1068 Smooth Talk

[John Cope]

One of the very finest films on youth and innocence/experience of the 80's or any era really. Honest and perceptive but also haunting and troubling.

There are those who have said that if the film had only been the final long confrontation scene between Dern and Williams then it would have been great but that all the rest of it just bogged the whole film down in unnecessary detail. Obviously I disagree though this critique is not that dissimilar to the one put forth by some against Friedkin's Sorcerer claiming that it too would have been improved had it concentrated only on the truck journey and had the rest (again deemed to be unnecessary) shorn off. Both these positions evidence a rather profound lack of appreciation for the way that the surrounding detail contributes to a better, deeper understanding of the main characters and the entire scenario of the film, what these films are about, without having it laid out as deadly didactic messaging, recognizing that it can't be as it's too elusive for that. The detail establishes an environment, a context, which saturates the particular characters within, shaping them, while also suggesting the irreducibility of any meaning or understanding to be found. There really couldn't be a much more mature handling of dramatic subject matter.

At a base level though what we do recognize about Smooth Talk, however, even if we are not the same gender as the protagonist or herald from the same specific era, is its sensitivity to all the nuanced detail of being young and gaining knowledge by taking risks. In this it reminds me of Araki's Doom Generation in that all is carefree frivolity until it suddenly isn't anymore. And what I especially like, and this is in keeping with the maturity of its presentation, is that there is no clear moral judgment implied by this arc of circumstance; rather it's more of an acknowledgment of a general ontological reality.

What's great about the final scenes between Dern and Williams too is that it's a kind of subtle break or shift in the film's naturalistic seeming demeanor (and this may be part of the problem that some have with it in continuity with the rest). The initial scene at the house and the dialogue is heightened, supple and insinuating in a way that recalls for me experimental two character theater pieces translated to film such as Beth B's extraordinary Two Small Bodies. By the time Dern's character returns to the house at the end the film collapses into full on metaphor with Williams' character even more of a spectral presence than he always already had been (the specter of experience). But this change or shift is appropriate, justified, by being a natural extension of the film's observational precision; director Chopra recognizes when such a shift from one mode to another is called for to give full and proper expression to the themes explored.

[beamish14]

Director Joyce Chopra has an interesting-looking memoir out now