Five unmarried sisters make the most of their simple existence in rural Ireland in the 1930s.

A young boy tells the story of growing up in a fatherless home with his unmarried mother and four spinster aunts in 1930s Ireland. Five women different in temperament and capability from one another form a firm emotional support system for one another (reluctantly at times), with the eldest assuming the role of "somewhat meddling" overseer. Into this comes their elderly brother, a priest too senile to perform his clerical functions who has "come home to die" after a lifetime in Africa. Then the boy's father rides up on a motorcycle--to announce that he's on his way to Spain to fight against Franco. Although undeniably affected by the presence of the two men, the sisters continue to cope as a close-knit unit until something happens that disrupts the fabric of that cohesiveness beyond repair.—BOB STEBBINS <[email protected]>

Kate Mundy (Streep) is the eldest of five sisters living together in a small house in Ireland in 1936. The only one with a steady job, Kate oversees the various conflicting personalities. Though none of the women is married, Christina (McCormack) has a young son named Michael. The household works well in its fashion, but after the sisters' senile brother, Jack (Gambon), shows up, and then Michael's father, Gerry (Ifans), things are unlikely to stay the same.

Adult Michael Mundy reflects on a pivotal period in his life, when he was eight years old in the summer of 1936 in his hometown of Ballybeg in Donegal County, Ireland. Then, he lived on the family farm with his single, never married mother Christina, and his four maternal also never married aunts: strict, domineering schoolteacher Kate, brash, heavy smoking Maggie, sensitive Agnes, and slow-witted Rose, the latter two, who like Kate, earn income outside the farm in, like many women of the area, being provided local wool to knit gloves. The latter two also have a special bond with each other in being the ones requiring the most care. Outwardly, the arrival of two men, independent of each other, is the impetus for the changes in Michael's life. The first is his maternal uncle, Catholic priest Father Jack, who is home for the first time in twenty-five years after having been away doing missionary work in Africa, and thus is the first time Michael would have met him. The sisters, especially Kate, may or may not want to admit that Father Jack no longer has all his mental faculties, refusing to acknowledge such a mechanism for their own protection. And the second is Michael's biological father, Welshman Gerry Evans. While Gerry has come in and out of the Mundy and Christina's lives once every few years, Gerry and Christina who still do love each other in their own way, this visit marks Michael's earliest remembrance of his father. This visit also marks a potential turning point in Christina and Gerry's lives in it being specifically for him to tell her his immediate plans for the future. While Father Jack and Gerry are the physical manifestations, they act as symbols for the passage of time which makes it this pivotal moment for Michael and the Mundys as a collective.—Huggo