Maysville

A great-looking Southern drama with a lot of heart filmed in Kentucky, though hampered by sometimes amateurish acting and direction.

“Maysville” is a Southern-fried soap opera with plenty of heart and terrific production values for a low-budget film. Filmed in Kentucky, it suffers from some amateurish acting and camera work. But there’s a compelling story thread that feels like something from a William Faulkner novel, or at least a downmarket copy of one.

It’s currently available for rental on Amazon and a few other platforms.

It’s about a native son of Maysville, Theodore “Teddy” Rodgers, who grew up circa 1929 adoring his closest friend, Willy Stamper (Forrest Campbell). He was the good kid afraid to get too far out of line, while Willy was the rebellious yin to his fearful yang. They’d do things like swim in the local creek and pretend to baptize each other, borrow Willy’s dad’s gun for shooting practice, and other Huckleberry-esque antics.

Unfortunately, Willy’s dad, Buck (a terrifying Brian Sutherland), is a mean drunk who constantly abuses his kid. He’s angry over the death of his wife, while Teddy has abandonment issues over his own passed dad. His mother, Clara (Trin Miller), carries on resolutely for the sake of Teddy and his two younger twin sisters.

Tragedy strikes when Willy is killed in a tractor accident, and Buck (and seemingly much of the community) blames Teddy for it. The elder Stamper shows up drunk one night and threatens eye-for-an-eye justice, though he settles for kidnapping him instead. He threatens Teddy that he’ll kill his mother and sisters if he doesn’t comply, so he tells the police he wants to stay.

He winds up essentially becoming Willy’s stand-in son, cooking and serving Buck. Years go by and Teddy has lost all contact with his family, and eventually escapes and makes his way back to town. He manages in ingratiate himself with Clarence Wells (Russell Hodgkinson), owner of the local corn mill, who offers him a job making deliveries all over the area.

He also falls into an instant attraction with Elizabeth Smallwood (Cheyenne Barton), who runs the grocery store owned by her father (Frank Lawler), the richest man in town. She’s a strong-willed proto-feminist type, someone not afraid to wear pants in a very traditional community and openly pursue Teddy romantically.

God bless the Sadie Hawkinses!

You can probably guess where this will all wind up: Teddy’s newfound happiness is going to be threatened by the intrusion of his dark past. There are also a few last-act plot twists that might send your head for a spin or two. (The final one, near-incomprehensible.)

Teddy is played by Holden Goyette as a youngster and Kevin Mayr as a teen. Both bring an earnest sort of simplicity to the character. Teddy is the kind of guy caught in the classic cinematic quandary of not wanting to talk about himself or foist his pain on others, leading him to push them away.

The movie’s got a great look and feel, with excellent period costumes, production design and vehicles. (Though I might quibble that real delivery trucks and other Depression-era work vehicles would not all look like they just rolled out of a spit-shined showroom.)

It’s clear some of the supporting cast are fledgling actors, so a strained line reading or blank expression strays in from time to time. Writer/director Leslie Goyette (mother of Holden) is a rookie filmmaker, and it shows in some of the staid shot selection and lack of consistent emoting from her cast.

It’s a little too long at just under two hours, with some filler shots that could be tidied up with some judicious editing. Still, the storytelling instincts are there and “Maysville” has the bones of a good story. It’s the sort of first movie that actors and filmmakers learn from for their second.