David Ansen

"Meryl Streep plays the down-and-out Helen, the woman he's been hanging out with for nine years. You've seen women like this on the streets and averted your eyes: pale, red-eyed crazies muttering angry curses. Helen, an aspiring pianist in her youth, cloaks herself in the illusion of gentility: she's a bum with pretensions, measuring the steps of her degradation by the tenets of her Roman Catholic upbringin, clinging to pride as she clings to the keepsakes from her once promising past. Streep's astringent performance is a marvel: she's never had a less glamorous role or exuded such charisma. In the movie's greatest scene, half real and half fantasy, she takes the stage of a saloon in her shabby coat and belts out a song, showing you the Helen who might have been. It breaks your heart...."

David Ansen
Newsweek, December 21, 1987