Elvis and Anabelle
Encyclopedia
Elvis and Anabelle is an independent film directed by Will Geiger. It premiered on March 10, 2007 at the South by Southwest
film and music festival in Austin, Texas. It has not yet received an official theatrical release, although it has been shown on Lifetime Television
and was released on DVD on October 5, 2010.
) runs the Moreau Funeral Home, having undertaken the duties of embalming
and setting up funerals in lieu of his father, Charlie (Joe Mantegna
), who has slowly been losing his lucidity.
Elvis spends his time concocting stories and reading them to his father, who enjoys his stories but who is worried about Elvis. Groomed by her mother, a previous Miss Texas Rose winner, Anabelle is on the road to winning the Miss Texas Rose tiara. Anabelle lives by all the decisions her mother has made for her but is also dissatisfied with her body.
She ultimately wins the competition but during her moment of triumph, however, Anabelle dies of cardiac arrest
brought on by her eating disorder
.
When Elvis receives Anabelle's body, Elvis recognizes her as Miss Texas Rose. He is oddly attracted to her natural beauty and kisses her, in which moment Anabelle's body springs upright, with Anabelle coughing and returning to life.
Amid the media attention the incident causes, Anabelle realizes that she has never really lived her own life.
Obsessing over her resurrection, she decides to meet Charlie and ask him about how she woke up. When she arrives at the Moreau Funeral Home, Elvis meets her, refusing her to meet his father or seeing where the embalmings take place. Later on that night, she breaks into Elvis' funeral home and lies on the embalming table, trying to rekindle the memories that haunt her. Elvis finds her, mistaking her for an intruder. He then tells her that this was the place where she was embalmed and resurrected. She then meets Charlie and Elvis tells him to tell Anabelle what happened. Anabelle spends the night and the next morning in their house and decides to stay around with Elvis as she doesn't want to go home and face her family or anyone else, wanting only to "disappear". She develops a friendly rapport with Charlie and Elvis, who is obviously smitten with her but is unable to act upon his feelings.
She asks Charlie about her resurrection and, each time he tells the story, it changes a bit. She grows confused as to how he can have differing stories but Elvis stops her from asking Charlie anymore questions. Living with them, she fills up her time by painting the "scary" house that Elvis and Charlie live in, joined by Elvis after a day or two. Her mother, noticing her gone, reports her missing, putting Anabelle's disappearance on high alert and angering Anabelle who decides to just continue living with the Moreaus. She decides to plant something in the neighboring field, ignoring the protests of Elvis and Charlie who insists that nothing ever grows there. Contemplating the dry land, she asks Elvis to take her into town and he agrees, where she tries her best to go incognito while visiting the plant store, and upon leaving it sees her stepfather in town with the local sheriff. Unfortunately, her comments about being Charlie's niece sparks interest in the salesclerk and he reports her to the local sheriff.
As she is out in the field working the tractor to plow the land, the sheriff appears and asks Charlie about the boy in the middle of the field. Charlie replies that he is a hired hand and after he leaves, Elvis confronts Anabelle about her staying with them. He is worried that if she is found on their property, he and Charlie will be arrested. Anabelle tells him that if he wants her to leave, he should tell her so but he decides against it, unable to bear the thought of Anabelle leaving. Later that evening, his father asks Elvis if he's going to leave with Anabelle, that he approves and that they can move out together.
Their friendship grows deeper and Anabelle invites him to go for an evening walk, ending the night sitting on a local bridge and talking about their parents. Elvis reveals to Anabelle that his mother committed suicide when he was 12 on the very same bridge they are lying on. Anabelle also reveals that now she sees that through all the terrible things that have happened, she now believes that miraculous things happen too. As she leans over to kiss Elvis, Anabelle recoils, as she feels a sense of deja vu
, from the night that he kissed her corpse. Elvis feels hurt but disguises it with bitterness, and Anabelle does her best to apologize. When they walk home, they arrive to see the local police questioning Charlie again. Charlie tells the police a fake story, leading them on a wild goose chase. Charlie urges Elvis to leave with Anabelle. Elvis hesitates but is reassured by his father that he will be fine.
Anabelle and Elvis leave, arriving in South Padre Island, where Anabelle locks him out on the beach, making him apologize for his former bitterness and promise to keep in contact with her. Elvis apologizes and their relationship quickly escalates into a romance.
During this time, Anabelle's mother is distraught over her daughter's disappearance and visits the funeral home, finding Anabelle's clothes, a photo album full of pictures of corpses that Elvis has taken and, after some digging, coming upon a photograph of Elvis kissing her daughter's corpse in the trash. Shocked, she calls the police but is surprised by Charlie, who asks who.
