David Denby
“The two stars turn in major performances … Shirley Maclaine … gives us one of the wittiest and most psyhologically acute portraits of the ego-stiffening process of middle age that we've ever seen in American movies…. Whatever the issue, Aurora thinks that she is simply right, and she's amazed that the rest of the world can't see it….
“Emma is completely different, not just because she is young but because she's grown up rebelling against her mother's evasions and gentilities. Aurora doesn't know that she has an unconscious; idly vicious remarks drop out of her mouth almost by accident. Emma, on the other hand, has such easy access to her instincts, desires, and fears that her reactions to everything seem utterly true.
“Actors who hit emotions dead center are generally less interesting than the performers who come at things from the side, or with a touch of irony. But Debra Winger makes sincerity mesmerizing. She drives right down the middle of whatever her characters are feeling, and she's so fluid, so electric--laughter, tears, rage rising to the surface without any apparent effort--that we stop noticing that she is acting at all. In Terms of Endearment, she's playing a woman who is daughter, mother, wife, as well as lover, and so she's lost some of that sweaty erotic ravenousness that was so exciting in Urban Cowboy and An Officer and a Gentleman. She's still sexy, with a heat behind the eyes that makes one's blood jump, but this time she's more rounded emotionally, and she's got other things on her mind. Her Emma has a way of registering her own amusement at what's going on with a roll of her eyes or a lip curled merrily, while giving all the rest of herself to the person she's talking to. She's complete, and we feel very close to her.”
David Denby
New York, December 3, 1983
“Emma is completely different, not just because she is young but because she's grown up rebelling against her mother's evasions and gentilities. Aurora doesn't know that she has an unconscious; idly vicious remarks drop out of her mouth almost by accident. Emma, on the other hand, has such easy access to her instincts, desires, and fears that her reactions to everything seem utterly true.
“Actors who hit emotions dead center are generally less interesting than the performers who come at things from the side, or with a touch of irony. But Debra Winger makes sincerity mesmerizing. She drives right down the middle of whatever her characters are feeling, and she's so fluid, so electric--laughter, tears, rage rising to the surface without any apparent effort--that we stop noticing that she is acting at all. In Terms of Endearment, she's playing a woman who is daughter, mother, wife, as well as lover, and so she's lost some of that sweaty erotic ravenousness that was so exciting in Urban Cowboy and An Officer and a Gentleman. She's still sexy, with a heat behind the eyes that makes one's blood jump, but this time she's more rounded emotionally, and she's got other things on her mind. Her Emma has a way of registering her own amusement at what's going on with a roll of her eyes or a lip curled merrily, while giving all the rest of herself to the person she's talking to. She's complete, and we feel very close to her.”
David Denby
New York, December 3, 1983
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