Paul Minx ventures boldly into Tennessee Williams country with The Long Road South. It’s 1965 and the Price family are idling about at home in Indiana. In mid-August the air is heavy with frustrated sexuality. Carol Ann Price (Imogen Stubbs) is a kindly, buxom waster slithering decorously into alcoholic dereliction. Her daughter, Ivy, is a perky little menace who cavorts about the lawn in a skimpy bikini trying to elicit male attention. Jake, the patriarch, is a charmless redneck with anger problems and a secret backlog of unpaid debt. Waiting on these white-trash parasites are two black servants, Andre and Grace, who are smart, industrious, even-tempered and limitlessly patient. Andre is a gifted theologian who pines after his severely disabled daughter. Grace is an ambitious author from New York who scribbles away at her latest novel while doubling as the Prices’ maidservant.
Even more remarkable is the distribution of ethnic prejudice in this household.
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