Anabelle Leigh collapses and dies the moment she is crowned Miss Texas Rose. Her body goes to the Moreau funeral home outside Austin, where a boy named Elvis has been quietly running the business since his father’s conviction. Elvis kisses her, she wakes up, and the film is about what the two of them do with the rest of her second chance. Elvis and Anabelle is a small Texas romance that got buried in 2007 and is mostly watched now because of who its two leads became.
What Happens After Anabelle Wakes Up
Anabelle does not want to go back to her mother, played by Mary Steenburgen, who built the pageant life for her, and she does not want to explain the eating disorder that stopped her heart. So she stays at the funeral home. Elvis’s father, played by Joe Mantegna, is a former embalmer who has lost his licence and his nerve. The three of them make a strange household, and the press and the pageant world eventually come looking.
Why It Is Worth Finding
Blake Lively made this the same year Gossip Girl started and it is a very different register, quieter and more awkward. Max Minghella plays Elvis as a boy who has only ever been comfortable with the dead. It was shot on film around Austin and looks better than its budget. Will Geiger wrote and directed and has barely made anything since.
Watch Elvis And Anabelle On GoMovies
The full 106-minute film streams in HD above. No sign-up.