Ode to Billy Joe (1976)

As an attempt to flesh out the story of the classic country song of the same name, this film has some highly questionable messaging on sexual identity. The teen leads’, Robby Benson and Glynnis O’Connor, performances are very earnest and they play well off of each other. The Mississippi setting and even the accents are fully realized and consistent, though I do question a bit how accurate some of the happenings were to the South in the 1950s.