'The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond': a minor film, but not without some sparkle

Though playwright Tennessee Williams has been dead for over a quarter-century, his cinematic output continues to grow.

"The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond," based on a screenplay Williams wrote in the 1950s, has finally come to the screen, and you can tell it's Williams from a cotton field away: a haunted yet saucy Southern heroine who relies on the kindness of near-strangers, a doomed romance, an elderly opium user and a brief glimpse of a picturesque insane asylum.

Set in 1923 Mississippi, the story is simple: A young, lovely heiress (Bryce Dallas Howard, with dark hair making a fetching contrast to her porcelain skin), caring little about society's conventions, pays an unwealthy man (Chris Evans) to be her escort at parties — and then, in between conversations with disapproving aunts (Ann-Margret) and bed-

ridden addicts (Ellen Burstyn), realizes she's fallen in love with him.

Director Jodie Markell gives it all a slow, showy, almost theatrical pace. At one point, interior lights dim and brighten though not touched by the characters, both heightening and cheapening the intimacy of the moment.

It's minor Williams turned minor cinema, but there are nonetheless moments that resonate. Burstyn, lying on a bed and reminiscing about "the smoke of the burning poppy," has an almost frightening intensity, her eyes both frantic and sadly resigned. The talented Howard gives her voice a mint-julep lilt that's a pleasure to listen to, particularly when it seems to twist itself around Evans like a vine.

And though Markell can't manufacture much drama when it isn't there on the page, she does somehow make us smell magnolias, feel the thickness of the air on a warm autumn night, and sense the voluptuous heaviness of a dangling pair of diamond earrings, flashing like stars that disappear when morning comes.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com