Dalva

Farrah Fawcett plays Dalva, the granddaughter of a rancher in Nebraska--white but with an Indian heritage--who was once discouraged by grandpa in her love affair with the handsome Native-American boy she wanted to marry and whose baby she was carrying (seems gramps neglected to mention when the two kids met that they were half-siblings, something which may have discouraged them from making love in the hayloft!). 30 years after the baby was taken away by adoption authorities, Dalva wants to pick up the threads of her past. Judith Paige Mitchell adapted Jim Harrison's well-regarded book for TV, giving Fawcett another tiresome opportunity (after 1994's "The Substitute Wife") to do her little-girl act (lots of over-the-shoulder glances and coy, trembling smiles). Rod Steiger, Carroll Baker, Peter Coyote and Powers Boothe make up the strong supporting cast, yet the movie has been pieced together by director Ken Cameron into some sort of soggy bucolic valentine, dappled with sunlight and morning dew. Fawcett reads Dalva's journal in voiceover as if the lazy-hazy descriptions of love were poetry, but the whole thing is strenuous and draining. Laurel Holloman, as an outrageous flirt with a shovel-wielding father, livens up the scenario--why wasn't the movie about her?

"Dalva" is based on an outstanding novel by one of the US's best writers, Jim Harrison. Whoever put this movie together had no idea what the book was about nor how shallow his mind was. Harrison managed a remarkable feat by writing a fun, exciting, sexy, history-encompassing novel from a woman's point of view. And it's set in Western Nebraska. Now who else has done that?

The book contains no clichés, no stereotypic characters, no embarrassing bits of dialogue. The film is built on these qualities. I'm sure excellent actors like Powers Boothe, Peter Coyote, and Rod Steiger read the book and said "Let's do this!" I doubt they knew Farrah Fawcett was going to play the lead nor that Mitchell (author of "Club Med") was writing the script.

The scenery in the film is OK, but the novel "Dalva" contains some of the best descriptions you'll ever read. If you think Farrah is the best actress you know of, watch the movie. You'll find it cute and romantic. If you have a brain, read the book and check out Boothe or Steiger or Coyote in lots of other films.

This film is like making a swimming pool out of the Pacific Ocean. It's an insult to the author of "Legends of the Fall" and many other outstanding books.