Insteadly after that Elvis and Anabelle are in his car making love and then go out on the beach.
The news makes the front page, where Anabelle sees the picture while stopping at a gas station. Before Elvis can explain what happened, the police arrive at the gas station and arrest Elvis, leading Anabelle away. Elvis is accused of being a necrophiliac bringing into question if he has done anything to any of the other corpses embalmed in his father's mortuary. He denies doing anything to anyone, revealing that him kissing Anabelle's body was the first impropriety.
Anabelle is now hounded by the media and grows despondent and depressed over what Elvis may have done. Even with that betrayal, she suddenly realizes that it was Elvis whom she remembers in her flashbacks. She visits him in jail, asking him for the truth and what happened when she came back to life. Elvis is flippant and she reveals to him that she has dropped all the charges so he can go home and take care of his father. He asks her why she cares about his father, with Anabelle replying that she thinks Elvis is a good man but that he needs help to realize it. He accuses her of analyzing him without actually knowing what has happened to him. She replies that while he has been hurt, he needs to move past it and learn to forgive, like she has. As Anabelle proceeds to leave the cell, Elvis finally reveals that he kissed her, that that was the only time he did anything like that and that he didn't tell her for fear that he might end up in jail. He also, finally, reveals that he was the one who saw her come back to life. Anabelle sadly tells him that even after all that has happened, that it is sad that he still doesn't believe in miracles and that he may be right. She then leaves.
Finally freed, he takes a cab home, thinking about Anabelle and Charlie. Once he arrives home, he is hounded by the media and ignores them. He looks upon the golf course he has created for his father and notices a red umbrella tumbling across the lawn in the rain. He runs over and finds his father on the grass, having collapsed after playing a perfect game of golf in the rain. Elvis cries for help and his father is wheeled away by paramedics, dead.
Elvis embalms Charlie and sets up a wake for him in the house. Sensing that his life holds no purpose any longer, he decides to hang
himself. Unbeknownst to him, Anabelle has decided to kill herself too, deciding to electrocute herself in her bathtub with a television, where she is watching the news.
After creating a noose, Elvis drags up a chair to the noose and slips his head inside. While contemplating his suicide, the attic windows blow open, reminiscent of the way that they did before Anabelle's resurrection, and he turns to see a field of sunflowers that Anabelle has planted in full bloom. While looking at the field, the chair leg breaks, causing him to fall and choke as he struggles with the noose. Elvis is now resolved to live and fights to stay conscious while trying to drag the chair closer to him. Eventually, Elvis straightens the chair and slips his head out of the noose, collapsing to the floor and gulping for air.
Anabelle, on the other hand, submerges herself in the bath tub, watching the television she has placed next to the tub. She begins to inch the television closer to the tub with her foot, waiting for it to fall into the water. While inching the television closer to the water, she pauses once she sees a news break revealing Elvis. He is outside his house, painting a message on the side of it telling Anabelle that he loves her. She abruptly gets out of the tub and gets dressed, heading to the field of sunflowers.
Finding Elvis lying in the middle of the field, she jokingly asks him what he's doing. Elvis replies that he's probably waiting for her and Anabelle lies next to him. Elvis tells her she's the most beautiful thing in his life and they stare out into the sky in each others arms.
as Elvis
Blake Lively
as Anabelle
Joe Mantegna
as Charlie
Mary Steenburgen
as Geneva
Keith Carradine
as Jimmy
South by Southwest
South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...
film and music festival in Austin, Texas. It has not yet received an official theatrical release, although it has been shown on Lifetime Television
Lifetime Television
Lifetime Television, often referred to as Lifetime TV, or most commonly, Lifetime, is an American cable television specialty channel devoted to movies, sitcoms and dramas, all of which are either geared toward women or feature women in lead roles. The cable network is owned by A&E Television Networks...
and was released on DVD on October 5, 2010.
Synopsis
Elvis Moreau (Max MinghellaMax Minghella
Max Giorgio Choa Minghella is an English actor. The son of film director Anthony Minghella, he has appeared in several dramatic American films, making his feature film debut in 2005's Bee Season and starring in 2006's Art School Confidential...
) runs the Moreau Funeral Home, having undertaken the duties of embalming
Embalming
Embalming, in most modern cultures, is the art and science of temporarily preserving human remains to forestall decomposition and to make them suitable for public display at a funeral. The three goals of embalming are thus sanitization, presentation and preservation of a corpse to achieve this...
and setting up funerals in lieu of his father, Charlie (Joe Mantegna
Joe Mantegna
Joseph Anthony "Joe" Mantegna, Jr. is an American actor, producer, writer,director, and voice actor. He is best known for his roles in box office hits such as Three Amigos , The Godfather Part III , Forget Paris , and Up Close & Personal...
