Cane River (1982)

May 18, 2020 8:22 PM

A charming Romeo & Juliet love story, Cane River is set in Louisiana, in one of the first free communities of color. The young couple confront class and color divisions that continue to roil America to this day. Check out the trailer. On the Criterion Channel.
posted by latkes (2 comments total)

Adored the lush, gentle images of a verdant Louisiana community with vibrant (and extremely pretty) lead characters. The movie has an easygoing and unambitious feel - although it must have been an enormous labor to produce. Has a nice, slice of life feel. It is obviously a political film that is fully about colorist hierarchies that grow from slavery and US apartheid, also about the meaning of land ownership for African Americans, but it's not preachy. These issues are just he facts of the film.

Perhaps because of my age - 45 - these images remind me in places of some early 80s tropes I grew up with - something about the beautiful couple riding horses together in the green field was a little reminiscent of Newport magazine ads? Which I sort of chuckled at. But the movie is just very sincere and gorgeous and charming so it wasn't distracting.

Recommended!
posted by latkes at 8:32 PM on May 18, 2020

Saw this at EbertFest last year and it's an interesting artifact but I don't know if it's actually a good film. The cinematography is quite good for its budget and it does convey a sense of place very well but the acting is pretty silted and it feels like an early edit, there's a lot of shots of moving from place to place that could have been cut out without losing anything.
posted by octothorpe at 10:53 AM on May 25, 2020 [1 favorite]