There are many things one should never say to those they love.  1985’s Smooth Talk has such an example, and I have never heard a line quite like this before: “I look in your eyes and all I see are trashy daydreams.”  This is what Mary Kay Place says to her teenaged daughter, Laura Dern in her last performance before breaking out in the next year’s Blue Velvet.

Dern is interesting to watch here, as she seems to occupy some sort of space that encompasses both that Lynch film and his later Wild at Heart.  If it wasn’t for her character in that film having a very different upbringing, I would have thought she was playing here the teenaged and inexperienced version of her Lula in the later film.  At the same time, she has an innocence in Lynch’s films recalling her character in this earlier one. 

Other times, she is simply a young woman bored mindless, such as her character in Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains three years prior.  And anybody who thinks it is easy to portray a bored teenage on the screen obviously haven’t seen the great many pictures I have where somebody fails to do so.  I especially like a bit where she is shuffling down a hallway, slumping against the wall with every couple of steps.

As indicated by that statement in the opening paragraph, her home life isn’t perfect, but it definitely could be worse.  Her relationship with her mother is greatly fractured.  Exacerbating this is how much her sister (Elizabeth Berridge) hangs on to their mother.  At one point, she and Place are on one side table grilling Dern on the opposite side, as if they are bad cop and whiny cop.

Dad is played by Levon Helm, formerly of the band The Band.  I don’t recall seeing him act in anything before, but he’s good here in a small role as the amiable, but rather ineffective, father.  There’s a neat bit where he’s sitting out on his lawn at night and marveling how he never thought he would get to the point in his life where he could just do that whenever he wants.  Funny, I feel that same way about being an adult.

He’s also concerned about Dern, as he saw her and one of her friends crossing a busy road one night.  If he noticed her attire, he didn’t comment on how skimpy it was.  I know it feels weird to have reached an age that, even without having kids, I see Dern that young and wearing that little and I want to put a formless sweater on her.

So, why did the teenaged Dern cross the road?  To get to the hamburger joint on the other side, where the older guys prowl.

It is there she catches the eye of the music older Treat Williams.  This is the kind of guy who refuses to acknowledge he is aging, hanging out a place where all the other customers are at least a decade younger than him.  That he has a muscle car is no surprise.  That he has his name painted on it is even more arrogant than I expected.  Pointing to the text reading “Arnold Friend”, he tells Dern, “That’s what I want to be to you.”  I so wish she had quipped back with “You want to be an Arnold to me?”

That is during an unnerving scene in the third act that escalates gradually.  He has come to her house on a Sunday afternoon, knowing the rest of the family is away.  He intensely woos her, in a manner that is equal parts threat and seduction.  Perhaps the worst aspect of this is how Dern is so thoroughly conflicted.  It’s like she is being betrayed by her own biology, like a cat in heat.

And that’s all I will say about the plot, though I do want to touch on the music a bit.  First, I found it odd all the music in the film seems to come from boomboxes, though those were very prevalent in the 80’s.  But there are at least two cars in the film where the music comes from those, and I wondered if this was somehow a world without in-dash stereos.

Then there’s how most of that music seems to be James Taylor, especially the song “Handy Man”.  I sarcastically asked my wife if teenage girls were really into Taylor in the 80’s and she shook her head slowly with an expression like she had just seen a terrible car accident.  Given that reaction, perhaps the most terrifying aspect of Smooth Talk is not the threat posed by Williams, but by the possibility of having to listen to James Taylor.

Dir: Joyce Chopra

Starring Laura Dern, Treat Williams, Mary Kay Place

Watched on Criterion Collection blu-ray