), who has slowly been losing his lucidity.
Elvis spends his time concocting stories and reading them to his father, who enjoys his stories but who is worried about Elvis. Groomed by her mother, a previous Miss Texas Rose winner, Anabelle is on the road to winning the Miss Texas Rose tiara. Anabelle lives by all the decisions her mother has made for her but is also dissatisfied with her body.
She ultimately wins the competition but during her moment of triumph, however, Anabelle dies of cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest, is the cessation of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively...
brought on by her eating disorder
Eating disorder
Eating disorders refer to a group of conditions defined by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of an individual's physical and mental health. Bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, and binge eating disorder are the most common specific...
.
When Elvis receives Anabelle's body, Elvis recognizes her as Miss Texas Rose. He is oddly attracted to her natural beauty and kisses her, in which moment Anabelle's body springs upright, with Anabelle coughing and returning to life.
Amid the media attention the incident causes, Anabelle realizes that she has never really lived her own life.
Obsessing over her resurrection, she decides to meet Charlie and ask him about how she woke up. When she arrives at the Moreau Funeral Home, Elvis meets her, refusing her to meet his father or seeing where the embalmings take place. Later on that night, she breaks into Elvis' funeral home and lies on the embalming table, trying to rekindle the memories that haunt her. Elvis finds her, mistaking her for an intruder. He then tells her that this was the place where she was embalmed and resurrected. She then meets Charlie and Elvis tells him to tell Anabelle what happened. Anabelle spends the night and the next morning in their house and decides to stay around with Elvis as she doesn't want to go home and face her family or anyone else, wanting only to "disappear". She develops a friendly rapport with Charlie and Elvis, who is obviously smitten with her but is unable to act upon his feelings.
She asks Charlie about her resurrection and, each time he tells the story, it changes a bit. She grows confused as to how he can have differing stories but Elvis stops her from asking Charlie anymore questions. Living with them, she fills up her time by painting the "scary" house that Elvis and Charlie live in, joined by Elvis after a day or two. Her mother, noticing her gone, reports her missing, putting Anabelle's disappearance on high alert and angering Anabelle who decides to just continue living with the Moreaus. She decides to plant something in the neighboring field, ignoring the protests of Elvis and Charlie who insists that nothing ever grows there. Contemplating the dry land, she asks Elvis to take her into town and he agrees, where she tries her best to go incognito while visiting the plant store, and upon leaving it sees her stepfather in town with the local sheriff. Unfortunately, her comments about being Charlie's niece sparks interest in the salesclerk and he reports her to the local sheriff.
As she is out in the field working the tractor to plow the land, the sheriff appears and asks Charlie about the boy in the middle of the field. Charlie replies that he is a hired hand and after he leaves, Elvis confronts Anabelle about her staying with them. He is worried that if she is found on their property, he and Charlie will be arrested. Anabelle tells him that if he wants her to leave, he should tell her so but he decides against it, unable to bear the thought of Anabelle leaving. Later that evening, his father asks Elvis if he's going to leave with Anabelle, that he approves and that they can move out together.
Their friendship grows deeper and Anabelle invites him to go for an evening walk, ending the night sitting on a local bridge and talking about their parents. Elvis reveals to Anabelle that his mother committed suicide when he was 12 on the very same bridge they are lying on. Anabelle also reveals that now she sees that through all the terrible things that have happened, she now believes that miraculous things happen too. As she leans over to kiss Elvis, Anabelle recoils, as she feels a sense of deja vu
Déjà vu
Déjà vu is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined...
, from the night that he kissed her corpse. Elvis feels hurt but disguises it with bitterness, and Anabelle does her best to apologize. When they walk home, they arrive to see the local police questioning Charlie again. Charlie tells the police a fake story, leading them on a wild goose chase. Charlie urges Elvis to leave with Anabelle. Elvis hesitates but is reassured by his father that he will be fine.
Anabelle and Elvis leave, arriving in South Padre Island, where Anabelle locks him out on the beach, making him apologize for his former bitterness and promise to keep in contact with her. Elvis apologizes and their relationship quickly escalates into a romance.
During this time, Anabelle's mother is distraught over her daughter's disappearance and visits the funeral home, finding Anabelle's clothes, a photo album full of pictures of corpses that Elvis has taken and, after some digging, coming upon a photograph of Elvis kissing her daughter's corpse in the trash. Shocked, she calls the police but is surprised by Charlie, who asks who.
