Stories this luscious and sumptuous, well directed and seamlessly edited, with characters faultlessly portrayed by an outstanding cast, come along rarely, and this is one of the best. It is so good that there are not superlatives enough to do it credit. The basic setup is that the principal characters, a mother, tantalizingly portrayed by Weaver, and her daughter, multifacetedly portrayed by Hewett, are "artistes confidence" to the core of their superficial existences. They cannot so much as have "lunch" without practicing their arts of the scam, but mainly they work the old "betrothal" game. Mom gets her rich mark to the alter, then even before the marriage can be consummated, the daughter, pretending to be unrelated, exploits the man's foolish libido, resulting in a substantial settlement after mom catches them apparently "in flagrante." But then things start going haywire when the daughter decides to strike out on her own, because the guy she fixes on as a mark is not like other guys at all. How he is not, and how her character develops as a result, makes for two hours of outstanding comedy and drama.
