Chris Wilkinson Movies
- 1994
- R
A French boy goes to Virginia and finds love with an intelligent black girl in this nostalgic French drama set in 1955, and based on the popular 1986 novel by Philippe Labro. The movie was filmed in both Paris and Virginia. The film contains many references to blues and jazz, Faulkner, Chandler and Salinger. The French student Phillippe Le Clerc meets many interesting characters when he becomes a foreign exchange student in a Virginia college. Of all the people he meets, the one he loves the most is April, a highly educated "Negro girl," who must clean faculty houses when she is not in school. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marco Hofschneider, Robin Givens, (more)
Bette Midler stars as a Martha Raye-type entertainer during the World War II era in this big-budget nostalgia piece. Midler plays big-band singer Dixie Leonard, who is chosen to perform at an overseas USO Christmas show by her uncle Art Silver (George Segal), a comedy writer for famed comedian Eddie Sparks (James Caan). Dixie is shuttled to London, where she is thrown on-stage with Eddie, who takes an immediate dislike to her. But her performance is a sensation, and the audience can't stop howling at Dixie's smart one-liner comebacks to Eddie. Dixie is catapulted to stardom, and the repartee between Eddie and Dixie becomes the stuff of legend. The two spar together through World War II, the McCarthy era, and Vietnam. But Dixie stops speaking to Eddie when he fires a writer for being a communist sympathizer and, later, she doesn't speak to him again after he arranges for a reunion between her and her son on the battlefields of Vietnam. Finally, Dixie, now an old woman, is cajoled to appear on a television awards show to reunite with a now decrepit Eddie, age 91. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bette Midler, James Caan, (more)
