The Scoundrel's Wife

An unusual tale about an often over-glorified era from our past, The Scoundrel's Wife exposes wartime America's sordid small town underbelly in a captivating, even entertaining manner.

The movie is finally just a little too ungainly, too jumbled at the end, for me to recommend, but it has heart, and I feel a lot of affection for it.

Scripted by Pitre and his wife, Michelle Benoit, this is more interesting for its historical setting than for its rather wooden drama, but Tim Curry gives a pretty good performance as the town's whiskey priest.

The shame is that Pitre, shooting entirely in his home state, wasn't more engaged himself. His intimate connection to the people, place and story, which certainly inspired him to write the film in the first place, is wasted.

A bland gumbo of wartime intrigue and home-front soap opera in the bayou country of Louisiana.