Cinema

Rip It Up, Issue 171, 1 October 1991, Page 38

Cinema

THELMA AND LOUISE Director: Ridley Scott There's no escaping the deadly claustrophobia in the opening scenes of Thelma and Louise: Geena Davis's kitchen, and the diner in which Susan Sarandon is a harassed waitress are both places to escape from. And : escape Davis and Sarandon do — for a weekend getaway that turns into a nightmare when Sarandon shoots a man who tries to rape her friend. Like a latterday Bonnie and Clyde, they scamper across America in a Thunderbird convertible leaving a trail of assorted mischief and political punishment behind them. -■ ? Ridley Scott has always been troubled by irritating stylistic agenda — what was stunning in Blade Runner just seemed passe in Someone To Watch Over Ale which was all style and little else under its threadbare premises. This time around, with Callie Khaouri's witty and vividly-written script, and two superb leads, there's more cohesion. Scott has a few stylistic indulgences — dalliances with glistening rain-soaked images, soaring panoramas, looming helicopters and night rides through eerily-lit canyons in a car glowing like a neon bubble — but Thelma and Louise gets its strengths from the women who give it its title. ’. J When Susan Sarandon's Louise snarled at the would-be rapist, "When a women's crying it means that she isn't having any fun", there was cheering amongst the preview audience, a degree of audience involvement that I have only experienced in the States. Yet the touching scenes with Jimmy (Michael Madsen) beautifully understated in both writing and playing, revealed the vulnerable side of the character. Geena Davis had perhaps the more difficult role, that of the naive Thelma, who is little more than the kewpie doll

plaything of her richly chauvinist husband (an over-the-top. performance from Christopher McDonald). Davis plays Thelma wide-eyed and giggly—the love-making scene with the young vagrant JR (Timothy Carhart) in the motel is crisply written and delicious — but by the end of the film, she has found an inner strength and self-acceptance that makes the disturbing, almost Wagnerian ending, seem justified and inevitable. Thelma and Louise was the closing night attraction at the Cannes Film Festival this year. It is an extraordinary film by any standards, but particularly so when considered within the restrictions of mainstream commercial cinema. WILLIAM DART DEFENDING YOUR LIFE Director: Albert Brooks Back in 1975, Albert Brooks was a young comedian on David Geffen's Asylum label. His A Star Is Bought album was a cynical take on how to ■ make it on radio, with contributions from the likes of Linda Ronstadt, and Mickey Dolenz. In the 80s Brooks turned to the cinema, with movies like Real Life, Modem Romance and, most popular, Lost In America. Defending Your Life sees Brooks casting a jaded eye on the afterlife — American style. He plays Daniel Miller, a crass advertising executive who slams his new car into a bus while searching for a CD under his seat, and finds himslef in Judgment City waiting to see whether he will progress to a higher state of being or be shunted : ' back to earth for more 'training'. Judgement City is a fantasy land, halfway between Century City and a Palm Springs resort. Brooks has a defending lawyer (a greasily unctuous Rip Tom) and a ruthless prosecutor (a snakey Lee Grant) fighting for his fate, examining past episodes of his life in a series of sometimes hilarious flashbacks. The only too human Brooks, in the meantime, falls in love with the ’ unbelievably virtuous Julia (Meryl

Streep, as bland as ever without a foreign accent). For a film that has been structured with such evident care, Defending Your Life is only a partial success. Steve Martin satirized the Californian good life much more pungently in LA Story, and too many of Brooks's barbs are distressingly blunt. He may put a lot of store on working with his regular editor David Finfer, who has been with the comedian since Saturday Night Live days, but the many flashback sequences, in particular, are

laboriously set up. Defending Your Life leaves too many questions unanswered — why is Judgement City mainly populated by middle-class WASP types? Why is a scene revealing the actors' previous lives so crude and undeveloped? Alongside the delicacy and imagination of Woody Alien's satire, Brooks's vision seems unfocused, and the film is singularly short on the physical humour that enlivened Lost In America.

WILLIAM DART