WILDCAT, based on the stories of Flannery O'Connor, was even worse than my worst fears! Flannery O'Connor is one of my favorite writers, so I was thrilled that somebody was making a movie of her short stories. Previous attempts to film her work have yielded mixed results. (The best was WISE BLOOD with Brad Dourif and Harry Dean Stanton; most notorious was the TV version of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" with Gene Kelly and a tacked-on happy ending.) This one takes on O'Connor's life after she has been diagnosed with Lupus (the disease that killed her father) and is frantically trying to write her very best before her death at age 39. Interspersed with the biographical episodes are vignettes from some of her short stories, which make no sense when removed from their contexts. It's an incomprehensible mess (starting with the title-there are no wildcats in O'Connor's work and she, a fanatical Catholic girl, could hardly be called one), with the same actors portraying real people Flannery knew and the characters she based on them. If you are not familiar with O'Connor and her work, I doubt this will make any sense at all. Top it off with the cringeworthy attempts at Southern accents by most of the actors. I enjoyed a few moments of it, but that's primarily because I had a frame of reference. Flannery's fans tend to be very possessive of her. I am no exception. I thought this was heartbreakingly bad.
