Yankee Snopes

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

The Beans are no-accounts too numerous to count. They are the one-family inner city of dismal little Egypt, Maine. They do odd jobs. They hunt deer out of season and do stupid, self-destructive things in all seasons. They seem to have never heard of contraception. They have heard of welfare, but they are too ornery to accept it.

Growing up in a prim, God-fearing little house across the road from their slatternly encampment, Earlene Pomerleau (Martha Plimpton) watches the Beans' messy comings and goings through her picture window, paying particular attention to hunky Beal Bean (Patrick McGaw), who is not paying much attention to her. He's sleeping with his father's common-law wife, Roberta (Kelly Lynch), while the old man (Rutger Hauer) does time in jail for beating a game warden half to death. This drama is, as Earlene says, better than watching television: it is live, and it is X-rated.

And The Beans of Egypt, Maine, adapted by Bill Phillips from the novel by Carolyn Chute, has this advantage over just about any other movie one is likely to encounter these days: it takes marginal American lives seriously. It does not patronize them. It does not invest them with tragic significance. It does not turn them into case studies. The film has a style that might be called sympathetic objectivity. Under Jennifer Warren's clear-eyed direction, it simply, almost uninflectedly recounts what happens to Earlene when she finally crosses the road to share Beal with Roberta. This new life takes the chill out of her bones. But it also contains relentless poverty, intermittent abuse, the constant threat of self-destruction. These people can never escape whatever desperate moment they are caught in, never know the luxury of foresight. It is hard watching fate enfold them. But it is also a bracing experience not easily shaken off.