Woman with a Past

Basically a grittier version of a ’30s melodrama in which the good girl gone bad (she did it for the kids, of course) makes a new life for herself while hiding the old one from her current husband. Trailer-park trash replaces seedy gangsters, au courant themes of abuse are played up, but everything else remains basically the same. Still, Pamela Reed is compelling throughout Woman with a Past, always breaking through the surface cliches of the scenario and getting to the real human truths. B-