Antonia greets her old friends, among them Russian Olga (who runs the cafe and is an undertaker and midwife), Crooked Finger (who lives in a room with his books and bitterly insists on the futility of life) and Mad Madonna, who utters wild goat cries at the moon because, as a Catholic, she cannot marry her Protestant lover.
There is also Farmer Bas, who comes courting one day with his five sons and makes a proposal of marriage centering largely on the boys' need for a mother. Antonia finds this underwhelming, but invites him to come over from time to time to do chores, for which she will pay him with hot breakfasts and cups of tea. "I can get those at home," he observes, but he comes anyway, and eventually Antonia tells him, "You can't have my hand, but you can have the rest." They agree that once a week is enough. Antonia doesn't want "all that confusion" in her house, or his, and so they build a little cottage for their meetings.
And so it goes. In fact, the narrator of "Antonia's Line," Antonia's great-granddaughter, is very fond of reminding us that so it goes; the movie is punctuated with moments in which we are assured that season followed season, and crops were planted and harvested, and life went on, and nothing much changed. e.e. cummings' poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town" comes to mind and has the same sad, romantic, elegiac, pastoral tone.
Generation follows generation. Antonia's daughter, who wants a child, but not a husband, auditions candidates for fatherhood.
Local matches are made: Loony Lips and DeeDee, who are both retarded, find happiness together. So does the village priest, who one day flings his cassock in the air, shouts "I'm free!" settles down and produces a dozen or so children. There are dark days, two of them involving rape, but the women take direct measures: One miscreant is punctured by a pitchfork, and another receives Antonia's curse.
What we remember most of all is the way Antonia's extended family grows. Children and grandchildren, in-laws and outlaws, neighbors, friends and drifters all come to sit at her long, long dinner table, and all learn the same simple rule, which is to look for the good in others - and to not criticize those who have found a way to be happy without seriously bothering anybody.
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