Bryce Dallas Howard & Chris Evans

In 1957, Tennessee Williams wrote a screenplay titled "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond," tailored for director Elia Kazan, Williams' valued theatrical and cinematic interpreter, and actress Julie Harris, fresh off Kazan's "East of Eden."

The project didn't come to pass -- until now, more than a half-century later, without Kazan, without Harris, without Williams.

First-time director Jodie Markell (she starred in the superb New York revival of "Machinal" a generation ago) has turned it into a showcase for actress Bryce Dallas Howard as the dramatist's Jazz Age tootsie, raising hell, challenging convention and yearning for life's riches in 1923 Memphis and environs. Is this long-gestating movie major? No. Is it interesting? Yes. Markell's direction is ruled by restraint and caution, never the most flattering combination for this writer. But how often does a story by a major 20th century American icon pop up out of nowhere?

The title refers to one-half of a $10,000 set of earrings. They're worn by the notorious Fisher Willow as she prepares herself for the ball season. Jimmy (Chris Evans), whose mother lies locked away in an institution (naturally) and whose drunken (naturally) pap works for the Willow estate, becomes a chaste yet hunky gigolo for hire, accompanying Fisher on the coming-out circuit.

This being Williams, the social arrangement reeks of sensual possibilities. An old Mike Nichols routine spoofing "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" put it this way: "drink, prostitution and puttin' on airs." Much of the material teeters on the edge of camp. Ellen Burstyn portrays Fisher's unofficial life coach, Miss Addie, a dying slave to "the smoke of the burning poppy" -- yet she's good and flinty enough to keep her scenes true. Fisher, a kissing cousin to Maggie the Cat, refers to herself, coyly, as "an only child and the heiress of two fortunes." The script is half-a-fortune at best, and visually the picture is staid. But you stick with it, because it's Williams and because certainly no one since Williams has written this sort of embroidered dialogue.

Early on, Fisher makes a casual remark to Jimmy about what money means to her.

"You don't mean you're greedy, are you?" he asks. Her reply: "No. I just know I'll have to buy most everything that I want." That rejoinder cries out for a little topspin, delivered with a half-smile; Howard, like her director, plays it for pure sincerity, which is something, I guess, but with Williams (or any other Southern writer of both charm and guile) it's not everything. Writers of all kinds could take a lesson or two from this master, even in a minor key, regarding prolonged sexual suspense and the value of a tough heroine, dating from a time when a screenwriter had to be pretty crafty to get around the Production Code.

 

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MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some sexuality and drug content).

Running time: 1:42.

Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard (Fisher Willow); Chris Evans (Jimmy Dobyne); Ellen Burstyn (Miss Addie); Mamie Gummer (Julie); Ann-Margret (Cornelia); Will Patton (Old Man Dobyne); Jessica Collins (Vinnie).

Credits: Directed by Jodie Markell; written by Tennessee Williams; produced by Brad Michael Gilbert. A Paladin release.

 

A rebellious socialite defies social conventions for a once-in-a-lifetime shot at true love, only to see her hopes for the future shattered after a priceless diamond vanishes into thin air in this romantic drama adapted from a long-lost Tennessee Williams screenplay. Fisher Willow (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the debutant daughter of a wealthy Memphis plantation owner. She harbors a great distain for the narrow-minded elite who seem to worship the ground her father walks on, and takes great delight in shocking and insulting them whenever the opportunity to do so arises. Shortly after returning from studying overseas, Fisher is swept off her feet by lowly farmhand Jimmy Dobyne (Chris Evans), who works on her father's plantation.