Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon

Three patients live together after leaving the hospital. Junie Moon (Liza Minnelli) is disfigured after her date burns her with acid. Arthur (Ken Howard) is epileptic. Warren (Robert Moore) is a gay paraplegic.

Arthur's dream/flashback sequence is too weird to be intercut with the real world. His epileptic fits look a bit fake. I don't know what he has. I get that director Otto Preminger is trying put the audience into Arthur's shoes but it could be done better. The movie meanders around and has some questionable scenes. The climax has real problems. Despite all that, I like the actors, the characters, and their friendships. To me, that's half the battle. It's a more enjoyable experience if the characters are enjoyable.

This offbeat drama uses quirkiness to offset the horrifically depressing storyline. If the audience couldn't chuckle every once in a while, they might leave the theater or turn the movie off. In Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, three misfits rent a house together and try to get a fresh start in life. While they all have outer handicaps, their insides are even more vulnerable and need nurturing the most. Liza Minnelli used to be a confident party girl, but a one-night stand went terribly wrong and the man threw battery acid on her face. Ken Howard has debilitating epileptic fits, and Robert Moore is in a wheelchair. They all meet while recovering in the hospital, and decide that, since they probably can't make it on their own, they'll keep house together. Can anything be more depressing?

Actually, yes. As the movie continues, you'll see just how much of a downer it can be. Trust me, folks. This is a very sad movie. If you just think it's another Liza Minnelli kooky character who will end up singing "Cabaret" to wild applause, think again. It was very tough to award the Best Actress trophy to someone else that year at the Hot Toasty Rag awards, as Liza couldn't have been any better in this movie. But before you start writing angry letters to the members of the board, rent Sunflower first to see why Sophia Loren won.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to violence, I wouldn't let my kids watch it. In fact, if you want to fast forward the battery acid scene, it might be a good idea for the adults, too.

I never got to see the end and have been looking for this movie ever since. I am a BIG Liza fan. How can I let Paramount know that I would buy this if available on video? I recall it as sad and funny, with very quirky characters.

Having portrayed Arthur in the play, the movie extraordinarily helped me out. The three freaks, one a female, struggle to live outside of the hospital life. Junie, Arthur, and Warren. Junie, a sweet-hearted kind person, struggles with the deformity of her face. Arthur, the big kid at heart, is brave, despite his failing health. And, Warren, an "all about beauty" kind of guy, tries to be the most elegant person he can, using "high type" words. This is the most unusual love story I have ever heard of, better yet, acted in.

I highly recommend this movie, it shows that there is, "Maybe something the rest of us don't take time to look for."

Three hurting people -- facially disfigured Liza Minnelli, paraplegic Robert Moore, and epileptic Ken Howard in his movie debut -- set up housekeeping.

Otto Preminger's well-meaning movie suffers from the same problems that afflicted his other late movies: a bit bloated, a bit clumsily edited (Kay Thompson shows up early, has an interesting couple of scenes, then disappears; Pete Seeger intermittently wanders around redwood trees singing "Old Devil Time"). Like D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. Demille before him, Preminger was not about to make small, intimate pictures -- not that he seemed to have any taste for those -- and that appears to be what Marjorie Kellogg's source novel called for. Instead, the audience is confronted with perfectly executed sequences that offer a cold, impatient and dispirited view of these three.