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A neglected masterpiece by a gifted director whose subsequent career was consigned to TV movies and series episodes.
Smooth Talk is one of the few films ever made whose climactic scene takes place on the borderline between reality and the imagination. That scene is done so beautifully by Dern and Treat Williams that one never forgets it. But the whole movie is full of wonderful moments.
For instance, after her first fight with her mother (and the sparks that fly between Dern and Mary Kay Place every time their eyes meet capture the hormones-versus-hormones explosiveness of adolescence versus middle age marvelously) Dern walks through a fruit orchard. This is Chopra's way of hinting to us that the Garden of Eden, the loss of innocence, lies behind the story.
The parents are house-poor, having had enough money to buy the house three years ago but not to decorate it. The inside is a chaos of paint cans, ladders, strips of wallpaper. This mirrors the chaos inside the emotions of the developing girl.
We learn during one of the mother-daughter quarrels that Connie's birth was an accident, that she was not wanted. This is a key to her conflict with her mother.
Chopra is a genius with focus. The three girls are seen perhaps fifteen feet from the camera, with everything behind them out of focus. Many of the outdoor scenes use focus in a creative way.
She is also a genius with light. When Jill comes to visit Connie in the dining room, the light on Connie's face is pure Vermeer, albeit coming from the right instead of the left.
The first time the girls see Frank's Restaurant, the long convertible of Arnold Friend passes them as he pulls into the parking lot. This is our introduction to Friend, who will be Connie's loss of innocence.
The first boy Connie meets at Frank's twirls on his bar stool like a child. He takes her out under the stars (not without Arnold Friend murmuring to her "I'm watching you" as they leave the restaurant) and she is filled with longing. "I wish I could just travel somewhere..." The second boy, more mature, takes her to an underground parking lot, a stark contrast. He is all business, and his caresses frighten her.
The first regression to innocence after sexual experimentation is Connie's offer to help her mother paint the house the next day. We see her holding the paint brush, then drifting into adolescent reverie. The scene ends, of course, with more conflict with her mother.
A possible bond between mother and daughter is shown during Jill's visit, when Connie plays James Taylor's "Handyman" on the record player in the dining room. Connie is swaying to the music with blatantly sexual movements that upset Jill, while Mother in the kitchen is also swaying to the song.
The introduction to the almost mystical approach of Arnold Friend is when the family has gone to a picnic and Connie hears Bobby King on her portable radio. The music is suddenly heard much louder from outside the house, and she turns to see Arnold Friend's car approaching.
Friend seduces Connie through a screen door, which is a perhaps too obvious hymenal symbol. Treat Williams' body language, from the moment he gets out of the car, is a key to the entire scene and must have been thought through carefully by Chopra. He is alternately playful and threatening. His dialogue consists entirely in the argument: "You were waiting for me, today is our date, your whole life has been leading to this moment of you giving yourself to me. Your family is nothing, your house is nothing." He sees the seduction as a fait accompli, and indeed it is, in the sense that all of Connie's tentative attempts at promiscuity have been leading to this moment of being possessed.
Curiously, the light suddenly changes as Friend is sitting on the car. The sunny day is gone, the sky is now cloudy. This probably was a result of a low TV budget, but it almost looks intentional. The whole world changes now that Friend has arrived.
Friend displays an astonishing (and perhaps imaginary) omniscience about what is happening at the family picnic far away. "They're cleaning the corn -- no, they're husking the corn. Hot dogs cooked to bursting over the fire..."
A wonderful moment: Friend observes that his friend Ellie Oscar, sitting in the car, is "strange." Connie says, "Kind of strange," and Friend's eyes dart to her with a significant look, measuring her compliance.
When Connie retreats from the screen door and says "Don't come in," Friend replies, "the plan is not for me to come in where I don't belong, but for you to come out here to me. No screen door, no house can keep us apart." There is no coercion. The impulse comes from within the girl. This is, I think, the essence of the movie and of the Joyce Carol Oates story. What appears to be a sort of rape is actually the fulfillment of a fantasy. This is why, after being initially terrified by the situation, Connie walks coolly through the door to Friend's car. "What if my eyes were green?"
The coitus is not shown, and in fact may not have happened.
When the family comes home and Connie goes to her bedroom with her sister, she says, "A man asked me to go for a ride, and I went." To which she quickly adds, "Maybe I didn't go. Maybe nothing happened. Maybe I'm going out of my mind."
The second and final regression to innocence is Connie now asking her sister to dance with her. "I mean, you wouldn't like feel defiled by touching me?" They dance to "Handyman" and as they hug the scene fades out.
Like Polanski's REPULSION, this movie takes us into the mind of the protagonist, and the climactic scene has the power of dream while perhaps not having happened at all.
An intricate, disturbing film classic. Made with funds from American Playhouse, Executive Producer Lindsay Law.
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