What is the synopsis for the film, “Elvis and Annabelle”?”
With lush cinematography and a haunting soundtrack, Will Geiger’s film presents a unique and timeless love story. Elvis (Max Minghella) is an unlicensed mortician in his family’s funeral home, a once-splendid American gothic in rural Texas. His sense of of family obligation and love for his eccentric, ailing father (Joe Manegna) keeps him from following his dreams. Anabelle (Blake Lively) is a beauty queen being groomed for the big-time by a pushy, show-biz mother (Mary Steenburgen) and creepy step-father (Keith Carradine). All her decisions are made for her – she’s just not sure she fits the part. Their lives are worlds apart, but they collide when Anabelle, in a moment of triumph, collapses and dies on a beauty pageant catwalk and ends up on Elvis’s embalming table. What happens next is as magical as it is unexpected.
In Elvis and Anabelle, every terrible tragedy brings about something equally miraculous. Groomed by her overly ambitious mother who had also previously been a Miss Texas Rose (Mary Steenburgen), Anabelle Leigh (Blake Lively) is on the road to winning the Miss Texas Rose tiara when she dies as a result of her eating disorder during a pageant. Her death lands her on the embalming table of Elvis (Max Minghella), an embittered young man whose sense of family duty and love for his ailing father (Joe Mantegna) keep him from following his dreams. When Anabelle is miraculously resurrected on Elvis’s embalming table the two unexpectedly connect and sparks fly. With the help of each other and Elvis’s father, they discover love, freedom, and happiness as the real world and their own demons threaten to force them apart. The film premiered on March 10, 2007 at the South by Southwest film and music festival in Austin Texas.
