MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Zelly and Me’ a Silly Southern-Gothic Tale

Tina Rathborne’s “Zelly and Me” (selected theaters) is such a silly, half-baked slice of Southern Gothic that it’s amazing that writer-director Tina Rathborne, in her feature debut, ever got it produced. Even more amazing was her ability to persuade Isabella Rossellini and her “Blue Velvet” director David Lynch to appear in it. The more Rathborne tries for a Tennessee Williams-like poetic decadence, the more incredible the film becomes. The result is strictly Amateur Night in Dixie.

The talented Alexandra Johnes, another of the film’s acting debuts along with Lynch, plays the exquisite 11-year-old Phoebe, who lives with her grandmother Coco (the distinguished British actress Glynis Johns) in a splendid Virginia estate. For an instant it seems that Phoebe’s existence is about as idyllic as an orphan could wish, surrounded by doting servants, including her loving French governess whom she calls “Zelly,” for mademoiselle. (This is Rossellini, incandescent but awkward-appearing here.) But very rapidly it’s clear that Coco is not merely mercurial in her increasingly violent mood swings, but a woman in the process of a rapid mental disintegration.

What is most infuriating about an intensely infuriating film is that there’s never a clue as to why Coco is so deranged, or why she should be coming apart so swiftly just now. For all of Johns’ valiant expressiveness, there’s no illumination of Coco whatever, not even in such details as how long Phoebe’s parents have been dead or whether Coco is mourning her daughter or her son. As a result, the film is morbid and unpleasant rather than tragic.

Everyone else is so hopelessly ineffectual, including Lynch as Zelly’s timid suitor, that it’s inconceivable the memory of Zelly’s love alone will give an 11-year-old strength enough to resist the destructive influence of her grandmother when she’s left entirely in her care. Even if Phoebe, who identifies with Joan of Arc in such a twisted way that she has burned her own flesh, does survive Coco, surely she will be emotionally scarred for life. The irony of David Lynch’s presence in “Zelly and Me” (MPAA-rated PG, although definitely not for children) is that he’s the one film maker who might have made something of it.