Shy People **½ (1987, Jill Clayburgh, Barbara Hershey, Martha Plimpton) – Classic Movie Review 9908

The 1987 Shy People is Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky’s fourth film in the West, following Maria’s Lovers, Runaway Train and Duet for One.

It is a semi-successful oddity, and boasts an excellent performance by Jill Clayburgh as Diana Sullivan, a New York freelance writer who journeys to Louisiana to get information about her long-lost Cajun relatives as part of the article she is writing for a magazine. Naturally, it does not all go smoothly.

Also holding the attention are Martha Plimpton as Grace, the brattish mid-teen daughter Clayburgh takes with her, and especially Barbara Hershey as Ruth, the Cajun cousin with a brood of bayou sons.

It is enjoyable enough if you ignore a script that is largely scuppered by slow-moving, inept plot development and clumsily fashioned characters, and concentrate on the commendable acting and the pretty pictures in Chris Menges’s cinematography.

Hershey won the Best Actress award at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.

It is written by Gérard Brach (screenplay), Marjorie David (screenplay) and Andrei Konchalovsky (story and screenplay).

Also in the cast are John Philbin, Don Swayze, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Merritt Butrick, Mare Winningham, Michael Audley, Brad Leland, Tony Epper, Paul Landry, Warren Battiste, Edward Bunker, Vladimir Bibic, Dominic Barto, and Dave Petitjean.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9908

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