TCM showed Cane River a few months back. I'm glad this film was rediscovered. I enjoyed this early 80s indie film that happened to be filmed in my state of Louisiana

Richard Roman comes down to Louisiana to do some sightseeing. He and Tommye Myrick fall in love. Yet while he is certain about their future together, her mother, brother, and she have issues.

It is the revelation of those issues that forms the story of this movie, and the beauty of New Orleans and its environs makes a lovely backdrop. The conflict -- and you can't have a compelling story without a conflict -- is their class differences. If this movie has a point, it's that Black culture is not monolithic. In fact, Roman's character is what is slighted these days as an 'Oreo' -- Black on the outside, white inside. His is a world of possibilities, while Miss Myrick's is a broken world of circumscription that makes her distrustful.

If this movie has its weaknesses, it is the too-pretty world of gardens that their romance takes place against, and the manner in which the back stories are revealed when they become necessary for the plot. It's too neat to have much verisimilitude. Still, it satisfies all of the requirements of a romance, and the players are all more than competent. and the need for self-respect, for being able to take care of oneself is a key point of the subtext.