A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

Nor need she, for if she's the daughter of brilliant novelist James Jones, hers is a privileged life. Yet the sole reason Kaylie Jones's tepid novel-memoir was committed to film -- her relationship to the famed author -- has been effaced by the film's insistence on pseudonyms. Not that Kris Kristofferson's Jones manqué character has much to do with anything -- he broods avuncularly on the fringes, his genius and demons irrelevant, with Barbara Hershey a more engaging presence as his wife. None of Jones's dark, edgy talent seems to have found its way into this account from Kaylie (played by a passive Leelee Sobieski), an episodic, humdrum tale of growing up in Paris in the '60s, relating to her adoptive brother, and dealing with high-school dating on her family's return to America. Daughter is directed by James Ivory, whose pointless period window dressing and dramatic inertia underscore the insipidity of this confessional indulgence. Screens at the Copley Place Saturday, September 19 at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m. and Sunday, September 20 at noon and 3:30 and 5:45 p.m.

-- Peter Keough

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Film Festival Feature Films

| The Witman Boys | The Cruise | Confessions of a Sexist Pig | Melting Pot | Pleasantville | Clay Pigeons | Waking Ned Devine | Blood, Guts, Bullets, & Octane | My Name is Joe | Six Ways to Sunday | The Theory of Flight | A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries | Down in the Delta | Children of Heaven | I Married a Strange Person | 20 Dates | Bandits |

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More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times

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