RUBY/ VC ANDREWS RUBY
US, 2021, 87 minutes, Colour.
Raechelle Banno, Karina Banno, Gil Bellows, Crystal Fox, Sam Duke, Ty Ward, Lauralee Bell, Naomi Judd, Bob Frazer.
Directed by Gail Harvey.
Ruby is the first in a series of popular films in the Landry series, which was attributed to VC Andrews, written by Andrew Niederman. There were five novels, and three subsequent films.
The settings are in Louisiana, at first and the bayous, then in affluent New Orleans society.
Most of the family secrets, skeletons in the closet, are explained in the first 25 minutes – and will be dramatised, exploited, made melodrama and the subsequent films. Many secrets, many revelations.
The focus is on a young girl, Ruby, brought up by a sympathetic grandmother and an alcoholic grandfather (who is prepared to sell Ruby to a neighbour). Just before her grandmother dies, there is a revelation about who her mother was, who her father was, her mother having a relationship with a married man and Lucy’s boyfriend, Paul, revealed to be her half-brother. Much will be made of this in the consequent films. There is also the revelation that Ruby’s mother bore twins, that one was taken by their father back to his affluent world, is ne’er knowing that there was a second twin.
After the death of her grandmother and threats by her grandfather, Ruby decides to go to the home of her father who is actually delighted to discover that he has another daughter. He has married in the meantime and his society wife will take the place of the cruel stepmother. The film also introduces the other twin, Giselle, and exceedingly wilful and self-absorbed snob who makes life a misery for Ruby, trapping her and compromising situations, and the stepmother inveigling Ruby into visiting the institution where her uncle, suffering mental problems after an accident caused by her father, spends his years. Ruby is then trapped into staying at the institution but is able to escape, creating a hold over the stepmother.
In the meantime, with encouragement from one of the servants, Ruby becomes involved in voodoo, visiting a celebrated practitioner, Mama Dede, who puts a curse on Giselle. Giselle is injured in a car accident where her boyfriend driver is killed. After hospital, she is on crutches.
The other character introduced in the story is Beau, who becomes close to Ruby, even closer in the second episode with complicated consequences after that.
One positive thing for Ruby is that she is an artist and hangs in the New Orleans Gallery. She will continue to paint.
As this episode ends, their father asks the girls to go to a boarding school which is the setting for the opening of the second film, Pearl in the Mist.
Throughout the series the twins are played by Australian twin actors, Raechelle and Karina Banno.
