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Potter's latest film proceeds in a different way in terms of style and storytelling from her past work.

Orlando, for instance, featured actors talking straight into the camera. Potter's cross-cultural love story Yes had the actors delivering their lines in iambic pentameter. And Rage consisted entirely of dramatic monologues staged to look like interviews on a cellphone camera; the film was even released on the iPhone. Potter says she wrote the script of Ginger & Rosa with "accessibility" in mind. It was a deliberate strategy to avoid the filmmaking touches of her previous work.

"It's always a good principle to reinvent and to be prepared to throw away the things that you cling to as being your identity," she says. "And I don't just mean this in films; I mean this in life. We're not a set of habits. And I think sometimes to return to kind of first principles of pure intention, and be prepared to throw away your signature, if you like, can be incredibly liberating. It's quite terrifying, but very liberating, too. And in that way one finds new things to do."

A 'Kitchen-Sink Drama' Made New

This time the new thing to do turned out to be something old, says poet and critic Sophie Mayer, author of a book on Potter's films. Mayer says Ginger & Rosa draws on the realist style that swept onto British stage and screen productions, as well as literature and painting, in the period this film depicts.

"It seems very familiar to us now, but at the time it was a huge shock to depict people in their kitchens," Mayer says. "You know, you use the phrase 'kitchen sink drama' to dismiss things, but until that point, people hadn't been seen in their kitchens. There was no consciousness in film of that kind of domestic life."

There was also no consciousness of the politics of domestic life — the silent suffering for women such as Ginger's mother in the film. It's the silence of that generation of women in 1962 who could not know they were on the cusp of feminism's reawakening, and it was on Potter's mind as she wrote the script for Ginger & Rosa.

"When my mother died in 2010, I remembered — in a way, painfully — the struggles of her and the women of her generation, and [I] experienced them as ... silent partners in the beginning of the time of change in the '60s," Potter says. "Women, who, in many ways, were sacrificed for that change."

It's a sacrifice Potter acknowledges at the end of Ginger & Rosa with a dedication to her mother.

The budget President Obama will send to Congress Wednesday is expected to include some $400 billion in reductions to Medicare and other health programs.

And if the word around Washington is correct, it may also include a proposal aimed at winning some bipartisan backing – by changing the way Medicare patients pay for their care.

But there have been previous efforts to streamline Medicare's antiquated system of deductibles and copayments. And none, so far, has been successful.

Tom Miller, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says having separate deductibles and co-insurance schemes for Medicare's parts A and B is an anachronism that dates back to the 1960s, when Medicare was created.

"That's been a legacy which has been very hard to change," he says, "because it requires an act of Congress, which requires agreement ... which tends not to be the case."

Currently, Medicare Part A, which covers hospital and skilled nursing home care, and Part B, which covers doctor and outpatient costs, have separate deductible and copayment schemes. This year the Part A hospital deductible is $1,184; the Part B outpatient deductible is $147.

Miller is one of many economists who say it would make much more sense to have a single, merged deductible of around $500. That, however, would likely make many patients pay more. That's because most Medicare patients aren't hospitalized in a given year, but they do almost all go to the doctor.

Under most of the proposals floating around, said Howard Bedlin, vice president for public policy and advocacy of the National Council on Aging, "about 30 million beneficiaries would end up paying more and about 2 million would end up paying less."

In exchange, however, says Miller, beneficiaries would likely get something they don't get now – "stop-loss" protection. That agreement for Medicare to cover all of a patient's medical costs after he or she reaches a specific threshold is something the program currently – and almost inexplicably – lacks.

"That's the world in which you need insurance," Miller says. "But Medicare traditionally doesn't have that type of structure."

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The Hidden Costs Of Raising The Medicare Age

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The United States lost close to 6 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2009. Now, slowly, some of those jobs are coming back. Over the past three years, the U.S. economy has gained a half-million manufacturing jobs.

But even with the manufacturing recovery, there are both winners and losers — and sometimes they're created by the same company.

Take the case of the Swedish manufacturer Electrolux. A century ago, it got its start in vacuum cleaners, and now it makes a wide range of appliances. It's the world's second-largest appliance manufacturer behind Whirlpool, owns the Frigidaire brand and makes Kenmore products as well.

In 2004, Electrolux began a major restructuring, shuffling jobs from high-cost to low-cost areas, from Sweden to Hungary, from England to Poland and from Denmark to Thailand. This summer, Electrolux will begin moving jobs from a town outside Montreal to Memphis, Tenn., where it will begin production of ovens and stoves in a brand-new, high-tech plant.

With the move, Electrolux will go from paying a base union wage of close to $19 an hour in Canada to roughly one-third less in Memphis. The company is expected to eventually hire about 1,200 people at the Memphis location.

'Back To The Future'

Jack Truong, president and CEO of Electrolux Major Appliances North America, won't speculate on how long the company might stay in Memphis. The company has not committed to a minimum amount of time, but Truong says Electrolux is committed to working with Memphis to build success so that it can stay there for the long term.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton is delighted about the jobs. "We're actually going back to the future here. This used to be a heavy manufacturing city," he says.

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