When We Last Spoke is a pleasant surprise during this period of the virus. Even with somewhat of a Soap Opera style handing over the script it is a genuine well performed and directed story of two young girls and how they deal with adversity while growing up.
Darby Camp who plays Juliet the older of the two sisters performs perfectly as a smart little girl who protects her younger sister as they face the loss of parents through neglect and death.
The two girls are dropped off at their grandparents home early on in the film when their mother refuses to deal with them during the time dad is stationed in Viet Nam. Grandparents Ruby and Walt (Melissa Gilbert and Corbin Bernsen) accept the responsibility of bring up the two on a farm in a small community where everyone knows each other.
Bernsen and Gilbert comfortably fill the role as grandparents who easily accept the responsibility of the two young girls who attempt to understand why their Mom just left them and the danger their soldier father is facing.
The script could have easily been just a little too squeeky clean two practically perfect folks with the little girls folding in comfortably in their new household, but questions from observances and the like create bumps that are more real, than we might expets. They are also so over the top they could not be true.
As might expect life is not always dark, Ruby who is a devoted Elvis fan send him a peaunut butter cake each year in a hat box for his birthday. Walt dutifully sends it through the office of an attrative young women in town. When Elvis responds with an expensive gift Ruby is in heaven. The kids receive a box regularly addressed from their mom with small but appreciated gifts.
Not long after the girls arrive, grandma Itasca (played wonderfully by Cloris Leachman) fills the house with history and strange behaviour. She is also dropped of on to Ruby and Walt when Walt’s brother can no longer deal with her behaviour which allows her to travel from being a young woman on the beach to a dancing performer and a wife who continues to see her departed husband.
When We Last Spoke deals with the two girls comming together as adults late in the film and revelation of two secrets that Walt has held close to his vest over the many years.
This is a surprisingly well worth seeing.