Briar Patch

I don't usually like romance movies. They drive me up a wall. Same with romance books. But perhaps because this was romantic in a weird way, I did really like it.

Swain plays a down-and-out white trash girl in Virginia, married to a creep named Edgar who robs stores to keep themselves afloat. They don't give you a background as to why she ever married this creep, but the bloom has worn off the rose and she just wants to get away from him now.

She's in love with a very pale young man who is a lawyer in their small Southern town. He's a big fish in a small pond and more to offer her then she's ever seen in her whole white trash life.

Edgar also has a best friend, a guy named "Flowers", for what reason I can't imagine, who hangs around Edgar and his wife all the time. Flowers is infatuated with Inez, Edgar's wife, but she finds him repulsive. He really is, at first--you have to look hard through all the dirt and bad clothing and beard to recognize pretty nice-looking Ari Verveen.

Edgar knows Inez is in love with someone else and after a fight, decides to keep her prisoner in her own house by chaining her to her bed at night and to the sofa daily, with Flowers standing guard while Edgar goes and does whatever it is he does.

Inez manages to convince Flowers to help her to get away from Edgar by murdering him for her. He doesn't really need a lot of convincing, since he wants her for himself.

These people are completely amoral and trashy, but there is still a beautiful kind of poetic romance to Flower's love for Inez. I loved the movie. Even if you hate romances, you may find it great too.

Really liked the acting and the cinematography of this film. Some real standout performances by Arie Verveen, Henry Thomas, and Dominique Swain. This movie portrayed the grim, gritty and DIRTY lives of these southerners quite realistically. The art direction was quite nice- and i really liked Henry Thomas' shirts- his character had a great sense of fashion, incidentally. I wasn't quite able to really, really get into the story, the pacing was a little slow. It was nice to see the development of the Flowers character by the end, again beautifully acted by Verveen as subtle and low key. I kept waiting for Swain's character to wash her hair and change her bandage but... it worked well for the denouement in the rain. The most striking thing about the film is the cinematography. Some really nice work here.

Young, pretty and dirt poor, Inez Macbeth lives in a squalid shack in the boonies, suffering the abuse of her criminal husband Edgar and the unwanted attentions of Edgar's repulsive, slow-witted partner Flowers, who slavers over her like a starved dog contemplating a steak bone. Inez runs around barefoot, dirty and frequently bloody from the beatings she receives from Edgar, who even chains her up. She lives only for her trips to town, where she visits a "licensed, semi-professional spiritual adviser" and her kindly and wealthy lover Drew, who plans to take her away with him.

After one particularly brutal beating by Edgar, Inez schemes to have willing dupe Flowers murder her husband and then take the blame for it himself, so she can run off with Drew. In the fallout from Edgar's murder Inez is freed of her husband, all right and even the police are happy to be rid of this criminal low-life, but Flowers turns out to be far more clever than expected, for he frames innocent, unfortunate Drew, leaving Inez with no where to go and no one to turn to, as Flowers finally takes her for himself.

This is a strong film about entrapment, desire and the wages of sin, with a good script and fine acting. Dominique Swain gives an affecting performance, managing to be sexy and fetching even under all that blood and dirt. Edgar and Flowers seem like real people - multi-dimensional and not the kind of one-sided, cardboard-cutout psychos found so often in movies. This picture is so gritty and realistic it may not suit all tastes but I highly recommend it - you may find it as powerful as I did.

After watching this movie and THOROUGHLY enjoying it I thought that I'd check to see how it did on it's IMDb rating and frankly, I was STUNNED! A two point four!?!? I couldn't believe it! This was one of the most surprisingly enjoyable movies that I've rented in a long, long time. Although somewhat predictable, the simplistic mix of drama and humor, the colorful characters and the original plot all elevate the quality of this movie FAR above many others I've rented recently. I can't imagine why people feel this movie deserves such a low rating, but give it a chance and I don't think you'll be disappointed. Just don't forget to come back once you've watched the movie and help to give it the rating that it deserves.

Zev Berman, the director of "Plain Dirty", or "Briar Patch" as it's identified in these pages, takes a big chance in bringing this Deborah Pryor's screen play to the screen. First of all, this is a courageous piece of film making, and the characters in the film don't exactly endear themselves to the viewer. The film is a moody attempt to present us people that are living at the edge of society with basically no redeeming qualities to them, yet, we are hooked into watching the movie until the end, no small feat Zev Berman pulls on his viewers.

We were attracted to the movie on the strength of its excellent cast. Henry Thomas is an actor that is always interesting to watch. As Edgar, he is the man obsessed with Inez, a woman he mistreats endlessly. Inez, played by Dominique Swan, makes a good contribution to the film as the girl who can't take any more of the beatings she receives from Edgar. It's clear, from the start, that Flowers is secretly in love with Inez, but being such a sorry sight, knows he can't compete with Dru, the rich guy who wants Inez for himself. Both Artie Verveen and James Urbaniak are right on the money about how they play their characters. Also, Debra Monk, who is seen as the police officer Avon is, as always, excellent.

The film sort of hypnotizes the viewer with the cinematography of Scott Kevan and the haunting score by Nathan Barr. While it's clear that this is a not a film for a lot of people, as demonstrated by the many negative comments to this forum, the least one can do is watch it with some degree of respect because the tremendous job by Zev Berman has accomplished with this movie.