'Parched' is much more than a film

The film is shot with such inescapable beauty by Russell Carpenter (who moves with fluent fecundity from the soggy sappiness of "Titanic" to the parched desertscape of this walloping work on women's empowerment), that you fear for the inner lives of the characters. Would their emotional existence be able to withstand the sheer extraneous splendor of the storytelling? The answer is blowing passionately in the winds. The winds of change, if you will. "Parched" is shot on location in the hearts of a glorious gallery of women who seem to have emerged from generations of oppression and longing into a tremulous, dim yet restorative and nourishing light to claim a place in the blue open skies.