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Songcatcher

Country: USA, Language: English, 109 mins

  • Director: Maggie Greenwald
  • Writer: Maggie Greenwald
  • Producer: Patrick Allen; Elizabeth Finkelstein

CGiii Comment

Although it is not a lesbian film per se...it does have a strong lesbian (unnecessary) subplot.

McTeer gives a cold performance...you wouldn't care if she was mauled to death by a mountain-dwelling creature.

Greenwald's sledgehammer feminism is as subtle as a brick in the face...all the men are vile and all the women are downtrodden, domestic Goddesses.

Her direction...flaccid, fatally flawed and repetitively episodic...

The barn dance scene - which should have been a rousing showstopper - was a dull dirge with cult-ish gyrations from the moonshine-swigging in-breds.

The ending...the less said about that, the better.

Why this ludicrous film has garnered such praise is mystifying. Superficial praise for a superficial film.


Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

After being denied a promotion at the university where she teaches, Doctor Lily Penleric, a brilliant musicologist, impulsively visits her sister, who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There she stumbles upon the discovery of her life - a treasure trove of ancient Scots-Irish ballads, songs that have been handed down from generation to generation, preserved intact by the seclusion of the mountains. With the goal of securing her promotion, Lily ventures into the most isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs and finds herself increasingly enchanted - not only by the rugged purity of the music, but also by the raw courage and endurance of the local people as they carve out meaningful lives against the harshest conditions. It is not, however, until she meets Tom - a handsome, hardened war veteran and talented musician - that she's forced to examine her motivations.

Cast & Characters

Janet McTeer as Professor Lily Penleric, PhD;
Michael Davis as Dean Arthur Pembroke;
Michael Goodwin as Professor Wallace Aldrich, PhD;
Greg Russell Cook as Fate Honeycutt;
Jane Adams as Eleanor 'Elna' Penleric;
E. Katherine Kerr as Harriet Tolliver;
Emmy Rossum as Deladis Slocumb;
Pat Carroll as Viney Butler;
Stephanie Roth Haberle as Alice Kincaid;
Aidan Quinn as Tom Bledsoe;
Bart Hansard as Hilliard;
Erin Blake Clanton as Polly;
David Patrick Kelly as Earl Giddens;
Kristin Hall as Isabel;
Michael Harding as Reese Kincaid