After a touring gig with a blues singer goes awry, Sadie arrives at her sister’s Seattle-area farm, which happens to be their childhood home, and says she’s going to stay in town.
Sadie sings with the band at dive bars and a local bowling alley, but continues to abuse alcohol and heroin.
While delivering groceries and liquor to Sadie at her motel room, a young man named Axel tells her he's a fan and expresses his admiration for her.
At a benefit concert, Georgia invites Sadie onstage to sing the Van Morrison song "Take Me Back" solo.
On the tense car ride home, things come to a head between the sisters when Sadie protests Georgia's joining her onstage.
Georgia’s husband Jake suggests that his wife is being too hard on Sadie and doesn’t realize the difficulties of living in the shadow of a successful sibling.
In Oregon and in a state of drug withdrawal, a disheveled Sadie tries to board a flight back to Seattle but is denied because she isn’t wearing shoes.
[3] In the talked-about centerpiece of the film, Sadie drunkenly performs a raw, grueling cover of Morrison's "Take Me Back" in a ragged Janis Joplin-style gut howl at an AIDS benefit concert.
[17] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "With an exploratory style in the spirit of John Cassavetes, 'Georgia' turns Sadie inside out without giving a neatly dramatic structure to her story.
The result is a film as maddening and unpredictable as the character herself, held together by a fierce, risk-taking performance and flashes of overwhelming honesty.
In a 3.5/4-star review, Roger Ebert said Georgia "is not a simply plotted movie about descent and recovery, but a complex, deeply knowledgeable story about how alcoholism and mental illness really are family diseases; Sadie's sickness throws everybody off, and their adjustments to it don't make them healthier people.
"[10] In The Seattle Times, John Hartl wrote, "The thoughtful script by Barbara Turner...makes certain that Georgia is neither a pushover nor a saint, while Sadie's misguided passion and ambition can be genuinely moving.
"[18] James Berardinelli of ReelViews praised it as "a tour de force for Leigh... there are times when it's uncomfortable to watch this performance because it's so powerful", adding "Georgia doesn't possess an amazingly original narrative, but what distinguishes this picture is the depth of the characters and the amazing power with which the two leads breathe life into them.
"[19] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that “Leigh’s exceptional performance tears you apart… we’ve never seen anything like it before”, adding that "Georgia is not an easy film, but in the American independent arena, it outperforms everything in sight.”[8][20] Barbara Shulgasser of the San Francisco Examiner wrote, "What Leigh succeeds at conveying so well is the desperation of a young woman whose passion for art exceeds her capacity to express herself artistically...Because of [her] powerful performance we glean that 'Georgia' is really not about drug abuse or sibling rivalry, or the frustration of the untalented...but about talent [itself].
[25] Speaking to MetroActive magazine, Winningham said: “I felt incredibly honored and touched to be nominated...But it was hard to be separated from Jennifer, because she was the heart and soul of that film.