Fool for Love

After reading Fool For Love in a Drama class of mine, I was looking forward to seeing how Sam Shepard's wonderful play would be translated to the screen. Much to my dismay, it was nowhere near as entertaining as the play. The film seemed to drag, the music was inappropriate for the tone of the movie, and all the raw energy of the play seemed to have been sucked out of this film version. It's a shame to see this come out this way even with Shepard's involvement, playing the role of Eddie. Do yourselves a favor...see the play next time it's being performed in your area or simply read the book instead.

Robert Altman directed this adaptation of a play by Sam Shepard, who wrote the screenplay and stars as a drifter who drives his pickup truck, complete with horse and trailer, to a small hotel in New Mexico. It seems he has a tempestuous romantic history with the hotel's proprietor (Kim Basinger), and the audience fills in the blanks as the film progresses, taking a distinctly sharp turn in the last third. Also with Randy Quaid and Harry Dean Stanton. The first half of the film nearly lost me for good, with not a lot happening and the performances pitched to the back row. But things get better during the home stretch, even if bits do strain credulity. From the Cannon Group, stepping outside of their usual budget action flicks.

May (Kim Basinger) is waiting for her boyfriend (Sam Shepard) in a run-down American motel, when an old flame turns up and threatens to undermine her efforts and drag her back into the life that she was running away from. The situation soon turns complicated.

When a film is an expansion on a play, such as this is, you have to be true to the source while also going beyond. Altman succeeds, casting Harry Dean Stanton as a one-man Greek chorus and bringing a fuller vision to the story than could be shown within one room.

Roger Ebert said that Altman "has succeeded on two levels that seem opposed to each other. He has made a melodrama, almost a soap opera, in which the characters achieve a kind of nobility." These are kin words and not without merit.

Adapted from Sam Shepard's play, this movie retains many play-like elements such as a relatively fixed setting (a roadside 50's motel in the Southwest) and extensive, intriguing dialogues. A woman "May" is hounded by a man "Eddie" (played by Sam Shepard). She tries to hide from him in the out-of-the-way motel, but he finds her. The film explores the history of their relationship, mainly from their childhoods, that has led them to this point. It's very easy to feel sympathy for the characters and to understand that their dysfunctional present relationship is a result of past events out of their control. We mainly watch them fight, make up, fight, make up and so on. One image that stands out in my mind, is of Eddie hauling May over his shoulder kicking and screaming, taking her somewhere she doesn't want to go.

The soundtrack is also perfect soulful country with vocals by a lesser known artist "Sandy Rogers". She has this country doll voice that almost yodels at some points in the album! This is the kind of movie that will stay lodged in some part of your brain/soul. In other words, go see it!

"Fool for Love" is one of the several now forgotten films Robert Altman directed throughout the 1980s. This one, a screen adaptation of a Sam Shepard play that features Shepard in the lead role, just simply isn't very good. Altman made many not-very-good films over the course of his fascinating career, and many times the fault was his. But here I think the fault lies with Shepard for writing such a flimsy play. Altman's direction is assured, the performances are o.k. given what the actors have to work with, but this inconsequential screenplay goes nowhere, and takes its time getting there.

Shepard is Eddie, a stuntman who has a love/hate relationship with May (Kim Basinger). The two fight endlessly over the course of an evening spent in some dusty motel in the middle of nowhere, while a mysterious man (Harry Dean Stanton) who may be either a figurative or literal father to both Eddie and May quietly observes. Randy Quaid rounds out the four-person cast as a gentleman caller.

The only dramatic hook in the entire plot is the suggestion that Eddie's and May's relationship is incestuous. However, this hook feels more like a gimmick than anything. The screenplay doesn't explore their relationship in any detail, and it doesn't use their relationship to explore any more universal themes. Shepard and Basigner create eccentric, mannered characters who grow irritating within the first five minutes; Stanton and Quaid have little to do but provide reaction shots.

The last half hour or so of the film is especially bad, when Eddie's and May's back stories begin to play out in flashback over monotone, somnolent voice over.

Chalk this up to another of Altman's experiments gone awry.

Grade: C-