Phil Morrison has created a film that is among the best I've seen so far in 2005. He has taken a simple country mouse-city mouse tale and given it cosmic implications. It is the story of everyone who grew up in the boonies and then gone on to make it big in the big city. It beautifully portrays the embarrassment you feel about taking a worldly spouse back to your small hometown and its pettiness; the small-mindedness and envy of the siblings who never left town or made good; the reinvention of one's self when one moves to a big metropolis like Chicago. I did NOT feel the Bible Belt North Carolinians were stereotyped, as some viewers have remarked; I felt they were all portrayed as real people who simply had a tough time articulating their feelings, and who were just SIMPLE people...church-goers, family people who have no complexity of emotions or doubts, like city people are wont to have. The actress who played the sister-in-law was brilliant, funny and totally believable; the mother was the next Gena Rowlands; Alessandro Nivola and the girlfriend were extremely appealing ciphers (which they were supposed to be); and the unrestrained horror of their having to return to this small Southern town was so palpable, that it made watching the film very uncomfortable at times (especially if a viewer's own life resembles that of the main characters'). Deliberately underwritten, beautifully paced, it is one to remember, savor, and wind up at the Festivals. Bravo!
