Limbo (1999 film)
| Limbo | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | John Sayles |
| Produced by | Maggie Renzi |
| Screenplay by | John Sayles |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Mason Daring |
| Cinematography | Haskell Wexler |
| Edited by | John Sayles |
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Production
company |
Green/Renzi Productions
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| Distributed by | Screen Gems |
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Release date
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Running time
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126 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | under $10,000,000 |
| Box office | $2,160,710 |
Limbo is a 1999 drama film written, produced, edited, and directed by American independent filmmaker John Sayles. The drama features Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, David Strathairn, Vanessa Martinez and Kris Kristofferson. It is the first theatrical film to be released and distributed by Screen Gems.
The film is set in fictional Port Henry, Alaska, a town undergoing stress as the local economy switches from an industrial one based around the canning and paper industries towards a tourism and leisure based model. Joe Gastineaux (David Strathairn) is a former high school basketball star and fisherman who quit fishing after some undisclosed tragedy. He now works as a handyman, particularly for Frannie and Lou, a lesbian couple who own the local resort hotel. Joe is friends with teenager Noelle De Angelo (Vanessa Martinez) who also works for Frankie and Lou. At an event which they are working, Noelle's mother Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), a lounge singer, breaks up with her live in boyfriend and asks Joe for help in moving. The two of them become close and eventually begin a romantic relationship. Meanwhile, Joe gets the chance to return to fishing when Frankie and Lou ask him to work a fishing boat which they have acquired as collateral from local fisherman Harmon. Donna has a strained relationship with her daughter Noelle, due mainly to Noelle's disapproval of her mother's peripatetic bohemian lifestyle. This is exacerbated when Donna begins dating Joe, who Noelle also had a crush on. At a bar Donna overhears the story of why Joe quit fishing: he had been involved in a deadly sinking which claimed the lives of all of his boatmates, including the brother of local bush pilot and small-time criminal "Smilin Jack" Johannson (Kris Kristofferson).
Things change when Joe's dissolute half-brother Bobby shows up. He asks Joe to help crew his boat to pick up a client. Joe brings along Donna and Noelle. They dock for the night in an isolated bay and Bobby reveals the truth: Bobby had been involved in marijuana smuggling and had dumped a load overboard when he was spooked by the police. Now they are going to meet Bobby's partners to settle up his debt. That night, men sneak onto the boat and kill Bobby. Joe, Donna and Noelle flee to a nearby island where the men begin to hunt them. They take shelter in an abandoned cabin and try to survive as they wait for rescue. As they do they grow closer and Noelle finds a diary written by a teenage girl who had lived in the cabin with her family. She spends the nights reading segments of the diary to Joe and Donna. Eventually Donna steals a look at the diary and discovers that it is blank after the portion her daughter Noelle had read during the first two evenings. Noelle had made up most of its contents, expressing her own feelings through the diary. They arduously maintain a signal fire and scrape some food from the seashore.
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