Risks

Bonanno cleverly explores materialistic values while taking a realistic look at a single-parent career woman struggling with family responsibilities and her own need for identity. When 18-year-old Lynn Ann Loomis loses her adored father, she inherits his insurance business and household, takes charge of a ditsy mother, two younger sisters and a treacherous office staff duo. Soon enough, Lynn Ann is also saddled with a no-account husband with whom she is ``crazy in lust,'' a drunken, narrow-minded mother-in-law and two children. Eventually divorced, Lynn Ann parlays her experience into a high-powered Wall Street reinsurance job, buys a Summit, N.J., home, sends her children to private school. Her son's cry-for-help behavior leads her to therapy with Beth, a counselor who has problems of her own. Lynn Ann thinks all she needs is Mr. Right, but comes to see how the business world feeds ambitions and anxieties while starving personal needs. Bonanno ( Angela Lansbury ) brings a distinctive voice and a credible point of view to her arresting story of a plucky woman in a competitive world. (Nov.)