This first feature has been described as school of Cassavetes, because it stars Gena Rowlands and the filmmaker in question is John Cassavetes’s son Nick. But the best that can be said for this fair-to-middling soap opera about a widow (Rowlands) getting a second lease on life is that, apart from being actor-oriented, it isn’t a copy of John Cassavetes’s work at all. It’s something much more conventional and sentimentaldecent enough, I suppose, on its own terms, but not the radical rethinking of art and human personality one associates with Cassavetes pere. With Marisa Tomei, Gerard Depardieu (even hammier than usual), and Jake Lloyd; Helen Caldwell collaborated on the script. (JR)