Franklin branches out from his early critical successes in crime-dramas (One False Move, Devil in a Blue Dress) to take the helm of what ordinarily would be pigeonholed as a two-hanky "woman's picture." Zellweger plays Ellen Gulden, a writer fighting her way up the career ladder at New York magazine. When she finds out that her mother has cancer, she moves home to care for Mom, a lifelong homemaker and avid decorator who takes pride in community craft projects. Ellen's attempts to keep her writing career alive clash with her unwanted duties at home, and she starts to reevaluate her family life with an adult eye--seeing unexpected strengths in her mother, who has always embarrassed her, and finding unexpected weaknesses in her father (William Hurt), a literature professor who keeps his unfinished novel hidden away like an insurance policy against failure.

The movie unfolds in flashback as Ellen answers an investigator's questions about her mother's death, and there is a moral dilemma lurking in the final minutes. But Franklin and his screenwriter, Karen Croner, avoid the pitfalls of hot-button issue advocacy on the one hand and treacly sentiment on the other. Streep, who made her reputation playing the most serious roles available, seems luminous and feather-light as she surefootedly negotiates the comedy and tragedy of motherhood, trying not to nag even when she doesn't understand or disapproves of Ellen's desires. Zellweger's performance hits just the right notes too: Her character reacts with anger as the partitions between work, play, social life, and duty collapse under the pressure of family life. Only William Hurt, whose acting is too idiosyncratic and unnatural to be ignored, strikes the wrong chord.

But the strength of Franklin's eye for detail--his clear-eyed vision through the temptations of the disease picture and the mother-daughter picture and the chick flick--brings One True Thing safely past all the points where it could have mired down. Mostly, he stays out the way of the emotions that flow so naturally from Zellweger and Streep, keeping the style unobtrusive and the atmosphere intimate. One True Thing is penetrating and satisfying because it treats family and death like the difficult realities they are, not like the usual overworked clichés. Thanks to those extra steps, a good old story feels new again.