Right Of Way (1983)

When a woman (Melinda Dillon, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND) drives from Carmel to Los Angeles to visit her aging parents (Bette Davis, James Stewart), they inform her that the mother is terminally ill and that they plan a double suicide rather than be separated. When attempts to talk them out of their plan fail, she contacts L.A. County Social Services for assistance. But instead of help, it starts a bureaucratic machine in motion that declares the couple incompetent to take care of themselves. Based on the play by Richard Lees and directed by George Schaefer, this grim drama pulls no punches, this isn't ON GOLDEN POND. It's a painful sit as we watch this determined couple robbed of their choices, their dignity as the law determines what is best for them. The one and only teaming of Davis and Stewart is a treat. They play off each other very well, their mismatched personas (the befuddled congenial Stewart, the acerbic tart tongued Davis) reflecting so many mismatches one sees in real life marriages that they somehow complement each other. There's a smattering of comedy, mostly by the couple's multitude of felines named after movie stars ("Robert De Niro just threw up a bird's head!"). Whoever did Dillon's disfiguring hairstyle should have been taken out and horsewhipped! With Jane Kaczmarek and Jacque Lynn Colton.