Fool for Love

The 80's were not very kind to Altman. After the disappointment of Popeye, both artistically and at the box office, he was banished from Hollywood. Altman burnt too many bridges on the Popeye shoot and so ended up at the University of Michigan teaching his films and staging plays, among other things. His filmography during this time tended towards smaller stories, often derived from stage plays. He had limited artistic success and almost no commercial success during this time. Fool for Love is among his most successful works from this time period, both critical and commercially but it is one of the Altman's most inaccessible films.

This film is a bizarre marriage of ponderous melodrama and the light detached bemused tone that is iconic Altman. Shepard's script, from his play, tells a battle of the sexes doomed romance story with a dash of family squabble that reminds me of a striped down version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? As written the story is a series of preposterous reveals and twists that upon final analysis add up to very little. It is all smoke and mirrors. The story is engaging because it is utterly weird. It has a roughness to it that shows promise, but Shepard does not know what to do with these characters in the end.

Fortunately, Altman leans into the script's limited setting. The motel on the edge of society coupled with the Western motifs present really allows Altman to bring out the absurdity present in the script. The film is dryly funny; it really undermines the Western image of masculinity. But the direction doesn't seem to link up to the script which also makes the film not add up too much. (And the photography is quite lovely to look at)

A must for Altman fans but others would be advised to check out other Altman films first.

Sam Shepard's story of obsessive love in a lonely Texas trailer park may have been a fine stage drama, but transferring the play intact from the imaginary backdrop of a theater to an out-of-doors location only makes the stage dialogue sound pretentious and artificial. Good theater doesn't guarantee a good movie, and Robert Altman's attempts to open up the play using flashbacks and fluid camera work do little more than draw attention to its stage origins, with the director's trademark slow zooming and cross-cutting giving an entirely false impression of movement and meaning (dramatic moments, including a childhood secret revealed, are subsequently lost within all the visual calisthenics). The end result is an attractive but empty experience.

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.

I came to Fool for Love, and am looking at what I just saw, from a position that won't be like some of you trading this: a few years ago, I saw an off-off Broadway production of Shepard's firestorm of sexual comedy and anguish, and I had no exposure to what it was before. I was awestruck by how much Shepard's play packed in one room, which is in the motel (the father "spirit" appears as a figure by the stairs), even featuring at one point some explicit nudity (a monologue that May delivers to herself, which one can barely hear in the film version as Shepard is outside looking in, is stark naked and it makes for an extremely vulnerable position to be in), and is a work that is darkly funny, intense, but the overall feeling is heartache and loss. It feels so suited for the stage, all of those monologues about a past gone included.

Altman and Shepard as screenwriter open up the production, but it doesn't add to what was already there on the stage. On the contrary, this is a case where Altman shows what characters are describing from their pasts. At first, this works. Kind of. When we realize this seeming derelict at this motel played by Harry Dean Stanton is meant to be May's father (and, gasp, Eddie's, which comes after we had a whole opejing act where they, you know, appear to be ready to rip each others throats), he tells her about a memory of pulling off a road to be surrounded by cows. He describes it in narration, and we see it, and how this is edited and weaved together with Basinger and Stanton largely works dramatically.

Where it doesnt is in all of those scenes after, where our two half sibling/estranged lovers tell confused Randy Quaid about their pasts, it's all too much. The images are not filmed or acted well in these flashbacks (except for a shotgun blast that is, um, a great goddamn shotgun beat), and this approach doesn't make these decidedly theatrical monologues any more... Cinematic. The writing of what the actors is saying isnt bad, but the combination just falls flat.

Why watch it then? Harry Dean Stanton, Shepard and to an extent Basinger bring it to these characters. Stanton especially couldn't give a bad performance if he tried, but in this case he was already on the hot streak of his career (look up what he did in 1984, how many actors had that great a year in modern American film?) He has a man here who is a Ghost of Non-holiday Past, and one who sees his children a certain way. Will they live up to what he expects? Will he disappoint them even as this theatrical apparition? He is also playing haggard and a bit drunk and aimless, and Goddamn is he a treasure every second on screen. If this is a less successful Altman film, it's not because of him, or for lack of Shepard trying with a role he wrote (though originally not for himself, and I lament that Jessica Lange couldn't play May, ironically because she was pregnant with Shepard's child).

Overall, I wouldn't say don't check out Fool for Love, but you can wait if you're just getting into Altman, and it's certainly not the stronger of the two Stanton/Shepard films of the 1980s (Paris, Texas wins by many miles). The main issue comes down to this: this is a filmmaker, via this writer, sort of... Going on auto-pilot. It doesn't feel special outside of what the actors more or less bring.

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.