Set in a small town in Georgia during World War II, Sudie and Simpson focuses on the friendship between Sudie Harrigan (Gilbert), a 10-year-old girl who had never seen a "nigger" in real life, and Simpson (Gossett Jr.), a black man living surreptitiously in an abandoned shack in the woods.

Sudie who finds to her surprise and pleasure that black people are not all nine feet tall, that they know what they do, and that their skin color doesn't rub off.

He added "what's so well captured is the personal point of view of a 12-.year-old girl rebelling against the taboos in the narrow world around her.

Gilbert is sensational, right down to her mastery of a Georgia dialect, and Gossett is memorable as a survivor hiding in a shack outside of town and tending his secret vegetable garden.

Textured support comes from Frances Fisher's staunch schoolteacher and an uncanny performance from newcomer Paige Danahy as Sudie's chubby, dim-headed girlfriend.