Una coppia perfetta

Possibly Altman's least well known theatrically released film, done in an era where he was making a lot of duds. Personally, I don't consider any Altman films duds – they're all interesting, at least. And this one is no exception. It's a quirky romantic comedy starring Paul Dooley and Marta Heflin. Dooley comes from a stuffy, old-fashioned Greek family steeped in classical music, and Heflin is a rock singer living in a hippie commune. The two meet through a video dating service, and the film depicts their rocky road to love. Altman's direction is very good, as usual, the script has a good palindromic structure, and I quite like the original songs. One big problem that I had is that Dooley comes on way too strong on that first date and the day afterward, almost creepy. Not a great film, but certainly a film that shouldn't be as forgotten as it is.

"A Perfect Couple" comes from a period when Altman was trying to make films through his own Lion's Gate company with financial backing from Fox (courtesy of Alan Ladd, Jr.). Working, in the main, with very slender budgets, he seems to have been trying to do work that could break even financially even when the films didn't expand much beyond the small audiences that most of his movies had typically attracted. In the end, the effort failed. He was rapidly losing the support of even critics who had long been sympathetic, and the audience for small, experimental films was drying up.

Most of the films from the Lion's Gate/Fox period have a flimsy undeveloped quality to them. His work from M*A*S*H to Nashville had all started from someone else's script even though most of those films would do little more than retain the basic structural elements, the rest being altered/improvised during rehearsal and actual shooting. But he had something to work off, react to (or against) and build from. By the time of "A Perfect Couple," Altman's name was showing up as screenwriter (usually in collaboration with someone from a previous film) which is a fair indication that these movies started shooting with little or no script at all, just an idea, some characters, and some sense of where it all should go. The financing was there, and he had to take advantage of it, hoping to pull something off on the spur of the moment. It worked with "3 Women," but he was less successful here and in "Quintet."

Paul Dooley is a middle-aged divorced man living at home where his life is ruled by his rich father (since they're Greeks, his father is naturally played by Titos Vandis). Marta Heflin is a shy aimless young woman who's a member of a rock band and lives with them all in a kind of self-contained community in a downtown L.A. loft. They meet through a computer dating service, come together, fall out with each other, come together again, and fall out. Most of the film deals with their efforts to kindle a romance in spite of the obstacles placed in their way by the respective family groups each belongs to.

Altman seems to have intended a culture clash comedy, and, in some ways, this film grew out of "A Wedding" in which Dooley and Heflin both had roles, and where Altman set two dissimilar families against one another with fair results. Here, though, the cultures that clash are both sketched out so quickly, and with such broad strokes, that "A Perfect Couple" could play as self-parody, if self-parody were so obviously not intended. Dooley makes the best of it. He's able to find (or create) funny moments, but they're just moments. There's not enough here for them to integrate into any kind of whole. Heflin is less successful, but then her character is, in general, so passive that there's not much character to play.

Not much develops here because so much time is given over to the rock band (Keepin Em Off the Streets) that Heflin belongs to. Every time the film starts going somewhere, we get another song that's played out to full length (and there are 11 of them in the movie). The band was formed by Altman cohort (and "Perfect Couple" co-screenwriter) Allan Nicholls, and "A Perfect Couple" seems to exist as much to showcase the band as to tell the film's story. Maybe the thought was that if the band (or any of its songs) hit, that would be enough to propel the movie to some kind of success.

In the end, the movie was dismissed by most as a light curiosity, and it went nowhere. If it's interesting, it's interesting as an experiment on Altman's part to exist in the commercial mainstream making quick, cheap movies that wouldn't need to bring in large audiences to succeed. But Fox, after a management shake-up, lost interest in Altman, and he lost their financial backing before Lion's Gate was able to make anything that succeeded (even on Altman's terms). Altman, for his part, would spend most of the '80's making even smaller, less expensive films in an effort to keep his hand in.

This movie had feeble comedy, no chemistry, and a plot that slogged along as if wading through knee-deep mud. Marta Heflin, presumably cast for her swan-like, melancholic countenance, was unbearably dull. It was as if she was in a Quaalude haze throughout the entire film. I could barely sit through the repeated almost-but-not-quite hookup scenes, watching Heflin affect doe-eyed bashfulness while flimsy garments were peeled off her skeletal shoulders. As for the band scenes, which accounted for nearly half the film, think vocal chords strained very nearly to rupturing and lots of white polyester vests. This movie is a bona-fide stinker. Were there any characters that were at all interesting? Well, there was a crying baby that made a few appearances.

This decidedly unconventional romantic comedy is watchable, but is neither very romantic, nor very funny; more often it seems like a promo for a pop music band. One half of the "perfect couple", Marta Heflin, has some appeal, but Paul Dooley lacks charm, and their instant connection is not believable. The liveliest performance is given by Ann Ryerson as a horny possible date, but unfortunately her part is very small. Still, at least compared to the same year's "H.E.A.L.T.H", also by Robert Altman, which I saw yesterday, this one has a bit more structure to it. **1/2 out of 4.

"Nashville" represented a critical and commercial high point for Altman. He followed it with a series of films that puzzled the critics and alienated his already slender audience (the critics loved his overlapping dialogue and generally unhappy endings but audiences didn't). "Buffalo Bill and the Indians", "A Wedding", and worst of all, "Quintet".

Altman was running out of studio backing and critical support. He had never really been a money maker and by 1979 with "Jaws" and "Star Wars" Hollywood had discovered the special effects summer blockbuster. It was tired of auteurs like him and Bogdanovich and Coppola, particularly auteurs who didn't make money (auteurs who remain the darlings of the critics like Woody Allen and Scorsese and don't cost too much money are OK.). Altman needed to show Hollywood that he could make money.

"A Perfect Couple" and "Popeye" were Altman's attempts to make movies he hoped would reach out to the general audience and be hits at the box office.