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Georgia (1995 film)

Georgia
Georgia film.jpg
Poster
Directed by Ulu Grosbard
Produced by Ulu Grosbard
Barbara Turner
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Written by Barbara Turner
Starring
Cinematography Jan Kiesser
Edited by Elizabeth Kling
Distributed by Miramax Films
Release date
May 19, 1995 (France)
December 8, 1995 (USA)
Running time
115 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Box office $1,110,104

Georgia is a 1995 American independent film starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham. In the film, Leigh played Sadie Flood, a punky barroom singer who has a complicated, jealous but loving relationship with her older sister, Georgia, played by Winningham. Georgia is a successful, talented and well-adjusted folk music singer and a happily married mother of two. Sadie is passionate but self-destructive and untalented. While she seeks fame, she destroys herself through drug abuse. Although the movie focuses largely on Sadie, it was apparently titled Georgia because Sadie defines her own identity so much through her older sister.

John Doe of the punk band X played a supporting role and performed as a member of Sadie's band. The music in the film consisted of 13 songs which were recorded live and performed by the actors ("a risk that has paid off spectacularly in terms of emotional intensity", according to Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan). These included covers of songs by Lou Reed, Elvis Costello and, most famously, Van Morrison: in the talked-about centrepiece of the film, Sadie drunkenly performs a raw, gruelling 8½-minute version of Morrison's "Take Me Back" in a ragged Janis Joplin-style gut howl at an AIDS benefit concert.

The film was a very personal project for Jennifer Jason Leigh: it was written by her mother, Barbara Turner, Leigh and Turner co-produced it themselves, and she chose as her co-star her longtime real-life friend Mare Winningham, whom she had known since the age of 13. It was directed by Ulu Grosbard, a friend of her mother's.

Georgia was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.


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