In "The Turning Point", Dee Dee(Shirley MacLaine) is a former ballet dancer, now running a dance school with her husband, Wayne(Tom Skerritt), in Oklahoma City. Twenty years previously, she gave up her career, when she became pregnant with her daughter, Emilia(Leslie Browne), who is now an accomplished dancer in her own right. A visit from the American Ballet Company including her former rival, Emma(Anne Bancroft), brings old emotions to the surface. (They were competing for the leading role in "Anna Karenina" when Dee Dee got pregnant. Twenty years later, they are envious of each other's lives.) When Emilia wins a chance to perform in New York, her mother and brother accompany her.

"The Turning Point" is an intellingent and thoughtful movie about the choices we make in life and the sacrifices and compromises that we all have to live with.(I am not sure but ballet would seem to be one of the only careers where pregnancy would perfmanently end a career.) MacLaine and Bancroft both give wonderful performances but the rest of the cast does not fare as well.(To be fair, most of them seem to be professional dancers.) I liked the movie the most when it focused on Emma and Dee Dee but was less interested about the young dancers(sorry, but I'm not a ballet fan). But I have newfound respect for the dancers, having seen the all the hard work they do.