Photo: Ryan Plummer/A+E Networks/Lifetime
When actressAnne Hechediedlast month at the age of 53, there was a sense that she’d deserved greater and more consistent success in Hollywood.
She had a petite sharpness, something but not quite like Holly Hunter’s, and the suggestion of an intelligence and spirit that were restless and not easily tamed. She never stopped working, though, and left behind several not-yet-seen productions. One of these, the movieGirl in Room 13, premieres tonight on Lifetime.
Such is our world. But no:Room 13is about a New Jersey suburban family in crisis.
Ryan Plummer/A+E Networks/Lifetime
Heche plays Janie, whose daughter Grace (Larissa Dias) has just come home after the latest of multiple stints in rehab — she became addicted to opioids as treatment for a sports injury. “I get a little bit concerned that I’m looking after her too much,” Janie tells her husband (Matt Hamilton). “I’m afraid of her relapsing.”
But Grace’s only mistake turns out to be that she’s too trusting: She meets up with Richie (Max Montesi), a drug dealer with whom she’d apparently had a relationship, to give him money he says he needs to pay for his little son’s hospital bill. It’s all a ruse: Richie — a lunkhead whose villainous ambitions make his stupidity even more dangerous — kidnaps Grace, stashes her in a motel room and begins drugging her, prepping her to be sold on the sex-traffic market.
This is a big role for Heche, and also a punishing one, requiring her to perform at what seems to be the highest pitch, and then somehow higher than that. But beneath that is the sturdy, steady power of maternal love — Heche gives us that, too.
Girl in Room 13premieres tonight on Lifetime at 8 p.m. ET.
source: people.com
