Sissy Spacek
Tommy Lee Jones
Directed by. Michael Apted
Based on the life story of Loretta Lynn, this shows the transformation from the naive daughter of a Kentucky coalminer, to the United States' number one country singer.
The first part concentrates on the adolescent Loretta Lynn, meeting her first boyfriend as he climbs up a slagheap in a jeep, marrying him against her parents wishes, and her introduction to the facts of life on her wedding night.
At the start of the second part she has become famous and appears at the 'Grand Old Opry' singing 'Honky Tonk Girl'.
Snippets of several sequences are then cobbled together by dissolves, ignoring completely several reels of the original. There is no hint that she had any previous singing ability, and the husbands exploitation of her talent has gone, although there is a family get together where the mother dances to 'Blue Moon Of Kentucky'.
There is plenty of music, very capably sung by Sissy Spacek herself and it ends as she breaks down at a concert in front of her fans. The front and end titles are almost complete, but the total running time is on the short side for a four-reeler, including as it does the captions at the end of part one and the start of part two.
The print is rock steady and masked for widescreen, with excellent colour, but it could have been a bit sharper.
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Distributed in the UK by: Derann
Films. |
The above review was printed in Super Eight Film Review issue
4. |
This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002