Made for television, this handsome adaptation of Carson McCuller's classic (and, evidently, uncinematic) Southern-Gothic coming-of-age novel still must dwell in the dark shadows of Fred Zinnemann's 1952 Columbia Pictures version.
"Do you think I will grow into a freak?" plaintively asks Frankie Addams (Anna Paquin). She's a 12-year-old girl in an affluent Georgia household in 1944, haunted by the sight of an androgyne in a carnival sideshow. Ungracefully straddled between childhood and maturity, Frankie has close-cropped
hair, scabbed elbows, a boyish figure, and a restless intellect. All this makes Frankie an outcast from other, prettier girls her age, and she ...
Released:
1997
Rated:
PG
Length:
93 mins