The Neon bible [Widescreen]

Adapted from the Pulitzer prize winning book by John Kennedy Toole, “The Neon bible” is a beautifully scripted and directed film about a sixteen-year-old boy, David (Jacob Tierney) and his reminiscings of his childhood in the bible belt of rural Georgia during the 1940s. An abusive and overbearing father (Denis Leary), a mother (Diana Scarwid) struggling to maintain normality under bleak and impoverished conditions and Aunt Mae (Gena Rowlands), a former glamorous nightclub singer, make up David’s immediate family but it is Aunt Mae who provides the excitement in David’s otherwise lonely, sometimes, harsh life. The recollections are made up of fragmented images, poignant and melancholy, rich in their intensity and atmospheric in mood. Slow-paced but intriguing, this film is also enhanced by some superb cinematography from Michael Coulter and an excellent support cast including Drake Bell (David as a young boy), Leo Burmeister, Peter McRobbie, Frances Conroy.