So much average

It is a performances centric movie

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Jennifer Jason Leigh here pulls off another of her 'impossible' performances. Is there any film actress as versatile as she is? Is there anything she can't do or any role she cannot play? When she acts, she throws herself into the role with the force of an express train. Here she transforms into a hopeless, cheery, ever-smiling flop of a girl, who has failed at everything but just goes on in good humour, taking it on the chin from Life time after time. Her pathetic, sprawling, inept character is endlessly endearing, like a delightful child, even though she drives everyone she knows crazy because she is so hopeless. She can't stay off the drugs, or the booze, or out of bed with anyone for a quickie. She doesn't know when to start, she doesn't know when to stop. She is behaviour-dyslexic. Her thoroughly controlled and successful older sister gets her revenge on little sister by extending icy and permanent tolerance, disguising condescension as devotion. The two sisters are both singers, and the older one, Georgia of the title (though the star is really Sadie, the Leigh character), is a magnificent folk singer with a marvellously controlled and captivating voice (must get Winningham's CDs!). She is played brilliantly by Mare Willingham, who was justly nominated for an Oscar for it. As for Leigh, she won best actress awards from the New York Film Critics Circle Awards (highly prestigious in the USA), and the Montreal Film Festival. Leigh can sing better than she does in the film because it is part of the role that she must not be very good. However, she throws herself totally into every song she sings, and unbearably heart-rending emotion is her specialty. What a contrast to the cold control shown by her sister, who stands erect and formal, while Leigh throws herself all over the stage and repeatedly swallows and vomits up the microphone, and everything hangs out like long johns on the washing line which the neighbours don't want to see. The film is incredibly sensitive and profound, a triumph by Ulu Grosbard, who made too few films in his career, and is now well into his 80s. This is REAL film-making, and one of the endless parade of spectacular achievements by the incomparably brilliant Jennifer Jason Leigh, and surely one of her best.

Hello, Brazilians! Georgia is such a touching film. I saw it once in one of the BAND's dawns, and then it didn't leave my mind anymore. After a long time, I saw it again, VHS, then I could remind it... still touching. A beautiful view of a beautiful life. Sadie is quite full of life. This life, sometimes, flees from her, but she's always trying to take it back. And there's no doubt about her ability... "She swallow people" - Georgia said. Yes, she's strong... she is Sadie Flood. And I really love this movie. I wish I could leave the Contracampo's (a Brazilian movie magazine)commentary here, but only English posts are accepted... what a pity!

Georgia is a stark and harrowing exposition into the relationship of two sisters, Sadie played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and the eponymous Georgia played by Mare Winningham (best supporting actress nominee 1996). The film follows Sadie, a young woman trapped within her envy and aspirations to achieve the success, and more importantly recognition, of her older sister Georgia, a revered folk and country singer in the pacific north west of America. In her pursuit of these desires however, she tears at her tenuous relationship with her sister and all those around her. It seems only her contagious beauty and vulnerability keep the people she hurts close to her, as we follow her through smoky clubs and bars, cheap motels and onwards into oblivion.Georgia is often a trying film on the viewer, as its director, the Belgium born Ulu Grosbard pushes mainstream codes of cinematic language, and at the same time, deals with a central character who is often caustic, abrasive and unredeeming. That said, Jennifer Jason Leigh's visceral portrayal of Sadie Flood is utterly compelling and inspired. Indeed, her performance truly brings alive a disaffected character wrought by insecurity, isolation, depression and self-loathing; all culminating in an itinerant and bohemian lifestyle of club singing, alcoholism, heroin addiction and disillusionment.Worthy of note also are the stellar performances of the support cast, notably Georgia's loving husband played by Ted Levine, Sadie's doting and tortured partner played by Max Perlich and Herman the drug-addled band-mate of Sadie's, performed by the ubiquitous character actor John C Reilly. Another great feature of this film is the soundtrack, and in many ways this film could be considered a musical. Contributions come from Van Morrison, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, Tom Waits and Otis Redding, many of whom were active in the music to the film. John Doe and the late Jimmy Witherspoon for example, both acclaimed recording artists in their own right, act and sing in the film. Indicative of the soundtrack's integral contribution to the overall film, please note the cover of 'this magical place is more than it seems' from the Wizard of Oz score, as Sadie more so than anything wants to click her heels together and get back to the old house, back home.In summation, this film will appeal to people who drink too much, people who tell me that it's a sin to know and feel too much within, which according to Bob Dylan many claim to live by and i concur; those with a penchant for '90s Seattle, rock and roll and dark character studies into alcoholism, thwarted ambition and pervasive despair.

I saw this the other weekend after a few years, and did enjoy seeing it again. A not-so-complex story of a character that would rather live the rock & roll life then try to match the type of life her sister has.But JJL (who I will admit I think is amazing but I did not give an overly amount of patronage to with an 8) does a good job at showing how a person like this acts.