Nuts (film)

Nuts is a 1987 American drama film directed by Martin Ritt and starring Barbra Streisand and Richard Dreyfuss. The screenplay by Tom Topor, Darryl Ponicsan, and Alvin Sargent is based on Topor's 1979 play of the same title. This was Karl Malden's final feature film before his death in 2009 and Robert Webber's final feature film before his death in 1989. It also included Leslie Nielsen's last non-comedic role.

Plot

When call girl Claudia Draper kills client Allen Green in self-defense, her mother Rose and stepfather Arthur attempt to have her declared mentally incompetent by Dr. Herbert Morrison in order to avoid a public scandal. Claudia knows that, if her parents succeed, she will be remanded to a mental institution indefinitely, so she is determined to prove she is sane enough to stand trial.

The attorney her parents hire to defend her quits after Claudia assaults him, so the court appoints public defender Aaron Levinsky to handle her case. She resists him as well until she finally accepts that he is on her side. Aaron begins to probe her background to determine how the child of supposedly model upper-middle-class parents could find herself in this situation, and with each piece of her past he uncovers he receives additional disturbing insight into what brought Claudia to this crossroads in her life. He discovers that she was sexually abused frequently by her stepfather as a young girl.