Heart of Dixie, well. Isn’t a film for me. If you’ve read any of the other pages about Virginia Madsens work in period pieces then you know this. If not, then get ready for a reoccurring them on the other ones.

Heart of Dixie is a film from 1989 that’s set in 1957. It’s an adaption of a 1976 novel, Heartbreak Hotel by Anne Rivers Siddons.

The story of the film follows three Sorority Sisters on their journey through college as racial segregation in Alabama is coming to an end. Maggie DeLoach (Ally Sheedy) is one of these sisters, she’s enjoyed the good life while growing up and slowly comes to realise just how badly African-Americans have been treated in their community which leads her on a bit of a mission about educating everyone around her.

Which of course is good, and it’s good to remember and point to this kind of thing in history and scream about how bad it was.

The other two, Aiken Reed (Phoebe Cates) and Delia June Curry (our heroine) are basically noise for Maggie to be around and bounce off of. Delia is very well realised noise, she does have a few stand out moments within the whole narrative, but noise all the same. AIken, well, I’m not really sure what the point if her is.
I honestly tried to watch this one, and ended up failing. It’s uhm – Well, I don’t know. I get what the film is, and what it’s trying to say and do. But, it does it well, badly. To me at least. Perhaps it’s the fact I’m watching it over 30 years later and times have (allegedly) changed. For want of a better way if putting it, it all seems kind of stereotypical to me.  Or, maybe it’s because of films like this I see it as stereotypical.

There are a few scenes towards the end, that are kind of hard to watch, as they should be, but again, it seems out of place here even though it’s exactly where it should be. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain how much I want this film to be better than it is at telling the story that should be told. Again though, I think it’s down to the age of the film and the time it was made more than anything else.
Heck, maybe I just feel bad because I don’t like the film and feel like I should, such as is the world we live in today.

The reviews online for this one place it in the middle ground. iMDB reviews are mostly favourable in the recent ones but those reviews seem a little more in favour of the message behind the movie more than the movie itself. Which I get, whole heatedly, but there are better movies than this that get that point across.

Obviously this is a hard one for me to recommend. I’d recommend anyone educate them on this kind of nonsense the best they can, if this is the kind of film you need to watch to do that, then good. Go watch it.

Anyways. Yeah.

In bonus news for this one – Treat Williams also stars in this one alongside Virginia, they can’t gave filmed that far apart from making Third Degree Burn together earlier. While Virginia isn’t playing a part a million miles away from Anna in that, Treat’s Hoyt Cunningham is worlds apart from Scott in that movie. Love to see this.

Availability:
Not hard to find on Region 1 DVD reasonably priced.

Gallery:

Trailer:

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