A river, a bridge, and two kids who just wanted to sin together.
"Tallahatchie Bridge": With those two simple words, the powerful images of a lost innocence, a murky river and a mysterious suicide spring to mind. Scorning the demands of her overbearing family, Bobbie Lee Hartley and Billy Joe McAllister meet at their usual Choctaw Ridge trysting place and attempt to consumate their forbidden love. Ode attempts to reconcile modern moralites with a tradition-bound faith, and asks whether it's possible to commit a sin against a religion that won't even have you as a member.
Direction
Reichardt's patient, observational gaze before her breakout.
Writing
Adapts Bobbie Gentry's song into something far uglier.
Director
Kelly Reichardt
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Reichardt shot this in rural Mississippi on a shoestring budget years before Wendy and Lucy put her on the map.
The original 1967 hit song left Billy Joe's motive famously unexplained; Reichardt makes the queer subtext and religious cruelty explicit.
US
