Desperately Seeking Susan

This, the second picture from Susan Seidelman-director of “Smithereens”--romps along with a ton of energy and self confidence. Though the way things get started is not completely convincging, that doesn't seem to matter once the picture moves into high gear. The impressive thing here is that they manage to maintain (with a few exceptions) a sense of inevitability about the sequence of events, which is always the most difficult thing to do in a farce; it is too easy to say, "this is a farce, so we don't have to explain anything." This picture doesn't do that, it makes things connect. The picture is, after all, a farce (I guess) with mistaken identity and all that, but it is also a love poem to the underground life of Manhattan. It does for the lower East Side/Village scene what, say, ARTHUR did for Sutton place and The Plaza. Throughout the film, you wait with a sense of delicious anticipation (different from impatience---an important difference--impatience only surfaces once or twice) for the various plot turns to sort themselves out. And they do, quite delightfully.

Seidelman almost blows it when she keeps cutting from the big climactic sequence to scenes of exposition between Roberta and her twit husband, but she gets back on track in the nick of time, and the picture manages to keep its energy, right up to a smooth, almost TV ending. A few plot points are muddled, but the high spirits of the film make that a minor fault; it's enough fun watching the principals zoom through the landscape, and the director handles the camera with verve and imgaination; the film never gets bogged down. Usually I have little patience with so-called "farces" because they constantly seem to have plots that revolve around bumbling and missed cues, but here there aren't many of those. The plot is about "a life so outrageous it takes two women to live it" and Roberta and Susan don't even meet until near the end. There are a lot of funny things going on--slapstick, sights gags, good lines, and even some subtle humor.

But what makes the picture are the performers: Roseanna Arquette as Roberta, Madonna (of course) as Susan, and Aiden Quinn as Dez. Madonna is good in a sort of bitchy, primpy way, though at first I couldn't see what was so great about Susan. I guess it was just her brassiness--total self possession at all times (kind of a female Jim Rockford) --that fascinated Roberta. She "is the ultimate material girl, concerned first and foremost about herself. It's funny, Madonna is supposed to be the sexy one here, and she is pretty sexy, but for real sex appeal I'd have to go with Roseanna Arquette as the boned housewife Roberta. Maybe the difference is that it seems that Madonna is trying too hard; Roseanna does it without trying. In any event, they are both well cast and do terrific jobs. I even liked Aiden Quinn (who I found sullen and unlikable in the equally sullen and unlikable picture “Reckless”) who gives a nicely restrained performance as the slightly bewildered Dez, who falls for Roberta (who wouldn’t?). The picture is an offbeat pleasure, which mixes old elements and new with great assurance, which makes for a great show.