Where The Crawdads Sing.

I hadn't been to the cinema for a very long time, since covid began. Two of the family had read this book, and another had started it. I haven't read a novel for a number of years, films are quicker, although they don't necessarily say the same things as the author of the original book.

The audience in the Picky for this film was about 80 to 90% female, I felt slightly outnumbered, although of course that's nothing new. The Picky is comfortable and the screen and the sound very good.

Photo - Michele K. Short.

The Guardian did not especially like this film, although it gets 3*. Rotten Tomatoes really doesn't like it 31%, a bit better on IMDb with 7.1. Jojo Regina as the young Kya is excellent, and she's mostly suitably grubby as befits someone growing up uncared for in the 1960s in the swamps of Northern Carolina. The other performances are perfectly good, and apart from some truly terrible CGI in the opening sequence the cinematography and direction captures the time and the place, clearly a magical place, very well. But, everyone other than the young Kya, is far, far too clean with perfect clothes, perfect hair, impeccably turned out, when they are living in marshland, and some in poverty. And the story is rather like that, rather sanitised, tidy and improbable. On the plus side it is about a girl growing into a formidably powerful and self-assured woman, and it does engage with the idea of being on the outside of society, unaccepted and discriminated against. So, decent entertainment, addressing a few social issues on the periphery, and mostly beautifully filmed, but somewhat tidy and clean.