If Leigh's performance is a go-for-broke triumph, Winningham's is a subtle one, and in some ways it is she who has the more difficult role. (Sadie may get most of the screen time, but there's a reason this film is called Georgia.) When I realized that Georgia was meant to be a sort of early-period Joni Mitchell/latter-day Emmylou Harris figure — a sensitive poet hugging a big guitar — I dreaded the moment she would burst into song, because I was sure what would come out of her mouth would be pure treacle. It's tricky to portray a pensive, fragile soul on-screen—there's something about the movies that reflexively critiques and coarsens such figures. Then, too, much of the time Winningham is performing her own material, and that sort of thing is frequently fatal — just recall the dreadfully ersatz country music that Ronee Blakley cooked up for Robert Altman's Nashville, a crucial weakness in that daring film.

But Winningham pulls it off. It helps that she has a lovely voice and a gift for intricately written, pretty melodies. As shrewd about Sadie's small-time club hopping as it is about Georgia's big-time productions, this is the most accurate and knowing movie about the music business since Rip Torn's 1973 country-music saga Payday (go rent it). Different in its rhythms from every other movie out there right now, Georgia puts you through the wringer, but you come out feeling exhilarated. A

Originally posted Dec 08, 1995 Published in issue #304 Dec 08, 1995 Order article reprints
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