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Duchamp in Greenwich Village was delighted to find it "full of people doing absolutely nothing," Milos Forman offers the Czech view, everybody's got a song (cp. Konkurs). Fresh young faces, assertive or vulnerable, one after another at an audition, the willowy runaway (Linnea Heacock) approaches the microphone and freezes on the spot. Her folks explore her bedroom like nervous archeologists, Dad (Buck Henry) searches the streets with a little stop at the bar while Mom (Lynn Carlin) marvels at a friend's marital carnality. Dives and rooftops, a police station upstate. "I don't know how you find anyone in this city." The Generation Gap at its widest, thus the Society for the Parents of Fugitive Children, a gala affair. Gentle and acerbic, Forman inquisitive like Makavejev (W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism) and with an offhand satirical pointillism admired by Ritchie (Smile). Harmonies and dissonances from the writers of Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie and Atlantic City, always surprising. There's the seductive side of "Camptown Races," and then there's "Ode to a Screw" ("You can fuck the lilies and the roses, too..."). Henry as Jean-Luc Godard as Jack Lemmon, Carlin with the nervous Faces giggle. A Tina Turner concert, an anti-smoking gesture mistaken for the Black Power salute, Allen Garfield's would-be Lothario on the run with his pants around his ankles. "Another life experience" is to be valued, the Old Guard's pot orgy gets the guide (Vincent Schiavelli) it deserves: "Do not, repeat, do not hold on to the joint. This is called 'bogarting the joint' and it is very rude." Strip-poker with Audra Lindley and Paul Benedict, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with a bashful Charles Manson lookalike. "I guess I accept the contradictions." Schrader has the humorless version in Hardcore. With Georgia Engel, Tony Harvey, David Gittler, Rae Allen, Carly Simon, and Kathy Bates.
--- Fernando F. Croce |