Pageant News Bureau - Muskrat Lovely

"Muskrat Lovely"

Independent documentaries have a reputation for knifing their subjects. Meanness is better than blandness when it comes to attracting an audience, and some aspects of the human experience are ideal targets for ridicule.

When we heard of this documentary -- about a beauty pageant connected to a muskrat-skinning contest -- we expected a merciless exposé. A more politically incorrect subject would be hard to imagine. We felt sorry for the small-town girls we were about to see held up for scorn.

How wrong we were! "Muskrat Lovely" is as gentle as a nap in the hay. It's full of ordinary people you simply have to love, and the teenage contestants are the the most lovable of all. No pageant or beauty queen was harmed in the making of this film, although a few muskrats were cut to pieces.

The setting is the bucolic Eastern Shore of Maryland, where locals trap fast-breeding muskrats to keep them from devastating the marshlands of the Chesapeake Bay. The meat and the fur of this bedraggled little mammal have become part of the local culture. A festival of competitive muskrat-skinning has been around for generations, and the "Miss Outdoors" contest has been a part of the festival for half a century.

Producer-director Amy Nicholson has a masterfully light touch. She lets the story tell itself but never allows it to wander too far down any side trail. The climax, of course, is the selection of the queen, but to describe the progression of the film would make it all sound simpler than it is. Nicholson shows us the contestants as individuals, which is the hardest part of any pageant documentary.

This tasty little film won't change the world. It won't change even the pageant world. But it might make you want to visit Maryland.

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