Gal Young Un

Plot

Set in the Prohibition Era, the late 1920s, in the backwoods country of Florida, Mattie, a middle-aged widow, lives alone. She has given up society, but is a woman of property.

A man named Trax appears, in need of money, and courts Mattie, who is old enough to be his mother. Mattie is charmed by his youth. When Mattie asks why he'd want to marry someone as old and tired as she is. Trax says, "Why not? There's not a thing wrong with you."

Premiere and reception

The film was first shown at the 1979 New York Film Festival. It cost $94,000 to make the film with 30 percent of the financing coming from the National Endowment for the Arts, 25 percent from the Florida Fine Arts Council and the remaining from private investors and had a gross revenue of $500,000. The film was based on a 1932 short story by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and shot entirely in Florida. It won the Silver Hugo Award for Best First Feature from the Chicago International Film Festival, top prize from the USA Film and Video Festival and the O. Henry Award. The New Statesman called it a "gem of a film" while Emanuel Levy called said it "helped shape regional cinema within the independent movement".