A Rare Serving of Adept Regional Indie Cinema

A rare serving of adept regional indie cinema, Ira Sachs's film uses its Memphis milieu as setting and as character—the film is waist-deep in country-blues insouciance quietly resisting the onslaught of early-millennium consumer homogenization. At its center is a legendary record producer (Rip Torn) as tyrannical as he is magnetic, enjoying the autumnal awards-ceremony phase of his career and his Muscovite trophy girlfriend (Dina Korzun), who at first blush seems merely a fastidiously sexed-up, lank-haired bottle blonde. But she's the movie: Astounded by her affluent lifestyle, and hyper-aware of how easily she could lose it, Korzun's lost soul tiptoes on eggshells in virtually every scene, searching for significances that aren't there. Korzun, unforgettable as the single-mom émigré in Pawel Pawlikowski's Last Resort, is perfectly cast—pretty but also plain, dedicated to beauty-shop artifice yet fiercely intelligent enough to lend her every gesture a sense of dissatisfied helplessness. Extras include commentary, interviews, deleted scenes, and Sachs's 2001 portrait short about his father, Get It While You Can.