Shy People

Diana, a magazine writer working in New York, travels to the swamp country of Louisiana to write about her distant relatives. She takes her daughter Grace, a teenager with a drug habit and a will of her own. In the bayou they are met by her cousin Ruth and her sons. When the two worlds meet a clash of cultures follows, and the consequences are heavy. Andrei Konchalovsky's film puts neither the city nor the country in the right. Diana's curiosity comes close to a kind of exploitation; the order Ruth has built is unacceptable seen from outside. The telling shows both inside their own logic. Barbara Hershey plays Ruth and won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987 for it. Most of it was shot in the Louisiana swamps themselves.