"Wake" at the Purple Rose

continued

To muddy things more, the main story is seeded with so many subplots and other devices that soon all seem to be struggling for air. Molly's daughter Sam (Stacie Hadgikosti) is a troubled, precocious teenage kleptomaniac. Molly's mother (Sandy Ryder), sensing her own impending death, takes steps to make a legacy. And cloistered though she may be, Molly sees so much action in her morgue you'd think she'd want to get out of it once in a while just to get some solitude. Her dead husband is a frequent visitor. A handsome, eligible man takes a doglike romantic interest in her, and she develops toward him a kind of nervous tic, frequently ambushing him with kisses while professing to be uninterested in him. And eventually she embalms her own mother.