Georgia

Davis plays Nina Bailey, an aggressive, uncompromising tax fraud investigator, who is manipulated by a mysterious invitation into discovering that she is in fact the daughter of photographer Georgia White, a female Weegee of the early 60's. Georgia, it seems, died mysteriously at a party on Victoria's exclusive Ninety Mile Beach when Nina was an infant. Elizabeth (Julia Blake) admits to being her adoptive mother, and explains the unusual circumstances of her birth and mother's death: Elizabeth and her then-husband, real-estate magnate Karlin (John Bach), lived with Georgia, as well as Elizabeth's lover Lazlo. At the party in question, Georgia fell off of a pier during a drunken revel. Elizabeth never learned the identity of Nina's father.

Lazlo sheds more light on both Elizabeth's devotion to Nina and Georgia's love-hate relationship with Karlin, whom he suspects of having caused Georgia's fall. Later, he's attacked by a masked intruder who demands information about Georgia's last negatives. Nina uses her clout with the government to research her mother's death, discovering that Karlin was under investigation for involvement in money laundering and organized crime, and that a cop named Frank Le Mat was using Georgia to procure evidence. Le Mat (Marshall Napier), now retired, reluctantly cooperates. He admits to having been at the party that night, but claims that Georgia was trying to escape from Karlin, who murdered her to prevent her from delivering the negatives.

A masked attacker breaks into Nina's home, but she fights off the intruder. She bullies her way into Karlin's corporate cloister and confronts him. He implies that he is her father, and tells his version of events: Le Mat was a drunken washout with a vendetta against Karlin, and Georgia was an erratic alcoholic who was leaving their home and abandoning her child that night. He denies involvement in her death. Back in Frank's trailer, Nina finds a shrine to Georgia, including the missing autopsy report, which she takes home to read. Frank appears, asks Nina to put on Georgia's pink dress (in which she died), and attacks her in a frenzy of jealous rage, just as he did her mother. She fights back; he chases her out to the street and is crushed by a truck.

GEORGIA, a 1989 film released to US home video in 1994, has nearly all the ingredients of a first-rate whodunit: the direction is crisp; the photography by Yuri Sokol is lushly evocative, making the most of the Victoria coastal settings; the music by Paul Grabowsky is moody, haunting, and memorable. The performances are solid and the dialogue (by director Lewin and producer Weis) is clever and agile, treating the more melodramatic plot points with surprising wit (when Nina confronts Elizabeth, she reflexively asks for a cigarette; when a nabbed tax dodger says "In the old days women like you were burned at the stake," she laughs "Really? What a waste.").

What the film lacks is plot. Credited as an "original" story by Mac Gudgeon, it is, in fact, hopelessly derivative, quoting from dozens of films you've seen before and relying heavily on RASHOMON-style multiple flashbacks to The Fateful Night (in which Georgia is played by a fiercely bewigged Davis). The climax is lacking in both surprise and intensity, and, since Nina has been established as such a strong, resourceful and independent character--the film's real achievement in a genre overrun with wimpy women--her sudden submission to Frank's perverse request is disappointing. The last seven minutes nearly destroy the film--instead of rising to the occasion, Nina is rescued by chance while trying to escape. Still, Davis's talent is never in question, and the film is worth seeing for her energetic, intelligent performance alone. (Violence, profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment