In the deep South, African-American single father Gaten (Ernie Hudson) and his ten year old daughter Clover (Zelda Harris) form a tight knit family, where they own an orchard. Gaten is recently widowed when he marries Sara Kate (Elizabeth McGovern) a white woman. His family is less than happy about this development, but when tragedy strikes and Clover is placed in Sara Kate’s care, everyone is forced to put their differences aside.
There’s nothing wrong with the premise of this film, it sets up a core conflict and the resolution is heartening. A cameo by Loretta Devine (Waiting to Exhale) as Gaten’s sister Everline serves to spice things up. However, weakness in writing leave the viewer to notice other things, like how the film is highly stylized in an early nineties fashion, how Sara Kate spends far too much time yelling “Gaten! Gaten! Gaten” while collapsing on the bed, in front of the mirror, or outside the house while Gaten the specter hangs idly by.
We’re never told much about Sara Kate’s life before she meets Gaten, or even how their relationship developed, for that matter. We know that they met “in college” and Sara Kate mentions that she is “from the North” and would have thus been on the same side in the Civil War. The first scene of the film is their wedding ceremony, with the accident taking place not long after. The wedding ceremony does achieve a certain tension, however, like when Sara Kate is walking down the aisle in her white wedding dress and a guests says “Now that is the whitest women I’ve ever seen.”
It would be interesting to learn what Sara Kate’s family thinks of her interracial marriage, and how they would react to Clover being placed in their daughter’s care. Not enough time is spent developing Sara Kate and Gaten’s relationship before he passes away. They love each other, obviously, but there are no defining characteristics of this relationship outside of the stock gleeful newlyweds. The accident happens the same night that they’re married, and more detail and information beforehand would serve to get the viewer a bit more invested in the overall story.
One good mechanism used in the plot is when Sara Kate and realize that Clover is getting over on both of them, telling them each different stories to get out of going to school. It is this moment that they stop being a black and a white woman and just start being family members raising a child.
Gaten’s relationship with Clover is perhaps the most developed in the film, the viewer gets a keen sense of her connection to him, and what she must overcome in order to move on with her life. Before he passes away they seem to have a kind of telepathic kinship, so it makes sense that she finds it the most difficult to let go of him after he dies. One does wonder why she calls him “Gaten” and not Dad, though.
DVD Bonus Features
There are no DVD bonus features but there is a scene selection.
"Clover" is on sale February 22, 2011 and is not rated. Drama. Directed by Jud Taylor . Written by Dori Sanders (Novel), Bill Cain . Starring Elizabeth McGovern, Ernie Hudson, Loretta Devine.
