Diane Keaton wakes up in a chair in the apartment of sister Tuesday Weld and her husband. The back of the chair blocks most of the shot but, over that, we can see the top of Keaton’s head and one eye. That eye is darting around some, as she tries to determine where she is and exactly what went down the night before. Keaton is a performer who can act rings around many others with just one eyeball.
This is in 1977’s Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and her character has good reason to wonder what has happened. She’s living a double life like some late 70’s Supergirl by way of Cosmopolitan: mild-mannered teacher of deaf children by day and sex-obsessed bar-hopper by night.
And she’s far from the only person here taking full advantage of the sexual revolution. In the next room, she’ll find Weld and husband, as well as another couple, all passed out after a night of orgiastic excess. This was after we saw a bit of the group watching an old stag film projected in the living room. Hanging over the bed is an astonishingly tacky mobile composed of glass objects, each of which has an illustration of a different sexual position.
We don’t see Keaton engage in anything other than one-on-one hetero hookups, but her behaviors and choices in partners are becoming increasingly dangerous. Her first liaisons are with her married college professor (Alan Feinstein). She moves on to the occasional tryst with a mercurial and violent hustler (Richard Gere). In the meantime, she is pursued by William Atherton, a “nice guy” who has an undercurrent of creepiness almost from the first frame he’s in.
Each of these trysts are unsatisfying in different ways. Feinstein truly does not care about anything but sex, dismissing her after one coupling with “I can’t stand a woman’s company after I’ve fucked her.” Gere definitely gets her motor running going, but he’s nearly as disinterested in her except for conjugal visitations, given he says of his passion for television: “It’s the only box I don’t have to screw all the time to keep happy.” Atherton is, on the surface, too courteous and cautious to excite her, as evidenced by a scene where she laughs uncontrollably over him putting on a condom.
And yet, she also isn’t looking for any long-term relationships. Despite being great with her students, she doesn’t want any offspring of her own. There is a good reason for this, and it might have to do with own childhood, and a long and painful recovery from scoliosis surgery.
Despite the significant scar on her back, I wondered if the flashback we see of the recovery process from the surgery was really what happened, or if it was in her mind. I say this because she has a fertile imagination, and the film often takes these transitions into her fantasies without any visual cues we are about to do so. This was a creative decision I wasn’t entirely happy with, though it does make what we see more unnerving, because we start to doubt some things we’re seeing are real. For instance, I’m not sure what one is supposed to make of Gere dancing around aggressively in her apartment while wearing only a jock strap and waving around a glow-in-the-dark switchblade. And yet, that was apparently real.
Another actor I want to single out is LeVar Burton as the older brother of one of Keaton’s students. He is terse and seems to have a chip on his shoulder. But there’s an amazing moment where Keaton is alarmed to see Gere is on the school playground and Burton’s attention snaps to the window so fast that it is like a switchblade being flicked open. In just that incredibly quick and wordless moment, we know we have seen a signs of an actor you know is going on to bigger things.
I’m not sure I believed much of what happens in this picture, but I found it fascinating just the same. If anything, I find fault in how many characters and threads it tries to cover. Admittedly, everything still centers around Keaton, as she is nearly every scene. But her absence in a scene near the end suggests excessive scope, as we see a gay couple breaking up, and it’s like the projectionist accidentally threw on a reel from a different movie.
What most people will remember most about Looking for Mr. Goodbar is the sex, and it is shockingly strong stuff. I’m surprised it received an R at the time. So were the censors in Salt Lake City, as they pulled the film from theaters and even went to court to defend that decision. The content makes it all the more surprising the film was directed by long-time industry veteran Richard Brooks, whose career went all the way back to helming Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and even that wasn’t his first film. Interesting a guy of advanced years would make such a movie about a young woman’s sexuality that was so honest it has her resorting to pillow humping when she can’t find a lay. In the end, she probably would have been better off doing more of that.
Dir: Richard Brooks
Starring Diane Keaton, Tuesday Weld, William Atherton
Watched on Vinegar Syndrome blu-ray