Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams is a 1973 Technicolor film which tells the story of a New York City housewife who rethinks her relationships with her husband, her children and her mother. The movie stars Joanne Woodward, Martin Balsam, Sylvia Sidney and Teresa Hughes, was written by Stewart Stern, and directed by Gilbert Cates.

Rita Walden is a depressed middleaged New Yorker. Always tired, Rita is prone to nightmares, and when she does dream more pleasant thoughts, they are of her childhood on the family farm. In her mind, she settled for second best when she married her opthamologist husband, Harry, as she still thinks about what life would have been like with the older farmboy on whom she had a crush at age 12. She is constantly bickering with her mother, her sister Betty and her grownup daughter Anna, who has issues of her own. Rita is also estranged from her son Bobby, upon whom she is in denial about his homosexualorientation. After Ritas mother dies suddenly, Rita is on the verge of a nervous breakdown in dealing with her mothers estate, especially when the family talks about selling her beloved farm which she still intends on passing on to Bobby. Harry thinks that a European vacation would help Rita clear her mind, with the possibility of visiting Bobby who is currently living in Amsterdam. Although Rita faces some crises on the trip, much of her thoughts do clear after seeing Harry revisit Bastogne, his first time there since his World War II battle days.

Source: Wikipedia