Big Stone Gap is the sort of old-fashioned homespun middle America town that represents a gentler and kinder world where time literally stands still. It's actually a real blue-collar mining town in a corner of Virginia where the movie's writer and director Adriana Trigiani grew up, and this is not only based on her own true story, but she actually got to film it all in the small town itself.
The year is 1978 (and one wonders if the movie's production team had to change anything in the Town to take it back in time) and the town's pharmacist and resident old maid is getting itchy feet. Good natured and extremely generous, Ave Marie Mulligan is every one's friend and this year she is also directing the community theater's production of Tales of The Lonesome Pine starring the histrionic Theodore, who offstage is also sort-of her boyfriend too. The reason that he cannot follow through on their relationship comes as no shock at all when it is later revealed, but then again Trigiaini ensures that there really are no surprises at all in this story.
The fact that Ave Marie claims she is happy being single, even when her mother passes away and leaves her totally alone, rings a tad hollow as she lights up every time that she spots hunky miner Jack MacChesney, who obviously has a thing for her too. The trouble is that 40 year-old Jack has somehow got through life not learning a thing at all about courting and stumbles badly at making a pass at Ave Marie. However at the same time, the town's blonde ex-cheerleader divorcee is circling him for her next husband. When he fails to win Ave Marie over, she decides its time to finally leave town. After her mother's death she had discovered a dark secret about her past, and so now thinks she needs to go off to Italy to seek out her real birth father before life passes her by completely.
All this is played out with a wonderful list of colorful characters that at first seem that they are right out of a Robert Altman movie, but you soon realize that they would easily fit into a Christopher Guest farce too. Everything that goes on in town is observed by the sharp eyed Fleeta, Ave Marie's her long-standing employee at the Pharmacy, who with her rapid fire acerbic wit makes great play of the fact that she is 'the only black woman' in the town. Then there is Iva Lou Wade the flighty and superstitious friend who runs the town's mobile library, and who believes that true love can be found through Chinese facial readings. Plus Spec the Town's only lawyer, and as he is also in charge of the Emergency Services he insists on wearing his Warning Vest at all times. It, and he, come in handy when Senate hopeful John Warner does a brief campaign stop in town with his wife Elizabeth Taylor who chokes on some local fried chicken! But that's the only really exciting thing that happens in this sleepy backwater.
The real joy in Big Stone Gap (the movie that is) is in the acting. Heartwarming to see again two talented actresses that are too rarely on our screens these days. The lovely Ashley Judd was so perfect as the affable and spunky Ave Marie that you cannot fail to root for her, and the wonderfully funny Jenna Elfman was such a good fit as the ditzy Iva Lou. Whoopi Goldberg is also infrequently in movies these days, and its clear to see why she decided to take the part of the wise-cracking Fleeta, as it was made for her. For Patrick Wilson however, who played Jack the strong man of few (ish) words, this was like coming home for him, as his father had actually grown up in Big Stone Gap. In fact Trigiani has been quoted as saying when her novel (on which the movie is based) first came out 15 years ago, Wilson's grandmother actually asked that she cast him in that part.
This is obviously a very personal project for Trigiani who has never directed a feature film before, and this one will be a strange fit in todays multiplexes. Its gently unhurried pace with it's cast of such very likable characters who exist in this picture-book world will probably not have universal appeal, which is a slightly sad indictment of some of society's values. This feel-good potential crowd-pleaser should be allowed to find the audience that it so justly deserves.
★★★★★★★★