Insteadly after that Elvis and Anabelle are in his car making love and then go out on the beach.
The news makes the front page, where Anabelle sees the picture while stopping at a gas station. Before Elvis can explain what happened, the police arrive at the gas station and arrest Elvis, leading Anabelle away. Elvis is accused of being a necrophiliac bringing into question if he has done anything to any of the other corpses embalmed in his father's mortuary. He denies doing anything to anyone, revealing that him kissing Anabelle's body was the first impropriety.
Anabelle is now hounded by the media and grows despondent and depressed over what Elvis may have done. Even with that betrayal, she suddenly realizes that it was Elvis whom she remembers in her flashbacks. She visits him in jail, asking him for the truth and what happened when she came back to life. Elvis is flippant and she reveals to him that she has dropped all the charges so he can go home and take care of his father. He asks her why she cares about his father, with Anabelle replying that she thinks Elvis is a good man but that he needs help to realize it. He accuses her of analyzing him without actually knowing what has happened to him. She replies that while he has been hurt, he needs to move past it and learn to forgive, like she has. As Anabelle proceeds to leave the cell, Elvis finally reveals that he kissed her, that that was the only time he did anything like that and that he didn't tell her for fear that he might end up in jail. He also, finally, reveals that he was the one who saw her come back to life. Anabelle sadly tells him that even after all that has happened, that it is sad that he still doesn't believe in miracles and that he may be right. She then leaves.
Finally freed, he takes a cab home, thinking about Anabelle and Charlie. Once he arrives home, he is hounded by the media and ignores them. He looks upon the golf course he has created for his father and notices a red umbrella tumbling across the lawn in the rain. He runs over and finds his father on the grass, having collapsed after playing a perfect game of golf in the rain. Elvis cries for help and his father is wheeled away by paramedics, dead.
Elvis embalms Charlie and sets up a wake for him in the house. Sensing that his life holds no purpose any longer, he decides to hang
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
himself. Unbeknownst to him, Anabelle has decided to kill herself too, deciding to electrocute herself in her bathtub with a television, where she is watching the news.
After creating a noose, Elvis drags up a chair to the noose and slips his head inside. While contemplating his suicide, the attic windows blow open, reminiscent of the way that they did before Anabelle's resurrection, and he turns to see a field of sunflowers that Anabelle has planted in full bloom. While looking at the field, the chair leg breaks, causing him to fall and choke as he struggles with the noose. Elvis is now resolved to live and fights to stay conscious while trying to drag the chair closer to him. Eventually, Elvis straightens the chair and slips his head out of the noose, collapsing to the floor and gulping for air.
Anabelle, on the other hand, submerges herself in the bath tub, watching the television she has placed next to the tub. She begins to inch the television closer to the tub with her foot, waiting for it to fall into the water. While inching the television closer to the water, she pauses once she sees a news break revealing Elvis. He is outside his house, painting a message on the side of it telling Anabelle that he loves her. She abruptly gets out of the tub and gets dressed, heading to the field of sunflowers.
Finding Elvis lying in the middle of the field, she jokingly asks him what he's doing. Elvis replies that he's probably waiting for her and Anabelle lies next to him. Elvis tells her she's the most beautiful thing in his life and they stare out into the sky in each others arms.
Cast
Max MinghellaMax Minghella
Max Giorgio Choa Minghella is an English actor. The son of film director Anthony Minghella, he has appeared in several dramatic American films, making his feature film debut in 2005's Bee Season and starring in 2006's Art School Confidential...
as Elvis
Blake Lively
Blake Lively
Blake Christina Lively is an American actress and model who stars as Serena van der Woodsen in the television teen drama series Gossip Girl...
as Anabelle
Joe Mantegna
Joe Mantegna
Joseph Anthony "Joe" Mantegna, Jr. is an American actor, producer, writer,director, and voice actor. He is best known for his roles in box office hits such as Three Amigos , The Godfather Part III , Forget Paris , and Up Close & Personal...
as Charlie
Mary Steenburgen
Mary Steenburgen
Mary Nell Steenburgen is an American actress. She is best known for playing the role of Lynda Dummar in Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard, which earned her an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.-Early life:...
as Geneva
Keith Carradine
Keith Carradine
Keith Ian Carradine is an American actor who has had success on stage, film and television. In addition, he is a Golden Globe and Oscar winning songwriter. As a member of the Carradine family, he is part of an acting "dynasty" that began with his father, John Carradine.-Early life:Keith...
as Jimmy