A Love Song for Bobby Long

Learning her mother has died, Pursy returns to New Orleans hoping to take the house. Two men live in it: Bobby Long, her mother's old friend, an alcoholic former literature professor, and his assistant Lawson. The three have to share the roof while the mother's real story slowly emerges. The film is not interested in an inheritance fight. It is interested in literature used as shelter: Bobby meets everything with a quotation, and the quotations let him accept no responsibility. By the end the film takes that shield away. The form is warm and heavy: a New Orleans summer, porches, tape recorders, records and constant drinking. The pace is deliberately low. Shainee Gabel wrote and directed, from Ronald Everett Capps' novel. John Travolta plays Bobby, one of the few character parts he took during his action years; Scarlett Johansson plays Pursy and Gabriel Macht plays Lawson. Travolta and Johansson would work together again a few years later. Who it is for: viewers who like Southern character drama and films built on literary reference. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. It is very slow, the quotations become too much at times and the final section is emotionally forced.