Le Anne Dunley (Kim Dickens) arrives home to find her daughter Kelli having oral sex. She send Kelli to stay with her aunt Marie Jones (Jane Kaczmarek). Le Anne and Marie are sisters with differing styles. Marie and her husband Walter have Elizabeth who is around the same age as Kelli and goes to the same school. Elizabeth has possessive boyfriend Mark. Kelli starts to suspect Mark of disturbing behaviors but aunt Marie sees Kelli as the bad seed and Elizabeth as the perfect child. Mark hits Elizabeth but they pass a lie to her parents. Mark get more and more jealous of her male classmate. Cody tries to befriend Kelli but she distrusts guys in general.This is the classic Lifetime melodrama of abusive boyfriend and abused girlfriend. There are some good adult actors. I'm not familiar with the younger actors except for Joe Dinicol. He's generally pretty good. This is a melodrama without much tension or actual drama. It's paint-by-numbers. Elizabeth's delusions are almost as infuriating as Mark's violence. This is Lifetime at its Lifetimiest.

When people say this movie was good "for a Lifetime movie" they mean it. There's a lot of substance to that statement since Lifetime network's films are so cookie-cutter that everyone comes back for another piece. But "Reviving Ophelia" was seriously different. The story focuses not only on the girl being abused (and reluctant to reject the relationship) but also a second character who has her own share of troubles, difference being that this one has the clarity to realize that her cousin needs help. Rebecca Williams is really, really great as Elizabeth (aka "Ophelia"; Shakespeare reference) because of how real she seems. The kind of viewer I am, I get mad at characters who, say, allow themselves to get abused and STILL stay in the relationship; but Williams's portrayal made sense and made me understand what some women endure. I don't reread books or re-watch movies but for some reason I DVR'd this flick and watched it again. Definitely watch if you're into a drama w/ a solid plot and believable characters/actors.

This is one excellent movie. The characters have been stretched from real life people towards easily recognizable stereotypes that create an emotional tension which invites audience participation (what would you do?) and which heightens the issues and of teenage infatuation, 'love' as ownership, being overly agreeable as an unworkable position, and the traps that girls fall into by caring too much (among others).The writers were women, so the characterization of the female characters was outstanding, but they clearly don't understand the emotional conflicts experienced by males (who does, actually?), so the male acting was unpotentiated which, if it had been with more emotional beef would have made this a first class movie.

Jane Kaczmarek does a fine acting job as the deeply troubled mother of a teenager who has fallen in love with a physical abuser. It's basically the same old story about a guy who saw his mother abused when he was a child and is continuing his ways.Kaczmarek is the same mother who finds fault with her niece's involvement as well as the break-up of her sister's marriage troublesome but is unable to recognize what her daughter is experiencing first hand. Both she and her husband are intelligent, thoughtful parents but were unable to see what was really going on until the situation escalated.Apparently, teenage battering has become a major problem and this film aptly showed it.