Film Review
Looking for Mr. Goodbar was
the last important film from Richard Brooks, one of American cinema's great
auteurs and the director of such classics as
Blackboard Jungle (1955),
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and
In Cold Blood (1967). Adapted
from a fact-inspired novel of the same title by Judith Rossner, the
film provides a dark commentary on the sexual revolution of the 1970s,
although it is often criticised (perhaps with some justification) for
its overtly moralistic tone. The minor shortcomings in the
screenplay are redeemed by Brooks's direction which never fails to be
less than inspired throughout the film and is particularly inventive in
its dramatic stroboscopic climax, which is perhaps the most viscerally
shocking ending of any American film of the 1970s.
Diane Keaton won an Oscar for her role in
Annie Hall, a film that was
released in the same year as
Looking
for Mr. Goodbar. This seems perverse given that Keaton's
performance in the latter film is far more nuanced and compelling,
possibly the finest in her career. The character that she plays
in Brooks's film is one of tremendous contrasts and a challenge for an
actress, but Keaton makes her believable and sympathetic, something
which renders the film's final sequence almost unbearable to
watch. Keaton's is not the only great performance the film has to
offer. Richard Gere and Tom Berenger remind us how formidable
their acting talent once was at the start of their remarkable careers -
here, both render their slightly stereotypical characters harrowingly
believable and give the film its required aura of menace.
Some fine supporting contributions from Tuesday Weld, William Atherton
and Richard Kiley add to the film's authenticity and hypnotic power.
Often categorised as an erotic thriller (a kind of
Emmanuelle meets
Psycho),
Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a far
more substantial film than this lazy epithet would suggest.
Despite its somewhat puritanical subtext, it functions as a cogent,
well-observed examination of the moral confusion of the 1970s which was
caused by the sexual revolution and the failure by society to reconcile
traditional values with the new freedoms that this brought about, for
both men and women. It was an era that is unique in western
society, a brief period of obsessive self-gratification and abandonment
between the austerity of the 1950s and terror of the AIDS pandemic that
came in the 1980s. What the film shows is that freedom is
entirely illusory, and that moral constraints are not only desirable
but essential for the fulfilment of the individual. More than
three decades on,
Looking for Mr.
Goodbar continues to have a profound resonance and is dated only
by its hip 1970s soundtrack.
© James Travers 2012
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Film Synopsis
Theresa Dunn is a university student who is physically and emotionally
scarred by surgery she underwent in childhood. As she battles
against her poor self-esteem and the righteous tyranny of her Catholic
father, she begins an illicit love affair with her teacher, a married
man. When her lover calls an end to the relationship, Theresa
embraces the sexual revolution and begins cruising the city's seedier
bars in search of one-night stands. By day she is a respectable,
dedicated teacher of deaf children; by night she pursues a
life of reckless hedonism, subjecting herself to increasingly dangerous
sexual encounters. She has no time for the romantically minded
welfare office who becomes infatuated with her, even though he is a
paragon of virtue compared with most of the men she lures to her
bed. Theresa begins to realise the perilous nature of her
existence when she breaks up with a hot-tempered Italian, Tony Lo
Porto. Even though she fears threatened by Tony, she finds it
impossible to change her lifestyle...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.