Shy People

Barbara Hershey gives a great performance as the deeply repressed backwoods woman -- it could have been caricature work, but it's passionate, dedicated and determined yet restrained. Her character is so dedicated to code and rigid beliefs that after a while we surprise ourselves by starting to wonder if there's some truth, or sense, or admirable strength, to her punishing way of living.

The city woman, played by Jill Clayburgh, is our way into the story, and yet she is depicted as somewhat silly and sheltered; her modern, idealistic comments and questions get across thoughts we agree with, and yet they aren't intended as powerful speeches, so our balance of skepticism and interest in Hershey is retained.

"Shy People" is full of powerful melodrama, strange and specific characters, striking settings, extreme dramatic implications and turning points. The material penetrates the mind and refuses to settle down in the form of cosy conclusions. An oddly powerful movie.

Barbara Hershey was incredible as usual. This film will stay with you well after its over.

It's hard to even put one's finger on what Konchalovskiy actually thought he was doing because as a whole the film doesn't hold together and looks rather fragmented. Maybe he wanted to do a horror flick or he didn't even have a coherent concept but just went shooting and hoping that something will come out of it?

The script has distinctive feeling of an old school Russian theatrical play - too much pathos and sharp separations between formal acts. That damages the flow and makes it look too verbal and melodramatic (which does work for live theater), as if it was used because they (3 writers) didn't have enough ideas for a smooth flow. Also a retard son was a cliché without any purpose or history.

The cast was very uneven in quality and makes me think that maybe Konchalovskiy run out of ideas on what do do with actors. Barbara Hershey has done a great job but the character is still monotone and that's a direction flaw (she has done enough very different characters to be able to portray a character transition). Martha Plimpton did well as Grace but it looks like she was left to her own devices and she needed directional help to go from "well" to "great". Jill Clayburgh was abysmal, ruined half of the flick and made me think how would Meryl Strip or Glenn Close make that role fly sky high.

Cinematography was way to much of a Chris Menges showing off and not thinking about the whole. In some scenes it looks so artificial that it make you snap out of the flow. Also it's way too much of a flat gray and lacking a range which is a trap that indulgent cinematographers sometimes fall into. Whatever he saw as gradations of gray on the set is lost even on celluloid and turns into a smudge in digital.

Portraying eerie requires enough contrast for the audience at large to see visual structure instead of a flat surface. Some thinking and effort to transition from say lush green to foggy to rainy to "vapor above a water" and some testing to check what is realistically discernible on screen with the tech at hand.

Barbara Hershey won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Andrei Konchalovsky's "Shy People". The movie portrays a magazine writer (Jill Clayburgh) and her daughter (Martha Plimpton) taking a trip to the Louisiana boondocks to meet a distant relative (Hershey). As the movie progresses, we learn not only about the relative's various kinds of superstitions, but also about the secrets that the great uncle held, and how they relate to some current rifts in the family.

Probably the movie's best aspect is how it dignifies country people. While making it clear that these folks have some backwards notions about things - namely that the deceased man is still watching - Konchalovsky never makes them look stupid. Also, we get to see rural Louisiana (although it may have changed in the past twenty years, especially after Hurricane Katrina).

If anything mildly disappointed me about the movie, it's that I didn't get to hear more about Cajun culture. But then again, it's probably best that the movie didn't lose its main focus. I would suspect that the one boy was right when he accused the oil companies.

All in all, worth seeing.

This film seems at first pretentious and then very thoughtful.

It begins as a shallow magazine photographer and her daughter travel deep into the Bayou to research their family history. As they meet and establish relationships with their cousins, the story evolves into a truly haunting display of modern life vs. isolation, and the ways in which people relate to each other. Barbara Hershey is especially excellent as a tough but deeply loving widow.