Hannah Free, 3 Stars
Chicago Tribune, Friday, Sept. 25, 2009
Review by Maureen M. Hart

Though Hannah Free has deep Chicago roots, it's California native Sharon Gless who captures the spotlight.

The modestly budgeted film was executive produced by Tracy Baim, publisher of the Windy City Media Group. It was shot in Baim's Prairie Avenue Home and in Beecher; and its cast includes Chicago theater veteran Maureen Gallagher, as the older Rachel. The script was written by Claudia Allen, playwright in residence at Victory Gardens Theater, based on her 1992 play.

But the main attraction is the star of Cagney and Lacey, Queer as Folk and Burn Notice, who plays the third act in the life of the adventurous character. As a child in the 1930s, Hannah fell in love with her playmate, Rachel, a relationship that survived the former's wanderlust and the latter's attempts to live a more conventional life as a wife, widow and mother of twins.

The story opens in the twilight of both women's lives, during their confinement in the same nursing home, where they're kept apart by the resentment on the part of the comatose Rachel's daughter (Taylor Miller, longtime Nina Cortland on All My Children) toward her mother's lover. Though some of the characters approach caricature, Gless transcends them as a once-and-forever firebrand chafing against her body's limitations and the toxic good intentions of those who surround her.

Plays Fri-Thur at the gene Siskel Film Center