SHORT TAKES

SHORT TAKES

movies

Savages (Marquee International) :: Despite a big skin spread in Playboy three years ago (mass distribution rights have been snarled), despite the presence of vulvaceous vixen like Ultra Violet, Asha Puthli who appeared in Oui, and Susie Blakely, who is some kind of a landmark herself as the first high fashion model with an unmistakable sleaze quotient, Savages is neither the raw ribbon of primal porn promised by the skin mag layouts, nor is it a movie with anything particularly cogent to say about the parallels between primitive tribal totems and our present setup (although it pretends to be). What it is is an art film. Of the worst kind, with portentously (read pretentiously) elliptical dialog supplied by Michael O’Donoughue of NatLamp fame (who was better writing comic strips for the subscription page in Evergreen Review). As well as symbols rolling around like the croquet ball that, in Savages’ sophomoric denouement, goes hurtling off into the underbrush, to be chased by the late-Victorian dinner party crowd who have reduced themselves (primarily by appearing in this long, dull flick) to the level of, why, veritable aborigines, Hannah. Pauline Kael once wrote that after leaving Blow Up she felt like she could find aleatory symbols (a.k.a. non sequiturs) as heavy on any curb. Now I know how she felt.

Lester Bangs

Funny Lady (Columbia):: For someone who has always been ruthlessly ambitious, Barbra Streisand seems most at home when she portrays female emotional masochism. The best moments in this movie are not when she’s portraying the star supreme, but, rather, when she reverts to her The Way We Were ugly ducklingisms and begins kvelling at the very sight of Omar Sharif. And when she cuts those moments with a nervous laugh or an angry tirade, you can understand why Streisand is as big a star as an actress as she ever was as a singer. This lady connects. The rest of the movie is a jewel-encrusted box designed to compliment its star; it’s not as polished or as heartfelt as Funny Girl but it gets by. The old songs (“Paper Moon”) are miles ahead of the new ones, but when Streisand’s singing them it’s hard to notice. Lots of production numbers, streamlined period detail, and an enigmatic, unsatisfying relationship between the two leads which Streisand and the ever reliable James Caan almost manage to pull off. Also, one piece of classic unintentional kitsch: Barbra in one of those Cher-type dresses that smack of Fredrick’s of Hollywood crooning something called “Great Day” while a lot of sequined blacks ape gospel movements in front of an Art Deco backdrop.

John Kane

At Long Last Love (Twentieth Century Fox) :: For a director so preoccupied with the past - he claims that he’s seen 45,000 of Hollywood’s 60,000 films - Peter Bogdanovich has consistently misunderstood and abused the movie genres he adores. At Long Last Love is Bogdanovich’s stab at 1930s musicals. More than any other genre, musicals are the quintessential Hollywood film: they are about style -style unencumbered by the numbing banalities of everyday existence. And it is style which At Long Last Love lacks. Despite some marvelous Cole Porter songs, it moves with all the grace of a car in wrong gear. It was style which transformed the sublime sexuality of a Fred Astaire dance into magic. It’s awkwardness which transforms Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd into atonal manikins. Even such fine performers as Madeline Kahn, Eileen Brennen, and John Hillerman are infected.

Kit Rachlis

A Brief Vacation (Allied Artists):: A “foreign” film with a universal message,

A Brief Vacation is the late Vittorio De Sica’s soft colored portrait of a woman in search of her identity. Forinda Bolkan, a middle-aged housewife, is given a chance to escape her drab lifestyle when she discovers she has TB. Journeying to a country sanitorium, she finds outlets for her emotional and intellectual needs via a brief romance and several chance friendships. Her cure spells condemnation, however, and she soon finds herself on a train heading back to the work-ethic world she has come to outgrow. Does she ever really fit back in? De Sica lets us formulate our own theories in an ambiguous finale. Similar in theme (but not approach) to A Woman Under The Influence, Vacation is a lovingly textured look at a frustrated adult world without the exasperated groans of Peter Falk.

Ed Naha