The word "alcoholic" is never used in the household, although Kelly Ryan is a classic alcoholic. When the parish priest comes to offer advice, it is to advise Evelyn to submit and pray and support her husband; when he leaves, one of the kids observes that the priest's breath "smells just like dad's."

There is a running battle with the milkman over the weekly bill. They are hours from being homeless when a contest prize allows them to put a down payment on a house. Homework goes on around the dining room table while Kelly, in the kitchen, swings between bitterness and tears; he feels shame because his wife supports the family with her contests, and it comes out either weepy or angry. Of course if he would stop drinking and go to AA, he could hold up his end of the marriage, but that does not occur to him as a possibility.

"So far three of my chicks have found their nests, and I am so very proud of them," Evelyn tells us in narration at one point. "That's where my prayers went. That's where they all went." It's the repetition, the use of the word "all," that carries the message. She did not pray for herself, nor for her husband. She does have one ambition: To travel to Goshen, Ind., for a meeting of a "Contester Club" convened by a fellow contestant (Laura Dern), who is a pen pal.

The movie is based on a memoir by Terry ("Tuff") Ryan, one of two children who became authors. The other kids all turned out well, too. The film ends with one of those moments that blindsides you with an unexpected surge of emotion. But for the most part "Prize Winner," written and directed by Jane Anderson, avoids obvious sentiment and predictable emotion and shows this woman somehow holding it together year after year, entering goofy contests that for her family mean life and death.

This is Anderson's feature film debut as a director, after work on television. As a writer, she was responsible for "The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom" (1993), starring Holly Hunter in one of the lost treasures among recent made-for-TV films. She is fascinated by mothers driven to extremes by the problem of having all of the responsibility and none of the power.

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