Choose Me

This movie holds a special place for me because I consider it to be my first "adult" film. Meaning this is the first movie made for adults with adult themes that I really paid attention to and liked. This doesn't mean it contains a lot of nudity and profanity. Actually it doesn't have much of either and that's a relief.

Keith Carradine is great as Mickey, a man will marry any woman he kisses. A man suffering the trials and tribulations of someone who always tells the truth. Two of the women that come into his life are "Ann" (also Nancy Love) and "Eve" (also Eve). Genevieve Bujold and Lesley Ann Warren play them with style.

Pepper it with characters make this movie a light treat. Alas it has dated a bit from its '80's self. But the Freddy Pendergrass music is still marvelous and sets "Choose Me"'s mood right.

I drove a long way to see this film, from Riverside to Santa Monica. Well, it was long way for me back then anyway. I loved it so much I sat through it twice that night, and came back a few nights later and sat through it twice again.

This film works for me on so many levels I can't fully describe it, but I definitely identified (and still do, to be honest) with Keith Carradine's Mickey. Chong and Bujold are appealing (especially the latter) and Leslie Ann Warren has never been better.

Rudolph and Carradine have at least one connection, by the by--the both worked on "Nashville".

Saw this film on a whim and became entranced. The strange premise was intriguing and the plot twists continued to catch me off guard. The wistful longing for romance displayed by the lead actor will touch a cord with anyone who has desperately needed to be loved. And that is most of us, isn't it?

Found the acting superb across the board. The story was totally unpredictable. Twisted and weird yet it never exceeded my ability to believe.

Too bad only 300 people ever saw this film. I believe it is one of the most seriously underrated movies ever produced.

This film strides with confidence into the netherworld of sexual politics. The story is overloaded with allusion, and the actors all render brilliantly nuanced performances inside characters that bristle with sexual energy and conflict.

Geneviève Bujold, as Dr. Nancy Love, is adept at giving radio talk show advice to her listeners, but cannot interact with people in real life. Had the internet been popular then, she would have been an AOL Chat Room Goddess. Her vulnerability blossoms like a rose as she gets caught up in the lives of her new roommate and her lovers.

Keith Carradine plays Mickey, who may or may not be a compulsive liar, but can often substantiate the wild boasts with which he regales anyone who will listen. He is deviously seductive, literally, and his ability to weave truth and lies into a delicate web ensnares and at the same time repulses the women he meets.

Lesley Ann Warren, as Eve, is a former hooker who owns a bar she just had to buy because it had been named for another Eve, who provides a connection to Mickey, maybe. Similarly, every character is delicately, and sometimes most indelicately, connected to every other character. Usually they don't know it, but their lives revolve around one another's secrets. The underlying message appears to be that to know someone, one must discover their secrets, and perhaps that is a bit too obvious to bear comment, but a more universal and ironic truth lies beneath. We want people to accept us as we present ourselves to them, but we demand of those we would care for that we see their inner selves.

Rae Dawn Chong and John Larroquette head up a sterling supporting cast, but Bujold, Keith and Warren are dead solid perfect in their fragile and complex portrayals.

This is one of my all time favorite films, and if you notice that it has a decidedly Altmanesque feeling, it's because director Alan Rudolph was, in fact, an early protégé. I watch it when I want to remember the 80's and wonder how any of us survived, but it's an acquired taste. There should be a warning on the cover; "Caution. Watching This Movie May Require an Intellect."

My mother famously tells all who will listen that she only reads true stories. She takes offense at implausible fiction, dismissing it as ridiculous. She heaps abuse on the television while viewing such stuff as"You Can't Take It With You," Olivier's film of "Hamlet," "Wings Of Desire," Fred Astaire pictures, The Simpsons. She can't abide the long stretches of zero plot development in musicals, ballets, operas. She hates characters who put on airs, and she really doesn't "want to watch" sexually evocative behavior among consenting adults. My mother loves Bob Hope monologues and says Jerry Vale has a beautiful voice.

I'm not bringing this video over to my mom's house for movie night. I'm going to make a hard drink with ice and watch this movie while lying on the sofa, with the lights off and the surround sound up to medium with the bass boost. And when it's over I'm going to get up and email an old flame. The one who could really kiss.