The Patron Saint of Liars (1998)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

You see the names Dana Delany, Sada Thompson, Ellen Burstyn... and you think, "Wow, this has got to be a great movie." Unfortunately, the best part of the movie was the opening credits and it goes downhill from there. I don't know if something was lost in translation from the book to the screen, but this movie lacked emotion. I didn't really care for Dana Delany's character, Rose. In fact, I came to despise her. It almost seems as if the producers of this film looked at every Lifetime movie over the last 10 years, grabbed scenes off the cutting-room floor, spliced them together and came up with this travesty. The ending was horrible... what happened? Did Rose, Son and Cecilia live happily ever after? Did the first husband come back? Did the daughter, Cecilia, ever forgive her mother or get to know her real father? Did Sister Evangeline (Sada Thompson) ever get out of that dang kitchen? And what was the deal with the healing spring? There were a lot of unanswered questions. My advice - skip this movie and go hug your family.

It is a weak movie, but it is based on a great book. The Patron Saint of Liars is a sad story of a woman unhappy with who she is. It details how she runs from her life then she puts herself into another life. She is never quite happy with her second life either. The story is sad, but interesting. You relate to her and feel sorry for her at the same time. The movie is much slower than the book, and not as deep. The book takes you in more and allows you to relate more to the characters and their feelings. Dana Delany is kind of bland in the lead role. It does have a small early role for Maggie Gyllenhal.It is worth a watch, but definitely worth reading.

SPOILERS BELOW+ + Rose leaves her husband with no real explanation ever offered- and relocates to Kentucky! She meets the wonderfully sympathetic Sister Evangeline and the crotchety heart-of-gold spinster landowner along with some of the other pregnant women. The audience is geered to feel empathy for these mothers who are forced to relinquish custody of their babies- yet despite a few initial protests, Rose does nothing to challenge the dictatorial Mother Superior or change any of her dictums even after she herself becomes a mother! Oh, and for reasons never explained, she isolates herself from her daughter Cecilia ASAP as well her her bigamously wed 2nd husband Son. Cecilia grows into a remarkably well-adjusted teen without any evident boyfriends who cherishes her de facto mothers (Sister Evangeline and the late spinster landowner who left the house) and her de facto father Son but is understandably puzzled and bitter towards her own mother's cold behaviour. Beyond cooking together for the unwed mothers and teaching her how to drive, Rose sees to it they have as little interaction as possible and openly resents any queries into her past. Rose actually berates Cecilia for driving the seriously injured Son to the hospital when there was no other reliable means to safely reach the place as though Cecilia had taken a joyride! Eventually Rose's first husband finds the family shortly after Rose has taken off with only the tersest explanation but he seems perfectly willing to leave things be. At the end, after someone smashes her car back window, Rose has an epiphany and drives back home and while a long-dry spring gushes to life, Rose gushes about how she's now Cecilia's 'REAL mother!' while hugging her daughter and bigamous husband. Contrary to another reviewer, I don't think Cecilia had miraculously become totally accepting of Rose at that instant but just seemed willing to see if this New Rose was going to change! Usually Lifetime movies try to provide compelling motivations for the despicable behaviours of the leading characters but this one didn't even slightly bother! While Rose wasn't overtly cruel or sadistic, it's hard to remember a less sympathetic female character- and she owed everyone in her life major penance! I'd have preferred it if the movie had been focused on Sister Evangeline, the spinster or Son instead of Rose. Sada Thompson and Ellen Burstyn shined in their parts but even the great Dana Delaney couldn't make Rose believable or likable!

Recently this movie was on Lifetime. It is about a woman who leaves her husband for no reason when she becomes pregnant. She goes into hiding to give up her child at a convent. The story gives no apparent reason for her running away until the very ending, which makes no sense. She then marries again, while still married to her first husband, to the grounds keeper, Clancy Brown. She decides to keep her baby and lives in a separate home from her husband and child at the convent. Years go by of the couple living apart and the child grows up thinking her mother doesn't love and care for her. Then after a mail incident, her first husband finds her and comes looking for his wife, which of course he is still in love with. Then the story finally unwinds and we find out why this woman runs from her family, which of course is very weak, and leaves the viewer full of questions that are never answered. I watched this whole story to find out the reasoning of a religious event that happens in the first 5 minutes of the movie with a sick child becoming well after a spring of water appears out of the ground, at the very end of the movie the spring appears again, when the lady who runs stops running, I don't see how the 2 relate to the story line that seemed to be full of holes, and how a woman can leave her child and have that child have peace suddenly at the end of the movie is a bit to far fetched for me! I would not waste my time with this movie. One of the worst I have seen.