There's something about seeing your hometown on the big screen. Not just as part of a movie, but as the central, driving force. Tonight at the Virginia Film Festival, more than a 1000 anxious locals had a chance to see their town represented in the opening night feature, Big Stone Gap, a heartfelt and earnest homespun comedy about the family ties that bind us all together.
Based on the book penned by director Adriana Trigiani and partially influenced by her own life, the story centers on Big Stone Gap's town "old maid", Ave Maria Mulligan, played by Ashley Judd with her usual blend of beauty and spunk. Of Italian descent, Ave makes for an odd fit in the Southern-rooted Big Stone Gap, but she stands as probably the most "normal" of a quirky cast of characters. She's the shining, good-natured centerpiece of the coal mining town, delivering meds to her neighbors and directing the town's play, but passion is something she's sorely lacking despite being in a relationship with her longtime best friend, the flamboyant Theodore (John Benjamin Hickey). But there's clearly something brewing between her and the town hunk, Jack MacChesney, played by Patrick Wilson whose Big Stone Gap roots run deep.
While the comedy and various romantic entanglements are pretty conventional, what shines through is that this is a labor of love for all involved.That includes Whoopi Goldberg as the acerbic Fleeta, who runs the town pharmacy along with Ave, and Jenna Elfman as the flighty and superstitious Iva Lou Wade, who believes love can be found through Chinese facial readings. It's an oddball mix of Altman-esque characters, with a deep multigenerational theme that really hits home. Feeling as if life has begun to pass her by and that Big Stone Gap has become more confining than rewarding, Ave reaches out to find a piece of her Italian heritage by locating her estranged father, but it's a development that arrives after long stretches of narrative drift. Not much happens in Big Stone Gap, it's a gradually paced film about a gradually paced place. But there's real chemistry between everybody involved, most especially between Judd and Wilson, and their romantically awkward scenes together are a joy. It's also safe to say Goldberg, who doesn't make many appearances on the big screen anymore, chose the perfect role for her brand of sharp-witted humor.
After tonight's world premiere, a woman next to me captured the essence of Big Stone Gap and why this simple film of modest aspirations works: "I loved it. It reminded me of home, the people and the places I knew".
Rating: 3 out of 5
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