Robert J. Maxwell
The scattered farm houses and barns look bleak, like something out of Hawthorne. In this rural area of Michigan, Dennis Hopper is a teacher with a limp. Because the school is being incorporated by a town and Hopper has no credentials, he's losing his job, though he's been teaching there for years. He's having a more or less ritualized affair with the widow Amy Irving. They make love in the dark and never do anything new. He yearns to see the ocean. Hopper's mother, Julie Harris, is dying and is tended by the sensitive but unemotional family doctor, Hal Holbrook.Then a new family movies into the area. The father is a retired army major, Gary Busey, and he's a crack shot. His wife is referred to as an alcoholic but his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amy Locane, is a blond Viking knockout. She comes on to the hobbling Hopper in the hayloft. Oh, yummy, he says, leading with Hopper Junior, which is always a big mistake.Well, these farmhouses and auxiliary buildings aren't all THAT widespread and before you know it, Hopper may have enlivened his life with some sexual adventure, but the enterprise becomes common knowledge. Why, even her father, the marksman Busey, finds out about it -- and we know from earlier scenes that he likes to kill coyotes because they're treacherous and will sneak away with one of your chickens if you give them half a chance.So far, so dull, right? How many cheap movies have we seen about an innocent older man being seduced by some silky teen ager? Sometimes the film is called "Lolita," sometimes "Poison Ivy," and sometimes "The Crush." Add a stern father who is fond of guns and we can expect a shoot out at the end, adding formulaic violence to formulaic sex.In this instance, those assumptions are all wrong. It's a decent movie, even a good movie. The characters aren't nearly as stereotyped as one might think. Locane's temptress with her long and lustrous blond hair, always holding her shoulders back to emphasize her modest bosom, isn't a vicious psychotic, just an ordinary, rather empty-headed high school kid who has been sexually active for a while and manages to convince herself that she's going to marry her teacher.Amy Locane, alas, can't really act, but everyone else does a fine job. Julie Harris in particular, as Hopper's Norwegian mother dying of cancer, is superb. She doesn't have that much screen time but she makes the most of it, never whining, and making only one matter-of-fact speech about dying. The pain is "like having a baby every day." Hopper gets to strip naked and he's in good shape for a forty-seven year old, although, to be sure, his figure is nothing compared to Locane's. Amy Irving gets to strip too, and although she's no longer the svelte high-schooler of her earlier movies, she looks just fine.Not to suggest that EVERYBODY gets to strip. Gary Busey doesn't get to strip. His job is to pose the threat that hangs in the air around the guilt-ridden Dennis Hopper. Someone warns Hopper: "The major knows about it. He's coming to see you." The shaky Hopper hides in the barn with a hunting rifle and a pint of booze, waiting for Busey to arrive.Busey does arrive apace, but when Hopper calls to him from the loft and asks if he's armed, Busey's reply is that of a thoroughly civilized human being -- "Now why would I be armed?" And when they talk inside Hopper's house, Busey exhibits a good deal of carefully controlled common sense. I know my daughter, he says, "and I figure it was probably less than half your idea." Not at all what you'd expect in a trashy movie.I won't spell out any more of the plot, but I ought to mention the evocative location shooting by Declan Quinn and the production design by Peter Paul Raubertas. These skills are often overlooked but, when exercised with care, they contribute immeasurably to a movie's success. This was shot in Texas instead of Michigan but it doesn't matter. There are other felicities, some of them symbolic, some establishing continuity, that I'll skip because of considerations of space. (Eg., Hopper trying to play the Hungarian Dances on the piano and, though imperfect, improving a little with each try.) It's a deliberately paced movie about characters and their dreams and the extinction and fulfillment of those dreams. A nice job by all concerned, though I'm not sure everyone could muster the patience required of the viewer.
Jill-68
A well-written story peopled with memorable characters. A bit off-putting, though, in its use of full frontal nudity....rather than displaying passion, Dennis Hopper and Amy Irving just looked plain cold.
And I do find it a bit of a male conceit to have a sexy nymphette of the caliber of Amy Locane be sexually aroused by a 49 yr. old (60 in real life) physically handicapped country schoolteacher who still lives on the farm with his mother. Perhaps she might have wiled away her Tuesday afternoons with him in the barn.....while she planned her weekend escapades with someone more suitable. As a woman, I found myself wishing Amy Irving would find herself a 17 yr. old stud to carry HER away....now THAT might be reason for some frontal nudity. But this film really is quite good....I'm just not sure women will like it nearly as much as the fellas.
