Termini Station

There is a certain anonymity to be found in big cities. And there is more truth than most people can handle in small towns and communities. A common truth. The truth that everyone knows everything about everybody. In the small town that provides the setting for the back story in this fine film by Allan King, there has been a suicide. Colleen Dewhurst is the widowed matriarch of the Dushane family. Her late husband took his own life after threatening their daughter with a gun. No one has been the same since. Molly Dushane deals with the unwelcome reality she inherited by finding a new reality in the comfort of alcohol. She is also suffering from a terminal illness and aches to go to Italy before it’s too late. It falls to her daughter, Micheline, played by Megan Follows, to take her. Once there, they find a perspective allowed almost uniquely by the combination of distance and time. The title comes from the name of the main railroad station in Rome.

Filmed in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Termini Station was nominated for six Genie awards including Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay. It was Colleen Dewhurst’s last film.