TV Reviews : ‘Friends’ Takes Hard Look at Divorce

Kathleen Turner, in an auspicious network movie debut, almost scratches her nails into the screen in an indelible portrayal of a loving wife starkly embittered by the shock of divorce.

You might say Turner comes well prepared following her earlier crazed breakup in the theatrical divorce drama “War of the Roses.” But Susan Sandler’s script for “Friends at Last,” crucially set in the post-”Feminine Mystique” ’60s and ‘70s, shines a stronger light on the nature of our divorce culture.

Although this is a women’s picture, the husband (Colm Feore) is not a caricature or an easy knee-jerk target but a fairly representative, immature guy on New York’s fast track--in this case, a wholly self-absorbed, insensitive newspaper columnist who exploits his proud homemaker wife as a running character in his column “Manhattan Diary.”

What sets the production apart from the sob sister genre is Turner’s fierce, heart-rending performance: a portrait of betrayal that’s harrowing but never overdone.

On the other hand, the movie’s inexcusable lurch into the heroine’s failing health in the movie’s final minutes is egregious melodrama that almost undermines the whole movie.

Up to that point, though, and even beyond it, the production is a contender. Close-ups of Turner’s hurtful, angry eyes convey the wreckage of a woman burrowing into her apartment, letting the place and even her young daughter’s care and comfort go to hell in the torment of the split.

* “Friends at Last” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS (Channels 2 and 8).