The Rising Place (2002)

13% of critics liked it
(16 reviews)
75% of users liked it
(78 ratings)

A woman learns a valuable lesson about her family as she and her aunt look back at her troubled past in this independent drama. As Virginia Wilder (Frances Fisher) visits her elderly Aunt Millie (Alice Drummond) for the Christmas holidays, she discovers a number of letters she received during the… More A woman learns a valuable lesson about her family as she and her aunt look back at her troubled past in this independent drama. As Virginia Wilder (Frances Fisher) visits her elderly Aunt Millie (Alice Drummond) for the Christmas holidays, she discovers a number of letters she received during the 1940s, and gains a new and clearer picture of Millie's life when she was younger. Teenaged Emily (Laurel Holloman) falls in love with a soldier who soon ships out to fight in World War II, but not before she discovers herself pregnant. When the soldier refuses to marry her, Emily is left to have the baby on her own, and soon she discovers herself an outcast in the small Southern town where she was born. While Emily's father (Gary Cole) turns his back on her, her mother (Tess Harper) remains supportive, and Emily soon becomes close friends with two other people who haven't been welcomed by the community, a strong-willed black woman named Wilma Watson (Elise Neal) and Will Bacon (Mark Webber), a well-meaning young man with a bad habit of bending the truth. As Emily's new friends stand by her, Emily in turn stands up for them as Wilma and other members of the town's African-American community begin standing up for their rights as citizens. The first feature film from writer and director Tom Rice, The Rising Place also features Jennifer Holliday and Frances Sternhagen. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: PG-13, 1 hr. 33 min.
Directed By: Tom Rice
Written By: Tom Rice
Genres: Drama

In Theaters: Jun 1, 2002 Wide
On DVD: Oct 28, 2003
Studio: Flatland Pictures

Critic Reviews

Jan Stuart, Newsday
It is one more celluloid testimonial to the cruelties experienced by Southern blacks as distilled through a Caucasian perspective.
Lou Lumenick, New York Post
Looks awfully like one long tourist spot for a Mississippi that may never have existed outside of a scriptwriter's imagination.
Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter
A not-so-Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood with a hefty helping of Re-Fried Green Tomatoes.
Stephen Holden, New York Times
This misty-eyed Southern nostalgia piece, in treading the line between sappy and sanguine, winds up mired in tear-drenched quicksand.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Rice is too pedestrian a filmmaker to bring any edge or personality to The Rising Place that would set it apart from other Deep South stories.
Nat Johnson, Village Voice
Yet another weepy Southern bore-athon.
Edward Havens, FilmJerk.com
A solid cast, assured direction and complete lack of modern day irony.
Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Daily News
Rice never clearly defines his characters or gives us a reason to care about them.
, E! Online
Never rises above its own unleavened blandness.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
Salutes an interracial friendship between two Southern women and the ways in which enthusiasm can be a life-saving gift in tough times.
Ken Fox, TV Guide's Movie Guide
Sticky sweet sentimentality, clumsy plotting and a rosily myopic view of life in the WWII-era Mississippi Delta undermine this adaptation.
Mark Olsen, L.A. Weekly
However sincere it may be, The Rising Place never quite justifies its own existence.
Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
The overall feel is not unlike watching a glorified episode of "7th Heaven."
Maria Garcia, Film Journal International
[Creates] the worst kind of mythologizing, the kind that sacrifices real heroism and abject suffering for melodrama.