In 1915 Harrison, Texas, an as-yet-unkissed piano teacher in her twenties is stymied from finding romance by her snobbish, suffocating parents whom she still lives with. Screenwriter Horton Foote adapted his one-act play, originally part of his nine-play saga "The Orphans' Home Cycle", and apparently had a hand in the casting as well (Horton Foote Jr. plays Steve, Daisy Foote is Allie, and the leading role is played by Hallie Foote). Obviously this was a labor of love, but nothing quite looks right or sounds right here. Foote has a definite ear for small town gossip, rife with religious and class prejudice, but his characters are merely sounding-boards, not people. Did he mean the parents to come across as such ignorant bullies--and if so, why? Do they want their eldest daughter to be an old maid piano teacher, untouched forever? The performers are uneven, their accents are over-emphatic, and the director has no idea where to place the camera, making this one clumsy "Courtship". * from ****
Review of Courtship
