Desert Hearts

“In 1959, Vivian Bell came to Reno, Nevada for a quick divorce. Of all the people she met there, the one who surprised her the most was herself.”

Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) comes to Reno in 1959 to wait out the six weeks it takes to finish her divorce, and she can't account for the way a young woman named Cay (Patricia Charbonneau) keeps drawing her attention. Donna Deitch adapts Jane Rule's novel with a patient eye, following the literature professor away from her careful, buttoned-up habits. Vivian stands in the Nevada heat beside Cay, a stranger with her own ideas about how to live.