Synopsis

At the beginning of BARGAINS, the female clerks in the local discount store are preparing for a mid-summer sale and gossiping over marked-down goods that nobody wants. Sally, prim and conservative, still lives with her tyrannical mother. Mildred, brassy and funny, lives in a trailer with her brother, Lothar, a failed, colorblind hairdresser who has never found himself. When the department store closes, the world as these women know it comes to an end. Although opposites in all respects, Sally and Mildred become allies and then friends as they rearrange the people who encumber their lives. After much maneuvering with the semi-suicidal Lothar, Mildred sends him off in the trailer to make a new start in California with his lover Dennis, a florist who is allergic to flowers. Sally confronts her domineering mother for the first time in her life and decides to let Mildred come to live in their house. Having inherited Dennis' flower shop, the two friends begin new careers, a new business and new lives.