Stanley & Iris

Stanley & Iris
original film poster for Stanley & Iris
Directed by	Martin Ritt
Produced by	Arlene Sellers Allen Winitsky
Screenplay by	Harriet Frank, Jr. Irving Ravetch
Based on	Union Street by Pat Barker
Starring	Jane Fonda Robert De Niro
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Donald McAlpine
Edited by	Sidney Levin
Production company	Lantana Productions Star Partners II Ltd. MGM/UA Communications Co.
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	February 9, 1990 (1990-02-09)
Running time	104 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$23 million
Box office	$5,820,015

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Stanley & Iris is a 1990 American romantic drama film directed by Martin Ritt and starring Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro. The screenplay by Harriet Frank, Jr. and Irving Ravetch is loosely based on the novel Union Street by Pat Barker.

The original music score is composed by John Williams and the cinematography is by Donald McAlpine. The film was marketed with the tagline "Some people need love spelled out for them." It was the final film that Ritt directed, and he died months after the film's release.

Iris King (Fonda), a widow still grieving a half-year after the loss of her husband, works in a baking factory in Connecticut and lives in a high-crime area. She lives from paycheck to paycheck as she raises her two children, Kelly and Richard. Also staying with her are her sister Sharon and Sharon's abusive husband Joe, both unemployed. With money already tight for the family, Kelly discovers she is pregnant, which makes matters worse.

Iris makes the acquaintance of Stanley Cox (De Niro), a cook in the bakery's lunchroom cafeteria, when he comes to her aid after her purse is snatched on a bus. But as their friendship develops, she begins noticing peculiarities about Stanley − he doesn't own a car (he instead bicycles wherever he needs to go), he lives with and supports his elderly father, becomes frustrated when asked to sign his name, doesn't believe in opening Chinese fortune cookies, and cannot pick out a specific item from a shelf. Iris soon realizes that Stanley is illiterate, and when she innocently mentions this to Stanley's boss, Stanley is fired the next day over food safety (and potential lawsuit) concerns, despite being a good cook and model employee. Afterwards, Stanley is unable to obtain any steady work, forcing him to move into a garage and put his father in a shabby retirement home. His father dies in the home only a few weeks later, upsetting Stanley over the fact that his illiteracy prevented him from caring for his father properly. Stanley seeks Iris out and asks her to teach him to read, explaining that his traveling-salesman father moved him all over the country when Stanley was a boy, bouncing him to nearly 50 different schools in total, resulting in Stanley developing no reading or writing skills from this lack of educational stability. Iris begins giving Stanley basic reading lessons and he gradually grows close to her and her family. It is during one of these reading exercises that he tells her that he's been wanting to get intimate with her since they first met, but Iris is hesitant.