Fool for Love

Adapted from Sam Shepard's play, this movie retains many play-like elements such as a relatively fixed setting (a roadside 50's motel in the Southwest) and extensive, intriguing dialogues. A woman "May" is hounded by a man "Eddie" (played by Sam Shepard). She tries to hide from him in the out-of-the-way motel, but he finds her. The film explores the history of their relationship, mainly from their childhoods, that has led them to this point. It's very easy to feel sympathy for the characters and to understand that their dysfunctional present relationship is a result of past events out of their control. We mainly watch them fight, make up, fight, make up and so on. One image that stands out in my mind, is of Eddie hauling May over his shoulder kicking and screaming, taking her somewhere she doesn't want to go.

The soundtrack is also perfect soulful country with vocals by a lesser known artist "Sandy Rogers". She has this country doll voice that almost yodels at some points in the album! This is the kind of movie that will stay lodged in some part of your brain/soul. In other words, go see it!

May (Kim Basinger) is waiting for her boyfriend (Sam Shepard) in a run-down American motel, when an old flame turns up and threatens to undermine her efforts and drag her back into the life that she was running away from. The situation soon turns complicated.

When a film is an expansion on a play, such as this is, you have to be true to the source while also going beyond. Altman succeeds, casting Harry Dean Stanton as a one-man Greek chorus and bringing a fuller vision to the story than could be shown within one room.

Roger Ebert said that Altman "has succeeded on two levels that seem opposed to each other. He has made a melodrama, almost a soap opera, in which the characters achieve a kind of nobility." These are kin words and not without merit.

The 80's were not very kind to Altman. After the disappointment of Popeye, both artistically and at the box office, he was banished from Hollywood. Altman burnt too many bridges on the Popeye shoot and so ended up at the University of Michigan teaching his films and staging plays, among other things. His filmography during this time tended towards smaller stories, often derived from stage plays. He had limited artistic success and almost no commercial success during this time. Fool for Love is among his most successful works from this time period, both critical and commercially but it is one of the Altman's most inaccessible films.

This film is a bizarre marriage of ponderous melodrama and the light detached bemused tone that is iconic Altman. Shepard's script, from his play, tells a battle of the sexes doomed romance story with a dash of family squabble that reminds me of a striped down version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? As written the story is a series of preposterous reveals and twists that upon final analysis add up to very little. It is all smoke and mirrors. The story is engaging because it is utterly weird. It has a roughness to it that shows promise, but Shepard does not know what to do with these characters in the end.

Fortunately, Altman leans into the script's limited setting. The motel on the edge of society coupled with the Western motifs present really allows Altman to bring out the absurdity present in the script. The film is dryly funny; it really undermines the Western image of masculinity. But the direction doesn't seem to link up to the script which also makes the film not add up too much. (And the photography is quite lovely to look at)

A must for Altman fans but others would be advised to check out other Altman films first.

After reading Fool For Love in a Drama class of mine, I was looking forward to seeing how Sam Shepard's wonderful play would be translated to the screen. Much to my dismay, it was nowhere near as entertaining as the play. The film seemed to drag, the music was inappropriate for the tone of the movie, and all the raw energy of the play seemed to have been sucked out of this film version. It's a shame to see this come out this way even with Shepard's involvement, playing the role of Eddie. Do yourselves a favor...see the play next time it's being performed in your area or simply read the book instead.

Interesting, laid back version of the Shepherd play. On stage, with Ed Harris in the lead, it was all frenetic energy and danger. Here the piece is more moody and dreamlike. At times that works tremendously well, and it is visually beautiful. The play has been opened up in a way that feels natural and not forced. And the use of narration is very interesting and productively unsettling, since the memories we see do not quite match the words we hear.

On the other hand, the slower pace makes the writing feel more melodramatic and almost old- fashioned in its twists. And Shepherd is nowhere near as interesting as Harris was on stage. We never feel that he is really dangerous. He comes off more as a love-struck kid than obsessed man. And it ends with a whimper, not a kick. Still, there are plenty of less interesting theater to film adaptations out there.