The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (2005)

Image credit: The Prize Winner of Defiance, OH: Michael Gibson

WHO ARE ALL YOU PEOPLE? A feel-good memoir with the false, happy vibe of a good jingle

Is Julianne Moore to the girdle born? In The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, Moore comports herself once again with Eisenhower-era placidity as an ideal and idealized housewife and mother — a sister in diminished expectations to the perfectly groomed, oxygen-deprived, unhappy women she played in Far From Heaven and The Hours. Stepping off the pages of a 2001 tribute memoir written by Terry ''Tuff'' Ryan, Moore plays Terry's mother, Evelyn Ryan, a real-life domestic goddess who supported her family with cash and prizes won in jingle contests during the 1950s and '60s. Churchgoing mother of 10 kids and long-suffering wife of a weepy, childish, alcoholic husband (played by Woody Harrelson) who effectively counted as her 11th, this Evelyn is never less than minty fresh in rose-colored shirtwaist dresses, determined to squeeze sweet lemonade from the sour lemons of her circumstances.

Screenwriter Jane Anderson (Normal) makes her feature directorial debut with this caramelized production, and the tone she employs — a candy-colored perkiness that bathes every triumph, every setback, and every Ryan in the forgiving light of Simpler Times — is very much an aesthetic choice. (I assume the surviving Ryan children, who also make an appearance, approve of the color palette.) As a result, though, Anderson's adaptation is heavy on production numbers in which jingles come to life and light on conveying any real feelings of Eisenhower-era darkness the prizewinner herself might have felt during her decades of marriage to an abusive, drunken man. Here, nostalgia becomes its own form of defiance.