Wildcat

The film opens with Flannery imagining a melodramatic movie trailer starring Star Drake, a wild boarding-house figure who drags others into violent trouble. Across this frame, imagined scenes and real anecdotes from her stories begin to unfold, hinting at the movie’s literary mosaic. The sequence establishes storytelling and faith as central tensions of the biography.

Various episodes—drawn from The Comforts of Home, Everything That Rises Must Converge, Good Country People, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Revelation, Parker's Back—appear as vignettes, as well as scenes from The Violent Bear It Away and monologues from A Prayer Journal. These segments braid together fiction and memory, offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of her voice and faith. The scenes set up the film's core tension between artistry and conscience.

After winning a writing competition, Flannery travels to New York to seek publisher approval for her novel Wise Blood. She refuses to outline the work for the publisher, insisting on keeping it as she wrote it.

In New York, she discusses the novel with poet Robert Lowell, who calls her his most talented student and makes clear there are mutual romantic feelings between them. The scene foreshadows the complex personal dynamics that accompany her career, including his eventual marriage to Elizabeth Hardwick.

Returning from New York, she feels tired and develops facial rashes; tests reveal she has lupus, the disease that also claimed her father. The news reframes her subsequent years and creative work.

She initially refuses to see a doctor for the illness, hoping it will pass. Eventually she does seek treatment, marking a turning point in her health and daily life.

Her illness worsens and she must use crutches. She suffers a fall down the stairs during this period.

Her mother Regina tries to help during the illness, offering support. She also reveals racist prejudices and finds Flannery's writing abrasive.

To comfort herself, Flannery buys a peacock. The bird becomes a personal comfort amid her struggles.

An Irish priest counsels her about her internal struggles with faith and art, suggesting acts of charity and using her writing for good.

During their talk, she mentions how Joyce's Ulysses is banned in Ireland, which the priest agrees is needless and misguided. He then encourages her to perform acts of charity and use her writing to serve others.

Flannery receives a letter from Lowell informing her of his marriage to Elizabeth Hardwick. Gravitating toward a life of disciplined work, she settles into concentrated writing.

An intertitle reveals that O'Connor lived for another fourteen years and ultimately died of lupus, the 'French wolf'. The closing credits quote thanks thousands of pigs whose pituitary glands yielded the lupus injections that kept her alive.