L'amour poursuite

This film go largely poor reviews, but for whatever reason the films of director Alan Rudolph always get me. A lot of his films seem to exist in their own universe. The noir elements of this film and "Trouble in Mind" feel quite similar, but even his films like "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" or "Choose Me" seem to exist on their own plane of reality. Tom Berenger plays a hard-boiled private investigator hired by Anna Archer to tail her shady boyfriend, which leads to a Raymond Chandler-esque serpentine mystery. Add in a competing P. I. in the form of equally tough-as-nails Elizabeth Perkins and you have an interesting love triangle of sorts between the three leads. What makes "Love at Large" memorable is writer/director Alan Rudolph and the unique style he brought to an oddball series of films he made in the 80s and early 90s, which seemed to exist somewhat out of time ("Trouble in Mind" "The Moderns" "Mrs. Parks and the Vicious Circle" and this film). These films were throwbacks to another time, but incorporated 80s/90s pastels and neon color palettes, along with modern sensibilities to the characters and situations. Composer Mark Isham's score also nicely balances a score that feels period yet also contemporary. Although the "Love at Large" meanders and is slow at times, the cast, which also includes Ted Levine, Kate Capshaw, Ruby Dee, Kevin J. O'Connor, Annette O'Toole, Anne Magnuson, and Neil Young, and Rudolph's visual style make the film well worth watching for fans of old school noir and 80's indie flicks. FUN FACT! "Love at Large" was filmed primarily in Portland, Oregon.

After reading the reviews, I expected "Love at Large" to be an almost surreal experiment in film noir, heavy on atmosphere and short on plot. It's true that the cars and some of the costumes don't seem to fit the early 1990s setting--Doris's green, full-skirted dress, complete with eight inches of yellow crinoline, is straight out of the 1950s, and the Blue Danube nightclub seems to belong to an even earlier era (pre-World War II). The vampy Miss Dolan exudes a 1940s glamour and mystery, the kind of woman who never existed outside of male fantasies. But much of the action (or conversation) takes place in realistic settings--upper-middle-class suburban houses, airplanes, airports, a ranch in what appears to be Wyoming or Montana.

More to the point, the subplot surrounding the bigamist Frederick King/James McGraw (Ted Levine) is not merely "thrown in," as some critics have suggested. Mistaken identity is a classic comedic device going back at least 2000 years to the New Comedy of Menander in ancient Greece, and it still works. It also adds suspense; both Harry (Tom Berenger) and Stella (Elizabeth Perkins) believe McGraw/King to be Miss Dolan's "charming but dangerous" lover, Rick, and are consequently oblivious to whatever danger the real Rick may present.

The Levine subplot also provides opportunities for variations on the love theme so blatantly emphasized by Stella's omnipresent "Love Manual." Compared with most movies of the 1980s and 90s, this one has relatively little sex but lots of kissing. (Ted Levine gets to kiss two women, unusual for him, but this film predates "Silence of the Lambs," in which his powerful performance as Jame Gumb stereotyped him as a murderer.) There are some genuinely tender moments and a lot of surprises, some of them comic and most of them in some way related either to love or mistaken identity.

The casting is excellent. Both Berenger (despite his gravelly voice) and Perkins are likeable and believable, and Levine is marvelous as a man with two lives and two personalities. (No, he's not schizophrenic; he just likes to go out on a limb because, as he tells Stella, "that's where the fruit is").

To say more would be to spoil the film. Find it and watch it. It will be well worth the trouble of hunting it down.

I saw this film referred to as a comedy, but I hadn't remembered it as such when I first saw it some years ago. I suppose that it is, but it is funny in a wry sort of way, never a laugh out loud way. I don't know where Tom Berenger got that gravelly voice for this movie, but it seems to fit the part okay. Elizabeth Perkins was lovely and good as an angst-filled gal trying to be a private I. It was interesting to see Neil Young in a small acting role. He did OK. It makes me wonder how hard acting really is. Anne Archer was so totally gorgeous, I almost didn't realize how ridiculous her character was. This ended up being a pretty enjoyable film, if you don't go into it with unrealistic expectations. Grade: B

If you like slow-moving, aimless films, you'll probably like this exercise in murky self-indulgence by writer-director Rudolph. I guess I missed the amusing parts that others seem to find. Mostly I was just bored once I realized the story-- if you want to call it that-- was going nowhere. And what's with Berenger's phony voice that only distracts. Sounds like he could use a good gargle. Of course, noir has been parodied before, and truth be told, it's an easy genre to mock. But this has to be the dimmest of the efforts, if parody is in fact what it is. To me the results aren't interesting enough to care. I guess that's one reason the film flopped at the box-office and has since fallen into well-deserved obscurity. And, oh yes, for those who find profundity in the supposed subtexts, I'll leave that to the Midnight Study Group. Good luck.

This is a love story in the format of a comedy. Or, more appropriately, a love quest story. Like the Detective saga it parodies, the characters are on a search for absolution. But in Rudolph's screwball world where, for instance, every car is at least 20 years old and carries the model name "classic", all of this light madness works toward one, central theme: love is almost impossible to find, but, oh, so much fun to search for.

All the characters that are in long-term relationships are either breaking up, cheating on each other, or completely self-deluded. The other characters are in perpetual seek mode, from Miss Dolan who flirts and swoons wherever her whimsical heart takes her, to Stella, who studies "The Love Manual" and bitterly says things like, "the one who is in love always waits. It's the lover's signature."

Ultimately, this makes for light, entertaining fare. There aren't many bellylaughs, but there is a continual glow and a delightful, endearing glee about the film. Director Rudolph's cinematic sense is so keen that everything seems larger than it is, and more meaningful.