Ruby in Paradise

Director: Victor Nunez

1993 / 115min / DCP

Seeing nothing but a dead end in her rural Tennessee town, Ruby (Ashley Judd, extraordinary in her first lead role) packs up and heads for the “Redneck Riviera” of coastal Panama City, Florida, where she finds off-season work at a souvenir shop. Loosely inspired by Austen’s Northanger Abbey, this episodic character study from Florida regionalist Nunez gives a window to Ruby’s guarded inner life by way of a narration taken from her journal entries, an accounting of her unsteady journey towards self-discovery through a string of new relationships, both helpful and harmful. “Like Éric Rohmer… Nunez has an untiring, subtly novelistic fascination with ordinary people and events and the special feel of particular places… [Ruby in Paradise’s] tempo is slow and dreamy, but the flavor is rich, and it lasts.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader

Q&A with Victor Nunez August 21