DIRECTED BY
Robert Altman
WRITTEN BY
Robert Altman,
Frank Barhydt
STARRING
Jennifer Jason Leigh,
Miranda Richardson,
Harry Belafonte
Jennifer Jason Leigh is a Jean Harlow obsessed housewife trying to free her loser husband from the clutches of a local gangster. She kidnaps the wife of a politician as leverage, but things get complicated when the two women develop a friendship and discover just how crooked their city has become. All this on the day before the 1934 Democratic primary election, no less. Shot with painstaking attention to period detail, director Robert Altman enlists real musicians to play venerated jazz figures like Ben Webster, Lester Young, and Mary Lou Williams. Their performances, captured by Altman in a concert-documentary style, give the film an intoxicating sense of excitement despite its bleak conclusion. Featuring a sensational late-period turn by Harry Belafonte as the incredibly named “Seldom Seen.”
