I watched Desperately Seeking Susan<\/em>, the 1985\u2026 is it a woman\u2019s picture????\u2026 in which bored housewife Roberta Glass (deer-faced, yearning Rosanna Arquette) becomes obsessed with the imagined romantic life of schemey drifter Susan (Madonna!). It\u2019s mostly a delight, from the very first hyperfeminine scene of Roberta waxing her leg. The producers and one of the writers were women, and it\u2019s directed to the max by Susan \u201cSmithereens\u201d Seidelman.<\/p>\n Roberta and Susan have the film\u2019s greatest chemistry, which is both a strength and a weakness\u2013we\u2019re supposed to root for Roberta to ditch her husband and get with \u201cDez\u201d (Aidan Quinn), but even bracketing the divorce angle \u201cDez\u201d has essentially no personality, and it\u2019s hard to ignore that sparks fly whenever Roberta encounters Susan but sparks kinda\u2026 wriggle limply\u2026 whenever she\u2019s with a dude. Late in the game Roberta protests, \u201cI\u2019m not a prostitute! And I\u2019m not a lesbian\u201d and it\u2019s like\u2026 but you\u2019re kind of<\/em> a lesbian, no? \u201cDez\u201d does own a beautiful cat but that is not the same as being Madonna.<\/p>\n Anyway it\u2019s filmed in glorious neon, God bless you Michael Mann, and the plot is stripped to the bone so we can spend more time basking in the giant mood that is 1980s New York movie clothing. Seidelman has a weird tic of introducing people into a scene by following them from the waist down, which I guess does call even more attention to their style. There\u2019s an awful suburban party where both sexes wear pink and aqua (man, remember aqua<\/em>? remember when people would just wear aqua<\/em> right out in public?), and a foot chase bathed in melting tones of lime green neon. I die, I live again.<\/p>\n Roberta buys Susan\u2019s discarded jacket\u2026 Roberta gazes achingly at Susan\u2019s photo, then sinks beneath the foamy black waters of her bubble bath\u2026 Susan herself isn\u2019t actually an especially interesting character but this is the tale of Roberta\u2019s rebirth, and Arquette is perfect at both the comedy and the heartache. It\u2019s a grimy-sexy film\u2013we see Susan use a bus-stop bathroom hand dryer to air out her armpits. It can be on the nose (Susan, answering Roberta\u2019s phone: \u201cGlass house\u201d) and delightfully contextless (\u201cCigars? cigarettes?\u2026 Tofutti?\u201d). There\u2019s a Mafia stalker with haystack hair, and he\u2019s genuinely quite snaky and menacing. There\u2019s an astonishingly 1980s Movie New York \u201capartment\u201d with a giant kung-fu mural and two freestanding turquoise doors.<\/p>\n Good grief, I enjoyed this. Even the recurring use of concussion as plot device (tonight, on Head Injury Theater! Filmed in Traum-o-Vision) becomes pure in the service of such pleasure.<\/p>\n Mid-\u201980s Madonna via Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I watched Desperately Seeking Susan, the 1985\u2026 is it a woman\u2019s picture????\u2026 in which bored housewife Roberta Glass (deer-faced, yearning Rosanna Arquette) becomes obsessed with the imagined romantic life of schemey drifter Susan (Madonna!). It\u2019s mostly a delight, from the very first hyperfeminine scene of Roberta waxing her leg. The producers and one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":12774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[32,114],"class_list":["post-12771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-gayer-than-a-picnic-basket","tag-the-day-the-world-turned-day-glo"],"yoast_head":"\n