Shy People

Andrei Konchalovsky’s engrossing feature about a New York journalist (Jill Clayburgh) who invites her teenage daughter (Martha Plimpton) along on an expedition to the remote bayous of Louisiana to hunt up some remote relatives for a magazine article she’s writinga journey that leads her to the imperious and eccentric widow Ruth (Barbara Hershey) and her family. The interesting and exciting thing about this exercise in comparative anthropologywhich can incidentally be read as a brilliantly understated cold-war allegoryis that it is never complacent or obvious; the relative values of civilization and primitivism are constantly juxtaposed, but without the kind of facility that one would expect from such a venture. The mysticism and poetry of Konchalovsky’s conception, moreover, are never forced, and never allowed to interfere with the film’s value as entertainment (adventure, comedy, and melodrama, with a faint touch of fantasy)yielding a movie that manages to be Russian in conception without sacrificing any of its local truths. Gerard Brach and Marjorie David collaborated with Konchalovsky on the script; with Merritt Butrick, John Philbin, and Mare Winningham. Chris Menges is the talented cinematographer; the music is by Tangerine Dream. (JR)

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