Pearl

Pearl lives on an isolated Texas farm in 1918. Her husband Howard has gone to war. She tends her stroke-paralyzed father in his wheelchair while her severe German immigrant mother Ruth watches her with cold suspicion and iron control. Pearl goes to the cinema in town whenever she can, watching picture shows, dreaming of becoming a dancer and a star. The desire in her is so enormous it has nowhere to go.

She has violent impulses she barely conceals. She feeds a goose to the alligator living in the pond, more out of curiosity than cruelty. She stabs the alligator with a pitchfork for the pleasure of it.

A handsome projectionist at the cinema becomes her obsession. He tells her about dance auditions happening in the city for a traveling show and they begin an affair. Howard's sister Mitsy visits the farm; Pearl confides in her, tells her everything, the longing and the plans. Meanwhile Ruth tightens her grip, suspicious of Pearl's absences, attempting to compress her further.

Pearl auditions. The deacon running the auditions passes over her, choosing another girl. She returns to the projectionist and confesses her heartbreak. He tries to let her down gently — tells her she's too intense, that their affair was a mistake. Pearl, rejected, kills him with a pitchfork and puts the body in the alligator's pond.

At the farm, Ruth and Pearl's confrontation turns physical. Ruth slaps her, again and again, methodically. Pearl snaps and strangles her mother to death on the kitchen floor. Her father, unable to flee, dies in the fire that follows.

Howard returns from the war. Pearl has cleaned the house. She has set the table. She greets him at the door with a radiant, trembling smile — and the camera pulls back to reveal what is seated at the table with them.

The film ends on an unbroken close-up of Pearl's face — the enormous forced smile holding, cracking, holding — as the credits roll in silence.