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Sappho's muse, her house and grief in 16mm New Jersey. ("So my old lady's a dyke," the son shrugs. "Big deal.") The college hausfrau (Linda Griffiths) starts out as passivity personified, waffling around "faculty land" as professor-hubby (Jon DeVries) specializes in sarcasm and coed-humping. Her own affair is with a poised psychology tutor (Jane Hallaren), staged with nervous delicacy—a childhood crush remembered, bodies and faces slowly inching closer on a couch, bluish half-light and murmurs. Discovery forces her to leave home, though not before the man furious at the "unnatural act" spells out the situation's gender politics: "No matter how much you think you can hurt me, I can hurt you more." Restart from zero, "a room of my own" (The Killing of Sister George, An Unmarried Woman). Charting sexual exploration as key to half joyous, half painful independence, John Sayles balances anecdotal stiffness with a keen interest in his characters' unguarded moments. His cinematic growth here is measured in the communication of sensations: In the extended nightclub sequence, in elated subjective shots embodying the protagonist's newfound gaze around femmes, in the way the two lovers, unable to touch in a public swimming pool, whisper tactile feelings to each other. There's even a stab at impressionism toward the end, breakup sex intercut with interpretative dancing scored to Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long." "It's the point where film and reality intermingle!" Sayles the actor pops up as a strapping campus wolf to hit on the heroine but Sayles the filmmaker keeps a gallant distance, scrupulously attuned to a woman searching for happiness on her own terms. With Jo Henderson, Jessica MacDonald, Jesse Solomon, Stephen Mendillo, and Maggie Renzi.
--- Fernando F. Croce |