The hospital scene also encapsulates the warm, bittersweet tone of the film. While typing, Channe begins to cry. Her father, severely ill with heart disease, says, "Sweetheart, you know what I always told you," referring to the maxim that serves as the film's title. Channe replies, "Yes Daddy, but I'm not a soldier's daughter anymore; I'm a writer's daughter." In a wry and loving response, Willis tells her, "Oh, well that's okay then; they cry all the time!"
After Willis loses his battle with his hereditary heart disease, the family goes through a bracingly realistic mourning period. Barbara Hershey wears drastic makeup to etch the stress of the loss on her face, and in keeping with the mood, Fabre took "no special care with her lighting" in the mourning scenes. When Marcella begins to rebound, Hershey's makeup becomes more conventional; she is once again lit like an actress and "is more beautiful than ever," says Fabre.
Hershey, who has been a film star since her early teens in the late Sixties, was initially concerned about her onscreen appearance, as are many actresses of a certain age. "She was tense because she was working in France, where she didn't know anyone. She knew I wasn't using any diffusion on the lenses. She asked me to be careful of this and of that with her face. I'm afraid my response was somewhat cool, perhaps because I'm young, and I think she was a little surprised by my reaction. It took her a while to gain confidence in my work. But she did, and things went well from that point. I think she is very beautiful and looks great in this film."
Fabre always operates the camera on his films. He explains, "For me, the picture is one thing; the lighting goes with the framing and I don't like to separate the two. I'm also able to work more quickly this way. I also like to be near the actors and to the light. I look through the camera and I see immediately what needs to be changed."
As the film ends, the surviving Willis family members begin to rebound from their loss. Sitting on their front porch on a beautiful day with the setting sun visible through the house's windows, Marcella Willis happily reminisces about her late husband, lamenting only that he was continually reluctant to dance with her. Channe rushes into the house and puts on a lively Latin record, prompting Marcella to ask her adopted son to dance, but he too demurs.
Trying to capture the setting sun in a series of shots that included dialogue was, of course, a challenge for Fabre. Additionally, the crew had only a few hours spread over two days to shoot the scenes. Only a third of the scene used real sunsets; the rest was re-created with gelled lights and filtration. "When Channe was in the house putting on the record, it was actually raining," he recalls. "To simulate the setting sun, I used a 6K HMI outside with a 1/2 orange gel. I cheated by closing a curtain on the window. When the characters are on the porch, the sunset you see through the windows is real. Naturally, the sunset did not last nearly long enough for the dialogue scenes, so for those we used gelled lights and an orange lens filter. The orange filter was also used for the film's final shot." Despite these technical necessities, Fabre was happy with the results.
After her son's gentle rebuff, Marcella begins to dance with Channe, who is delighted to take a twirl. The low setting sun is still visible through the windows. In the picture's final moment, the family strolls down the hill to their dock. Long shadows from the trees fall on the yard, and the strong orange light from the sunset washes the scene. The Willises proclaim it to be a beautiful day.
