Thoughts on Losing Ground

In March on Criterion, I watched Losing Ground, a 1982 drama by director Kathleen Collins, that had a quiet, slow, and laid-back atmosphere that I really liked. It’s a drama about an opposites-attract married couple, the bookish, restrained professor Sara (Seret Scott) and the loose, casual painter Victor (Bill Gunn). They’ve been married ten years, and going through some strain and clashing in their relationship, as he sees her more for her beauty than seeing her inner self, so they go away to the country for the summer, each finding their own individual paths of joy and enlightenment, but also growing apart as different people.

I liked the slow pace of the film, how it was very much a talky movie, and how early on, the couple do have contrasts that initially work together, as she needs to loosen up and he needs to get more serious. I liked scenes like him teasing her when he’s painting her, or her having conversations with her easygoing but honest mom, or her working on her academic research but learning to have more fun when dancing in an artistic project with friends. Seret Scott was really wonderful in this, playing both the cold nerdy side of Sara and the sexy, happy side when she’s dancing.

Victor was charming, but not really as sympathetic, as he proves to be more immature over the course of the film, like openly flirting with a female neighbor and falling back on his bad philandering habits. But I still liked Bill Gunn’s performance, and knew of his name a little from the cult 1970s Black vampire film Ganja & Hess. He had a long career in television and film, and was friends with James Dean way back in the 1950s.

I didn’t realize that Duane Jones, the hero from Night of the Living Dead, was also in this in a supporting role as a friend and potential lover to Sara.

The writer/director Kathleen Collins, who passed in 1988 of cancer at just 46, was a filmmaker, writer, and teacher. She only directed two films in her lifetime, her daughter working to resurrect her films posthumously, but according to her IMDB bio, she also created a film program at City College of New York, was an editor on Sesame Street, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and was a memorable teacher. I’m happy I checked this film out, it had a chill pace to it that I really enjoyed sitting with.