Georgia

Sadie sings in bars, drinks, and cannot hold her life together. Her sister Georgia is a well known country singer: the voice is good, the house is in order, the career is settled. Sadie moves in and out of her sister's circle, asks for money, asks for a chance on stage, and ruins it each time. The film is not about the difference in talent between two sisters but about one of them being unable to become the other. Ulu Grosbard directs from a screenplay by Barbara Turner. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Sadie and Mare Winningham plays Georgia. Barbara Turner, who wrote it, is Jennifer Jason Leigh's mother; the project was developed together over a long period. The singing is not dubbed. Leigh sings in her own voice and the voice is deliberately bad; the best known passage is a benefit concert where she performs a Van Morrison song for minutes on end, breaking, with nobody stopping her. The scene is held past the point of comfort. Mare Winningham was nominated for the Oscar for best supporting actress. Jennifer Jason Leigh took a great many critics awards and no Oscar nomination, which was counted among the arguable omissions of that year. Who it is for: viewers who like performance driven American independent drama of the eighties and nineties. Who it is not for: Sadie is deliberately exhausting, the narrative does not advance, and the film offers no resolution that makes things easy.