Lianna DVD

In John Sayles's LIANNA, a young faculty wife, bored with her life and angered at her husband's infidelity, has an affair with another woman. When her friends and family find out, she discovers she has no support.

Linda Griffiths plays Lianna, the naive young wife of a professor bored with her life and angered at her husband's blatant sexual indiscretions. She has an affair with another woman, Ruth (Jane Halleran), and when her affair becomes common knowledge, she finds herself shunned by both her friends and family. Released shortly after a handful of films touching upon homosexual relationships (MAKING LOVE, PERSONAL BEST), LIANNA is a realistic depiction of a lesbian relationship that does not succumb to typical Hollywood formulas. Director John Sayles traces the consequences of divorce and the constrictions of women's possibilities with an unsentimental eye, showing that freedom often comes with a heavy price. Although many people were skeptical about a man helming a film about lesbians, Sayles does an admirable job creating a movie that no studio wanted to touch, on a budget that very few directors could live within. Later in his film career, he would continue to explore topics considered outside his range of experience, including life in Harlem (BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET) and the terrors of a war-torn Third World country (MEN WITH GUNS).

Shot on location in Hoboken, New Jersey. As with many of his films, writer-director John Sayles appears in a minor role, this time as a character named Jerry. LIANNA features the first screen appearance of Chris Elliott, who plays a lighting assistant. The film was originally scripted to take place in Santa Cruz, near where Sayles was living then. "I think it did help setting it in the East where you're always going to run into these people at the A&P and there is not this huge beach to go walk on where you can get away from people. You feel like there is a little less acceptance of anything goes in a campus on the East Coast in New Jersey than there is in Santa Cruz where some of the biggest radicals in both lifestyle and politics have taught in the past," Sayles explained in an interview with American Cinematographer. Estimated budget: $300,000. The money was raised by Maggie Renzi and Jeffrey Nelson. The film's investors included about 30 "nontraditional" investors--people who had never put money into a film before. After RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN, Sayles wrote the screenplay for NIGHT SKIES, a project that Steven Spielberg was to direct. Sayles used some of the money from that project to finance LIANNA. The screenplay was written in about 1978, before the screenplay for RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN. Sayles based the characters on couples he knew who were undergoing custody battles and women who were coming out as lesbians.

Lianna Reviews:

"...Everything in it looks and sounds authentic....[Griffiths] is splendid..." -- Vincent Canby, New York Times

"...[John Sayles] again uses a keen intelligence and finely tuned ear to tackle the nature of friendship and loving in LIANNA..." -- Step., Variety

This is the only Linda Griffiths video. Stars also making their debut in this video: Jon De Vries.

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