The Ballad of the Sad Café

Actor Simon Callow makes his directorial debut with this grotesque slice of Southern Gothic adapted from Carson McCullers and Edward Albee. A backwoods community in Depression-era Georgia is dominated by store owner Miss Amelia (Vanessa Redgrave), an androgynous figure with a mysterious past. Amelia controls the locals through the distribution of her secretly brewed moonshine, but her rule is destablized by the arrival of her hunchbacked dwarf cousin Lymon and by the reappearance of the ne’er-do-well husband (Keith Carradine) she rejected on their wedding night.

Official Selection — 1991 Berlin International Film Festival: In Competition

USA / Canada | English | 1991 | 101 mins | Restored