Wrestling with Alligators

At the end of an era, her life was just beginning.

All that Maddy Hawkins has ever wanted was a family she could call her own. Even in 1959, the simplest of things are difficult to find.

Maddy (Aleska Palladino), a street-wise teenage runaway, believes she has created this family with the women who live with her in an East Coast woman-only rooming house: Lulu (Claire Bloom), an eccentric silent-screen star; Claire (Joely Richardson), a beautiful, widowed French war bride; and Mary (Adrienne Shelly), a young artist. Bus as Maddy watches her newfound family fall apart, she begins to realize that some things in life are worth fighting for, and that the bonds of true friendship are the strongest bonds of all.

Wrestling With Alligators is not only a young woman's rite of passage, it's also the story of three generations of women, struggling to shape their own destinies and challenge tradition, facing a world on the eve of dramatic change.