Samantha (film)
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Samantha is a 1992 American movie starring actress Martha Plimpton. Though at the time already a film actress for nearly ten years, this was the first vehicle in which Plimpton was the star. The film co-starred Mary Kay Place, Hector Elizondo, Ione Skye and Dermot Mulroney. It was a commercial failure, with mixed critical review.
The film was released in the summer and promoted as a romance blockbuster. A soundtrack/score album was released in anticipation of success that never came. The film revolves around Plimpton as the title character, a hugely talented violinist who discovers on her 21st birthday that she was left on the steps of her parents' (Place and Elizondo) home and subsequently adopted.
She goes into a panic, asserting that everything she has believed herself to be is a lie. She abandons music (just before her senior university recital) and moves in with childhood friend Henry (Mulroney). As she searches for her true identity she becomes oblivious to the inconvienience and suffering her search is causing the people she loves.
Ultimately she locates her birth parents, who are emotionally cold towards her but who are professional concert musicians (a harpist and a flautist.) She realizes that her gift of music came from within, but that despite no blood-connection, her family is truly her own.
The film featured cameo appearances by Robert Picardo (who would later find fame as The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager,) and Maryedith Burnell. Ironically, Burnell had previously played the character of Helen Buckman, mother to Julie Buckman in the television version of the film Parenthood; in the film version, Julie was played by Martha Plimpton.
