Josh Bell
When Lucy Fowler (Ashley Judd) wakes up next to a strange man at the beginning of Come Early Morning, it’s not a sign that something horrific has happened to her. The first thing she says is “shit,” but it’s more of a resigned utterance, an acknowledgement of the unhealthy pattern she keeps repeating. She does her best to sneak out of the motel room, gathering her clothes from under empty beer bottles. Her companion wakes up and tries to stop her from leaving, but it’s just an empty threat. When she gets home, she throws her panties in the trash.
This is a typical weekend for Lucy, but she’s not some kind of self-destructive addict or hapless victim. She has a good job as a contractor, she lives with her best friend Kim (Laura Prepon), and she spends time with her extended family, even if they often exasperate her. She just likes to get drunk and have one-night stands, and when she meets a man who wants more than that, she doesn’t know how to handle it. She’s flailing through life like anyone else, and she’s not going to have everything figured out by the end of the movie.
Released 20 years ago this week, Come Early Morning is the only feature film written and directed by actress Joey Lauren Adams, who’s best known for her 1990s work with Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater. It was shot in and around Adams’ hometown of North Little Rock, Arkansas, and it has the lived-in feel of a homecoming. This is a proudly Southern story, but it’s never condescending about the South, even when characters are line dancing at a honky-tonk. Adams understands these people and how they live, and she unfolds her story in a straightforward, unfussy manner.
Not that there’s a ton of story. Come Early Morning is a languid, laconic character study, with low-key conflicts that don’t lend themselves to tidy resolutions. When Lucy meets town newcomer Cal Percell (Jeffrey Donovan), it’s not the launch of a grand romance. They bond while throwing rocks at an old sign, and later he takes her on a date to catch frogs. They seem to understand each other, but Lucy still can’t process the idea of being in a relationship. “Can I get your number?” he asks after their first meeting. “What for?” she responds, genuinely baffled.
Those intimacy issues clearly stem from her strained relationship with her father Lowell (Scott Wilson), but this isn’t a movie about heavy trauma. Lowell is just a run-of-the-mill distant father; he cheated on Lucy’s mother and doesn’t know how to express his emotions. Lucy doesn’t know that he’s back in town until she hears the news from her grandmother, and when she goes to his new place to check in on him, they can’t even make eye contact while talking.
Yet Lowell isn’t necessarily a bad guy. It sounds a bit ominous when Lucy’s grandmother says that he’s going to a new “holy roller” church, but when Lucy decides to accompany him, she finds a friendly and welcoming place with a pastor (Ray McKinnon) whom she can turn to for advice. Adams incorporates religion as just another fact of life for these characters, something to do on Sundays before heading to the bar. Lucy doesn’t come to a profound spiritual revelation, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be back in church the following week.
Come Early Morning is full of small, knowing details about life in the South, from Lucy telling Kim that Cal is like every other guy at the bar except “he doesn’t wear Wranglers” to the way that she calls one of her grandmothers Nana and the other one Doll. Fellow Southern filmmaker Jeff Nichols has a cameo as one of Kim’s suitors, and it’s like he’s giving Adams an unofficial Arkansas stamp of approval. Like Nichols’ 2007 debut Shotgun Stories, Come Early Morning is the cinematic equivalent of a great country song, complete with pickup truck and stray dog.
“Ah, crap,” Lucy says when she spots that stray dog, knowing that she’s definitely going to pick it up and give it a home, even if she pretends that she won’t. Judd’s excellent performance is full of nuanced moments like that, and in a movie this quiet and contemplative, it’s essential for her to hold the audience’s interest as not a whole lot is happening. Judd accomplishes that with ease, giving one of her best and most underappreciated performances. She’s scaled back her onscreen appearances considerably in the past decade, and Come Early Morning is a reminder of what an effortlessly brilliant actor she can be.
It’s also a powerful demonstration of Adams’s skills as a filmmaker, something that she hasn’t had the opportunity to explore further. Maybe she just had this one deeply personal story to tell, and if so, she’s expressed it beautifully here. But the South is full of complex characters like Lucy, with their own unique experiences, and Come Early Morning shows that Adams is a poet of that distinctive environment.
“Come Early Morning” is streaming on Tubi, PlutoTV, and the Roku Channel.
