down her beautiful brown cheeks. 

It was good for me to see, to remember that despite how fast she's growing up, and how mature she sometimes seems to me, that my princess is still a little girl in many ways, and the death of a little boy would affect her more than the death of someone who probably seems old to her.  I'm glad now, looking back, that my girl is still just that.