Adapted from the novel by John Kennedy Toole, this measured, beautifully photographed but harrowing study of family angst in Georgia around the time of the Second World War marked the American debut of director Terence Davies. Although far from his Liverpool home, Davies revisits much of the territory covered in his acclaimed Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes. Yet he manages to breathe some new life into the familiar small-town formula, thanks to his keen eye for detail and a supremely assured performance from Gena Rowlands as the nightclub singer aunt who shakes up the lives of the ten-year-old Drake Bell and his careworn parents Diana Scarwid and Denis Leary.

During a train ride, a teenager recalls his upbringing in 1940s small-town Georgia and the events that have led to this point.