On Criterion in May 2021, I watched the 1985 coming of age drama Smooth Talk, starring a 16-year old Laura Dern as this goofy, lanky teen girl who runs around with her girlfriends at the mall, butts heads with her mom (Mary Kay Place), dances to James Taylor and 80s rock, and has a mix of innocent run-ins with boys until a seductive stranger (a slowly creeping Treat Williams) comes into her life and shatters her innocent summer. The film was directed by Joyce Chopra and based on the Joyce Carol Oates story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” This movie hit Criterion last year and got this renewed attention in 2020 from the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and I really liked it a lot. Laura Dern was fantastic in it, she had this mix of looking loose and sexy while also looking like a gangly teen, and she played the awkward mix perfectly. I liked how her encounter with the guy starts out seeming very attractive and slowly turns into this creeping dread and becomes this horrifying moment in time that would stay in her head for years. I’m glad this got dug up and celebrated, it’s worth seeing, especially with Dern’s deserved critical renaissance in recent years.
No comments:
Post a Comment