Kevin Bacon’s directorial debut, with a script by Anne Meredith and a Martha’s Vineyard setting, describes the recovery of a middle-aged housewife (Helen Mirren) from a nervous breakdown. Her husband (Beau Bridges) hires a young woman (Kyra Sedgwick) to take care of her and their two children while he’s away on business; a friendship between the two women develops, and the older woman begins to fall in love with her friend (who has a schizophrenic sister she periodically visits). For all the sincerity and able acting on view here, I never fully believed either the story or the behavior of the characters (the two women and two children especially)a problem that seems attributable mainly to the script, though the direction suffers as a consequence. (JR)